Being able to show up energized and motivated every day is necessary to achieve big goals and enjoy the process. This post presents a tool to benchmark your current energy levels as the basis for improvement.
Energy levels are a complex issue where causal links are hard to establish. There are too many variables at play to be highly confident about any particular interaction. However, you can often make meaningful improvements by becoming aware of your patterns and running targeted experiments.
The first step is to collect data on your current energy levels. I suggest using an Energy Log every day for 2-3 weeks to keep track of a few variables that have a good chance of influencing your energy levels. In a second step, you can evaluate the data and look for patterns, and come up with ideas for experiments to increase energy levels.
If you’d like to explore these ideas further, here are a few resources that you might find useful:
- Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time – Harvard Business Review
- Energy Audit – Matt Mochary
- A bunch of reasons why you might have low energy – Alex Lintz