Energy Management

No, I'm not referring to home or office energy use, but your own personal energy management. We all are concerned with time management, but few of us think about how we build, sustain and use the energy we need to perform better in our personal lives and our work lives. Yet, studies show that those who have more energy produce better.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review provides a thorough review of this in "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time", by Tony Schwartz (HBR, Oct. 2007). There are four areas of focus:
Physical Energy.
Eat right, exercise reqularly, develop routines that allow for adequate rest. Get away from your desk at reqular intervals and move around the building or campus.
Emotional Energy.
Learn to deal with stress; deep breathing exercises are one way. Eliminate negative reactions and thoughts. A meeting that you know will be difficult can be viewed positively by seeing it as an opportunity to be persuasive or to gain a new perspective. How do portray the events of your day, positively or negatively? If mostly negative, how can you change this, without altering the facts, to make it more positive?
Mental Energy - Focus.
One way to improve concentration is to reduce the amount of mutli-tasking, instead focusing on one task at a time. Set aside specific time for specific actions, even routine ones like reading and responding to email/voice mail.
Spirtual Energy.
What are your core values? How do you adhere to them in your work and personal life? If you're working toward the things most important to you then it's more likely you'll find rewards in what you are doing that reinforce your positive habits and make it easier to drop the negative ones.