Energy Map Your Day to Defeat Burnout
We all intuitively recognize that our energy level rises and falls throughout the day, and often our productivity goes right along with it. You could try to control these ebbs and flows with caffeine and denial, but what if you could instead use these patterns to your advantage?
Energy Map Your Day
Making Your Map
Before you make the most of your natural periods of heightened energy, you'll need to understand where they lie in a typical day. For some, the morning is the perfect time to burn off some creative energy, while others don't hit their stride until they've had some time to wake up. To find out, you'll want to make an energy map, which you can do in two easy steps:
Take a spreadsheet or a piece of paper and break it into half-hour chunks of your workday. Make at least five copies of this.
Every half hour, jot down your current perceived energy level on a scale of one to ten. Don't obsess about the number, just write your general perception. Repeat this every day for at least one full work week. We're interested in long-term trends, not one single day.
Analyzing the Trends
Once you've done this for a few days, take a couple of highlighters to the records. Where is your energy the highest and where is it the lowest? What patterns do you notice? If you're like most people, you'll find some times of day where you are more productive than others, which is perfectly fine!
Using the Map
The key to this activity is not to judge yourself or to try to change, but simply to understand your own preferences. When you know yourself better, you can take actions to improve not just your productivity but also your wellness.
Schedule your hardest tasks for your most productive periods. Meet your toughest challenges head-on by scheduling them for times when you have the most energy.
Take advantage of your energy dips by scheduling lighter work. Don't be defeated by lower levels of energy. Instead, schedule your lower-priority tasks for those times so that you can do the heavier lifting when you're more prepared.
Minimize your worst energy slumps. You might eat a small snack to raise your blood sugar or sip some tea for a mild caffeine boost. Maybe set aside some downtime to take a walk in the fresh air or meditate. But don't pressure yourself to be at full-throttle all day; that's a quick way to burn yourself out.
