I am writing a new book for women who are ready to kick ass. It’s not far enough along to have a release date yet, but I’m really proud of it so far. This is one of the passages from my first draft. You’re very welcome to comment and let me know whether this resonates with you. This section is from Chapter 2, which is about balancing work with rest. Here, I’m sharing a few practices I’ve developed around being intentional with the way I spend my time. For example, I periodically do a “Time Review” and have some specific practices around increasing my time doing things that bring me energy (my “Energy Gainers”) and decreasing the things that take energy away (my “Energy Drainers”). I hope you enjoy this section!
The “Time Review”
It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in everyone else’s demands. Like, kid’s sports, school schedules, work activities, volunteering, child care. Before you know it, not a single second of your day is for you. You’re living your life for everyone else.
The best way I’ve found of being intentional with my time is to do a bit of a “time review”. At multiple times in my life, I have opened my calendar and looked back 1, 3, or 6 months at the various activities that were on it. Sometimes it’s just a personal life review and sometimes it’s a work life review. I take note of every activity that brought me happiness and energy and then every activity or meeting that drained me of energy. After looking at a few months, a clear pattern starts to emerge.
“Energy Drainers” vs. “Energy Gainers”
Perhaps it’s clear that your weekly hour and a half-long leadership meeting with no clear agenda is an energy drain, while your monthly book club / wine & cheese night with your best friends leaves you feeling ebullient.
Make two lists for the “Energy Gainers” and the “Energy Drainers”. The first list is now your list of things you should find time to do more and, of course, the second list are the things you should stop doing or do less. It might not always be under your control to, say, stop going to the weekly leadership meeting, but you could think about what might make it more tolerable? A better agenda, donuts, removing a toxic person, or adding a non-toxic one. Or, what if you could negotiate going every other week? That’s three hours of your life that you’d get back every single month.
How To Be More Intentional
You can start incredibly small. Find one thing on your “do more” list and schedule it. Reach out to your friends and find a time to play board games or schedule a date night with your spouse (or, my personal favorite, find time for a massage). Put a reminder on your calendar to schedule the next “fun thing” as soon as this one’s done. If you start by focusing on the things that bring you more energy, there will be an immediate, positive impact on the other areas of your life.
Once you have a habit of bringing more good into your life, then start thinking about how to remove the bad things. Can you limit the call with your toxic mother to 15 minutes every week? Could you put it at a different time of the week where you have more energy to deal with the bullshit that results?
The Weekly Review
I do a weekly review every Friday morning. I’ve been doing this since I read David Allen’s wonderful book, Getting Things Done, as part of a work-related book club in 2007. During this time, I do the following:
- Go through all of my emails and either answer them, put them into a to-do folder, a records folder, or a waiting-for folder.
- Go through my notes & loose papers and organize them.
- Review my calendar for the last week and upcoming week so I know what to prepare for.
- Go through my to-do list. Remove the things I’ve done, and make sure I have a good, prioritized list of the things I need to do in the next week.
- Go through my to-do and waiting-for emails and ensure high priority items are on my to-do list.
- Close extra tabs on my computer. I am terrible with tabs and closing a bunch always feels so good!
One of the things I have put in my to-do list is a reminder called, “Do you have enough fun things happening next week?” Underneath that prompt, I have a list of specific things that I know bring me joy. The list includes things to do as well as who to do them with. It makes it much easier to ensure I have fun to balance my work if I have that weekly reminder and a prompt that makes it easy to think of something to do. Better yet, if you can schedule something with friends on a regular basis, say, every 2nd and 4th Thursday night, that’s even better. You all get used to that activity and start to look forward to and cherish it.
Before you know it, the balance of your calendar will change from mostly things that drain you, to mostly things you love doing. It’s basically my favorite software development agile principle in action: continuous improvement. If you’re working to increase your “Energy Gainers” and decrease your “Energy Drainers”, you’ll always be moving in the right direction. You’ll be improving your life one event, practice, or friendship at a time.
Find a Root Cause
I did this exercise towards the end of my last job and I had a long list of “Energy Drainers”. About a year after I quit and took a sabbatical I did the exercise again. This time, almost everything in my list was an “Energy Gainer”. Almost everything.
And, honestly, I only made one major change there. I quit my job. Sometimes you can find one particular thing that turns out to be the root cause of a lot of your “Energy Drainers”. If you can identify that, work to eliminate it. Switching jobs can often eliminate a lot of useless meetings, especially if you quit and find an organization that better suits you (this is what the first chapter in this new book is all about!). Sometimes divorce does the same thing. When I left my first husband and moved back home to Madison, WI, I got rid of a house (lots of work), a commute (lots of wasted time), and a husband who not only was an emotional drain, but who rarely lifted a finger to help me around the house (best decision ever). Life was so, so easy after that. It was incredible.
When to Keep “Energy Drainers”
Some “Energy Drainers” are necessary to keep around. If it’s helping you reach your life goals, keep it and work to whittle away other “Energy Drainers”. For example, if that leadership meeting gives you visibility and a direct path to reaching the C-suite and that’s your goal, show up, kick its ass, try to make it more useful and palatable, but don’t sweat it. You’re doing this for a reason. If that weekly check-in on a side-project that seems to be going nowhere is a waste of time. Get rid of it or just stop going. You have permission to quit things that aren’t helping you reach your goals and are draining all your energy and time away.