Managing Energy: How To Improve and Maximize Work
Our lives feel like a race against time. We speed through work hours in an attempt to finish as much output as possible, allot time for family and friends to get the most intimacy out of what little moments we may have with them, plot schedules as if they were building blocks, trying to make sure we can jam each and every brick of our life plans into one cohesive structure.
But more often than not, each of us feels like we’re running out of time. We feel like there isn’t enough time.
Some of us enter a heightened state of productivity to accomplish as many things as fast as possible. Some may even plot intricate and comprehensive plans for days, weeks, or months while others may simply hoard responsibilities and accomplish them all at the same time. While several of these strategies may be helpful for some, a lot of us fall into unproductive approaches towards work.
These days, it’s easy to plunge into the trap of trying to accomplish more. We think that a fuller and more achievement-oriented life is the definition of success. We tend to worry about not doing enough, that we’re ‘slacking’ or being ‘unproductive’ when we don’t hit our goals. We feel bad when we don’t become the people we wanted to be.
These take a toll on our minds--on our wellbeing. It all takes a toll on our energy levels, leaving us drained. And once we entertain these negative thoughts and emotions, it begins a spiral of feeling more and more worn out, of feeling helpless and doubtful.
What is this all for? Why am I doing this? Should I be doing this? Am I doing something wrong?
All this is an effect of motivation, and how our understanding of what we want to, need to, and feel like doing.
What is Motivation in the First Place?
We’ve all, at some point, probably searched up tips and tricks on how to ‘get in the mood’ or ‘how to power through tough times even when we don’t feel like it’. Many of us think that’s what motivation is all about. However, motivation is more than just attuning to positive and productive behavior.
Motivation asks ‘what influences one’s behavior?’, ‘why did you do a certain thing?’, ‘what made you feel like doing it?’ Motivation unpacks not what people choose to do, but why they do it (Reeve, 2009). Understanding why you’re motivated to do something involves discovering what you want to do, why you want to do it, what influences these decisions/emotions of yours, and what keeps you going.
Motivation is what guides you through your daily life. From deciding what you prefer to eat for breakfast, to which job offer you want to apply for, to whether you want to go out on a date with that person or not, to even what time you decide to sleep at night. Motivation leads you towards what you want to do, and even leads you away from what you don’t feel like doing.
Motivation is what gives your life both direction and energy.
What Motivates Us?
According to Reeve, there are two main sources of motivation: internal motives and external events.
Internal motives come in three distinct forms. Needs are conditions within us that are both essential and necessary for maintaining our daily lives and nurturing growth and wellbeing. There are biological needs (hunger, thirst), psychological needs (competence, relatedness), and even social needs (achievement, intimacy). Cognitions, on the other hand, are thoughts, beliefs, and expectations we have towards ourselves, others, and how we (or they) should act in certain situations. Meanwhile, emotions are brief, subjective, and expressive sensations we feel to show how we respond or react to things.
These internal mechanisms serve as a personal compass of sorts. When we feel tired, we feel more motivated to rest than pick up another project. When we think we’re getting sluggish, we get a rush to go out of a quick morning jog. When our stomachs grumble, we decide its time for a lunch break and eat a hearty meal.
External events, as the name suggests, are environmental, social, and cultural sources of motivation. Unlike internal motives, external events can’t operate alone--in order to be effective, they need to tap into one of our three kinds of internal motives. For example, the incentive of money would only seem appealing if we think that we’re running out of groceries. We would only want to attend a party if our closest friends and loved ones will be going too, knowing we’ll have a good time spending the evening with them. External events only direct our behavior if they align with our own needs, cognitions, and emotions.
How do we use Motivation to our advantage?
Everyone asks ‘how do I stay motivated?’, ‘how do I get motivated?’, or even ‘what’s the best way to be motivated’? However, we rarely get to stop and ask ourselves, ‘what motivates me?’
In Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, they go through the process of identifying where to begin, how to find your direction and goals, and how to design meaning into what you do.
One of their steps to designing your optimal life is through wayfinding. Wayfinding is an ancient method of finding out where you’re going when you feel lost. Using a compass, you’ll need to have a direction--you’ll need to know where you want to go. Burnett and Evans suggest that life works the same way: there’s no one direction to your goals, and there aren’t clear paths towards them. But what we can do is stop and listen to the signs that direct us.
In short, we’ll have to tune in and listen to our motivations.
They introduce the ideas of tapping into what engages us and what energizes us as a means of planning out how we go about our daily lives.
What is Engagement?
Engagement is the act of getting engrossed into something, getting invested and focusing all of our attention into a single activity. If you’ve ever spent hours on learning a particular skill, worked undisturbed while fixing your malfunctioning TV, or have even spent an entire dinner without worrying about a single thing--that’s engagement.
But Csikszentmihalyi (1990) takes this a step further with his concept of flow. Flow is engagement at its maximum, at its fullest extent. It’s a state we enter where everything around us pauses and stills, where we’re totally engaged in what we’re doing, and the difficulty of the task is equally matched to our abilities.
According to Csikszentmihalyi, in order to experience flow, we need to find the right balance between the level or difficulty of what we want to do and our own abilities and skills. If you pressure yourself into learning three lessons in a day but struggle immediately with the first, we don’t feel flow. If you want to finish three project pitches before the end of the week by multitasking when you can only focus on one, we don’t feel flow. Because of these impulsive and unproductive work strategies, we miss out on the chance to experience the invigorating and pleasurable experience of being totally engaged.
What is Energy?
If engagement is how on-task we are with what we do, energy is more geared towards how refreshed we are after doing it. We need energy to continue on with our lives. We constantly engage in physical and mental activities all day long. As we do, you may have noticed that some activities sustain energy while others deplete it. The truth about energy is that it isn’t linear--it doesn’t steadily increase or decrease. It fluctuates depending on our environment, what we do, and how we feel about what we do.
Take, for example, your average work day. As soon as you enter the office, you may feel sleepy and lethargic. The act of climbing up the stairs to your floor drops your energy levels a bit. However, as soon as you hear from your colleague that you’ll be working together on a project, you feel giddy and excited about it--your energy levels go up.
Energy is a component of motivation, so it stands that knowing what energizes us (and what doesn’t) will help us better understand how to work with our responsibilities and tasks in order to maximize our days.
How do we maximize our Engagement and Energy?
There are many ways to go about this. Burnett and Evans suggest keeping a journal and tracking your daily activities. But, instead of simply logging down what you did at the end of the day, take a few moments to pause and reflect on your engagement and energy while doing each task. Ask yourself, ‘how engaged or focused was I when I did this?’ and ‘how did I feel afterwards?’.
On top of that, it’s important to ask why.
By pinpointing how we respond and feel about chores, work, or recreational activities, we become more conscious of our motivations and how to work with them. If you find that organizing files feels like a drag because you do it for long periods of time, then consider breaking apart your workload into smaller chunks to see how it feels. If you notice you enjoy group projects only because you get to work with others, focus on picking up assignments that engage you with others in order to get energized as you work.
This is only one example of how you can use motivation, engagement, and energy into maximizing your life. Other examples include:
Pacing Yourself: No matter how hard we work, we will always need time to rest. We all perform better when we’re properly rested. Do something you love for longer breaks or loosen up and worry less during shorter breaks to energize yourself.
Focusing on Focus: It’s easy to want to pick up many things at once to be ‘productive’, but that won’t help your engagement at all. By working on a single task, you maximize your engagement and increase your chances of entering flow (and enjoying it too).
Knowing Your Goals: There’s so much we want out of life that it gets overwhelming. Take some time to set SMART personal goals so you don’t lose your way. Choose activities that engage and energize you in order to sustain your motivation.
Being Flexible: Setting schedules is always reassuring, but when we fail to meet our own daily expectations, it’s easy to feel bad. Understand that motivation, engagement, and energy fluctuate. Be flexible enough to work with how you feel and listen to what your body and mind is telling you.
Having Fun: We have persistent beliefs that ‘work is work’. But work, just like many things in our life, can be enjoyable if we choose it to be. Do what you love. Engage in what interests you. Thrive with those who energize you. These positive emotions will have a larger impact on your life than you think.
Steve Jobs once said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” Take a moment to pause, reflect, and think about how you want to live your days--to live your life. Think about how you can balance what you want to do with what engages you and energizes you.
Find what works for you. Find your own path.
References:
Burnett, W., & Evans, D. J. (2016). Wayfinding. In Designing your life: how to build a well-lived, joyful life (pp. 57–74). Alfred A. Knopf.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Reeve, J. (2009). Introduction. In Understanding Motivation and Emotion (pp. 1–23). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
