What is Your Most Precious Productivity Resource?

Posted on May 18th, 2012 by Patrick Clouden

What is your most precious resource in production? What, if left unmanaged, will kill your productivity more than anything else?

Most people would answer “time”…and they’re wrong.

The most important commodity you have and must manage in order to maintain high productivity is energy, not time. Why?

Well think about it for a second. Let’s say you managed your schedule meticulously and planned every second of every day, but when it came time to DO something in each slot you had low physical energy levels, you were anxious and stressed, you couldn’t focus on your work and were unmotivated, how much do you think you’ll actually get done? Not very much.

And unfortunately this is where many people sit: they think that buying a time planner and working out a rigorous schedule is the key to unlocking sky-high productivity levels. And it never works.

Instead, they should be focusing FIRST on properly managing energy levels and THEN managing their time. This subject is much too vast to cover in one blog post, but I want to briefly look at four distinct areas of energy that you must control to achieve “superhuman” levels of productivity.

Physical Energy

Not taking care of our bodies affects our work more than we think. When we eat poorly, sleep too little, crash our adrenals with stimulants, rely on sugar highs to feel energy, etc., we are contributing to long-term degradation of our physical capacities.

The fact is, when you feel lethargic, tired, physically uncomfortable, etc., it has a HUGE effect on your productivity levels. It’s very distracting and hard to mentally push through.  On the flip side, when your body feels healthy, rested, energetic and refreshed, it makes can make production a breeze.

Our physical energy capacity is defined by quantity. It is measured in these terms (high to low).

Mental Energy

Our ability to focus on what we’re doing when we’re doing it is paramount in our ability to be effective workers. If our minds are cloudy, distracted and “weighed down,” and we are unable to really focus in that moment, our productivity levels suffer immensely. When our attention is fixed on internal struggles and problems, it becomes very hard to stick to the task at hand. Our “noisy heads” can waste HUGE amounts of our time.

Our mental energy capacity is defined by focus. It is measured in accuracy (specific or scattered) and location (external or internal).

Emotional Energy

Our feeling of positive or negative emotions affects how we view

everything around us and thus affects our ability to produce. If we are angry, anxious, worried, stressed, etc., we simply will not be as effective than when we are uplifted, challenged and positive in our outlook.

Our emotional energy is defined by quality. It is measured in terms of pleasant (positive) tounpleasant (negative).

Spiritual Energy

Though this sounds kind of “new agey,” it’s actually pretty simple. The “spiritual energy” you bring to a project is your sense of purpose and motivation for completing the project. If you could care less about the work, you obviously haven’t connected it to any strong purpose of yours and you’ll bring little internal motivation to it. This can be a huge barrier when you’re trying to push through obstacles and get things done.

Our “spiritual energy” is defined by force. It is measured in terms of strength of purpose.

Now, correctly aligning these vectors could be a training program on its own (and we’re going to create that), but i thought I’d get your wheels turning on the subject.

Immediate Application

Work out how you could raise your physical energy levels. Eat better? Exercise some? Sleep more or better?

And what about your mental energy. How can you remove distractions in order to better focus on the tasks at hand?

How can you lower your stress levels and be more positive in your work? I guarantee you that by fixing the first two, it’ll automatically ripple into this area.

And finally how can you ensure your work connects with a deeply-held purpose or desirable goal of yours? Work it out.

Pat

P.S. What are you going to do this week to improve your physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual energy levels? Let me know in the comments below!

ΠΗΓΗ: