Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time
The new book “The Happiness Track” explains how to use
the science of happiness to preserve your energy and be more productive.
Emma Seppälä and I have something in common:
we are both recovering chore-haters.
“There was a time when I couldn’t stand
running errands: getting gas, taking my car for an oil change, calling the
electricity company about a bill, or going grocery shopping,” she writes in her
new book The Happiness
Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success. “Taking care of this or that silly errand instead of
being ‘productive’—doing things that would serve some future goal like
advancing my career—felt like a waste of time.”
Sound familiar?
In The Happiness Track, Seppälä
tries to untangle one of the knottiest problems of the modern age: our burned
out, overscheduled lifestyle. We are stuck in a jumble of feeling overwhelmed
yet never accomplishing enough, trussed up by the underlying assumptions that
we hold about productivity: Success requires stress. We have to compete
with others. We can’t cut ourselves any slack. “We have simply accepted
overextension as a way of life,” she writes.
So it’s no wonder many of us aren’t not
happy—we’re drained and emotionally exhausted! Nearly
half of us lie awake at night due to stress, the
worries of the day coming home to roost when we finally stop moving. We tell
ourselves to “tough it out” rather than to rest or reassess what we’re
doing.
To combat this problem, the typical advice is
to manage your time better: Prioritize. Make better to-do lists. Delegate
unnecessary tasks. If that hasn’t worked for you, don’t be surprised; nature
abhors a vacuum, and so do we. If we give ourselves an extra hour, we’ll find
some task to fill it with. So time is not the commodity we should be tracking
and managing, Seppälä argues. Instead, we need to manage our energy.
In Seppälä‘s formulation, we drain ourselves
of energy anytime we experience intense negative emotions or thoughts, or
struggle against our urges and desires. If we allow ourselves a walk during
lunchtime but are consumed by worries about our afternoon workload, we’ve
drained energy rather than gained it—yet the same amount of time has elapsed.
If we have to peel ourselves out of bed morning after morning running a sleep
deficit, it takes a toll on our vitality, even though we have more waking hours
to get things done.
Seppälä outlines six qualities to cultivate
that will contribute to both our productivity and our happiness. In effect,
they’re also ways to boost energy without making big changes to our schedules:
1. Full presence. Thinking about the past or future can bring up regrets
and worries that sap our strength. Instead, Seppälä encourages us to use the
techniques of focus and mindfulness to stay grounded in the present. Not only
will we be happier, but
we’ll also be more likely to experience flow, that immersive state where
progress skips along almost effortlessly. Presence is also the key to charisma and
building strong relationships at work, because true connection only happens
when we give our full attention to others. On a daily basis, that means we need
to stop multitasking and break free from our technological distractions, and
incorporate the practices of meditation and savoring into
our routine.
2. Resilience. As we move from stressor to stressor, Seppälä
explains, we don’t give our bodies time to calm down and activate our natural
resources for repair and healing. As a result, we exist in a constant state of
tension that strains our body and mind. To fight the frazzle, we have to
relearn the basics of taking care of ourselves: adequate sleep, healthy food,
exercise, and deep breathing.
3. Calm. Seppälä debunks the myth that energy and calm are
opposing forces. Instead, she believes calm and energy are key to productive
work and a happy life. Calm may be found in yoga or meditation, while energy is
derived from positive moments that we can experience daily: short breaks to
watch that viral cat video or go for a walk, engaging hobbies, and a gratitude practice.
4. Rest. In our rush toward achievement, we may not have noticed a
big casualty in our wake: creativity. Creativity notoriously can’t be summoned up on command,
squeezed into an extra power hour of nighttime work or sandwiched between
meetings. It requires rest and free time for new ideas to bubble up, interlace,
and recombine. Remember the errands that Seppälä and I used to hate? It might
be in these moments of idleness—on a drive to the grocery store, listening to
music, or walking in nature—when inspiration strikes.
5. Self-compassion. According to research, it’s self-compassion—not
self-criticism—that gives us the energy to plow forward. Self-compassion
inspires us to learn from failures and try again, while self-criticism might
lead to giving up or denying our failures. Who wants to be called dumb and bad
by the voice in their own head? Notably, research shows that people who are
more self-compassionate have less anxiety and stress and exhibit more
curiosity, creativity, willpower, and motivation. Self-compassion requires
treating ourselves the way we would a friend, both in our behavior and in our
internal monologue.
6. Compassion. Part of the stress and strain in today’s workplaces
comes from a lack of connection to our coworkers—perhaps because we don’t have
time for “socializing,” perhaps because we see them as our rivals. But again
and again, research shows us the benefits of reaching out. “Givers” are liked, appreciated, and influential, as long as they set boundaries and don’t get taken
advantage of. In a compassionate culture, employees are both happier and more productive. Not to mention that solid relationships at work can
buffer against any stress and anxiety we experience there.
Each of these suggestions for increasing our
happiness and productivity are grounded in extensive research, yet many of us
still turn to time management techniques. Why is that? Maybe it seems more
concrete—cancel a meeting here, delegate a task there, and we’ve done it.
Managing our energy by changing attitudes and beliefs takes more time and
commitment, but if we do the hard work of cultivating these qualities, we’ll
slowly begin to break free from the chains of stress and overwork. That path
may seem intimidating to the burned-out reader, but ultimately it’s the wiser
one. And the happier one.
By Kira M. Newman
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/manage_your_energy_not_your_time?utm_source=GG+Newsletter+Mar+2+2016&utm_campaign=GG+Newsletter+Mar+2+2016&utm_medium=email
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