4 Essential Steps For Managing Your Time and Energy

Written by Marianne Van Oyen, Psychologist | Author

Marianne Van Oyen is a psychologist in private practice with over 30 years of experience. She is a published author with three books to offer those who wish to expand their knowledge and skills by implementing her tools and insights. Marianne brings a blend of intuition, creativity, and psychology to her work.

Ready to elevate your energy, efficiency and enjoyment? In today's very busy lifestyle, knowing how to conserve and use your energy effectively is essential. Whether you are a single person or a parent, knowing how to manage these resources is crucial. In this article, we will explore four ways to maximize your time, energy and efficiency, four key ingredients guiding you toward a more satisfying life and lifestyle.

1. Create a menu

Much like reading a restaurant menu, creating a “to do” menu for all your tasks, activities, chores, etc., is mandatory for better time management. Too many people don’t plan their time, so they waste it or get caught off guard by unexpected deadlines. Doing so causes stress, cortisol and adrenaline rushes, panic, and poor productivity, even if you claim to do good work under pressure. Completing tasks at the last minute reinforces procrastination, as the task feels gruelling. This cycle reinforces the avoidance of such activities in the future, perpetuating maladaptive behaviours.

Define your list of “things to do”

Make a list of everything you want or need to do in the coming weeks. There is no need to put the items in any order. Simply write them down. Do a mind dump so that you don’t forget what these items and tasks are. If you enjoy order, you can list the items in categories later, such as work related tasks, personal chores, and miscellaneous. You can add one off items that need attention, much like a menu that is organized into categories such as appetizers, entrees, desserts, and time limited specials. Listing and identifying things that need completion, or personal items you want to tackle, calms your mind and saves brainpower from having to keep the running list in your head. If you don’t write the items down, you will surely forget something, causing unnecessary stress.

Set realistic goals

When setting goals, make sure you can achieve them in the most productive way possible to avoid overwhelm and analysis paralysis. Too often, people jump into a project or activity with no direction or clue about what it will require in terms of time and resources. Then they get caught off guard and are unpleasantly surprised by the rude awakening that they may not have enough time to complete their task.

Clearly define what you want to achieve with your goal. The more precise and detailed your objective, the easier it will be to develop actionable steps to reach it.

• Measurable: Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward your goal.

• Achievable: Set goals that are realistic and attainable within your resources and constraints. While it's essential to aim high, setting unrealistic goals can lead to frustration and demotivation.

• Relevant: Ensure your goals are aligned with your academic, professional or personal objectives and contribute to your overall vision and mission. Focus on pursuing goals that will meaningfully impact your success.

• Time bound: Set a specific timeframe for achieving your goal to create a sense of urgency and accountability. Deadlines help you stay focused and motivated, allowing you to prioritize tasks and allocate resources efficiently.

2. Establish time estimates

Knowing how much time you will need to start and complete a task before the deadline is very important. Not doing so is where many people get lost and panic when they encounter an upcoming deadline without a clear plan to execute their project. In minutes, you can create a time management and time estimate map that will guide you to achieve your success calmly, in control, and with confidence. Planning this map is a very good investment of your time, and it will support you on your journey.

Take a piece of paper or create a spreadsheet with the following titles across the top of the page. This approach is effective for students, professionals, or your own personal projects:

Make a list of subjects or projects you want or need to accomplish, then break each topic into its components. Beside each section, estimate the length of time required to achieve each step, and then multiply it by two in case you underestimated the time needed. Once you have completed each phase, record the actual time under the Real Time column to verify how close you were to your estimated time. Note the due date for each assignment.

Please do this for everything with a deadline. You may not need the extra allotted time, but you will be glad you accounted for it in case you do. You can see that if someone does not create a time estimate map, this person will be caught off guard and become more stressed and exasperated if, for example, they begin their project the day before it’s due. Doing so would require doing nothing else for a complete day, including no sleep.

This approach will also result in a lower mark for the project, as there was little time to focus on quality, reflect on ideas, and prepare the most professional presentation possible due to insufficient time and rest. As the experience will be gruelling, one will not want to think about the next project, leading to procrastination, and the cycle will continue. A sense of success and satisfaction will eventually elude a person who either quits or fails to meet their potential, all due to a lack of a plan or inadequate time management.

Conduct time estimate research

Investing time in assessing what needs to get done and when will change your life when you add the time estimate map to your “to do” menu. You can quickly see how fast time can pass by and elude us if we are not investing in where our time goes and how much time we will need to be successful. Twenty nine hours over two days will feel like torture, whereas if you give yourself 28 days to complete a project, you can decide when you will spend this time, allowing yourself to breathe, think, rest, enjoy life, sleep, and get a multitude of other tasks and projects done. Whether you decide to invest an hour a day over 28 days or commit to doing chunks of time, such as 3 to 4 hour blocks over a period of four weeks, you get the idea. Just reading this should give you a sense of relief.

3. Energy is currency

No one teaches us that energy is currency. Rather, we treat energy as a never ending supply, ready to be abused and misspent, much as we treat time. Everything we have, time, energy, and money, has limits in how it can serve us. Yet we put ourselves into financial and energetic debt, leading to stress and a slippery slope toward poor recovery, costing us our physical and mental health and further taxing our nervous systems and bank accounts. We borrow perceived energy from the adrenaline that courses through our veins to get us through a day, always at the expense of our health.

Adrenaline and cortisol are the price of getting energy on credit. We can’t afford things, yet we spend regardless and often borrow from banks, paying interest that keeps us stuck in debt. We need to respect ourselves, our energy, and our money so that we can best invest in and support ourselves in a hopefully long and fulfilling life. Sometimes we may need to borrow energy or money in the short term to invest in ourselves and our lives, as long as it is for investment purposes, such as building a business or reaching a substantial goal that will pay dividends in our lives. Otherwise, it’s spending and wasting precious resources.

When we rip through our energy by rushing, doing things at the last minute, running marathon sessions of work or school projects, trying to get a million things done in a compressed time frame, and not enjoying any of the process, we are overspending our energy. Once the adrenaline calms down, this will leave us feeling exhausted and in need of recuperation, slowing us down and creating stress as time runs away from us while our energy is trying to catch up. Eventually, the gap becomes too large, and we fall into the abyss of exhaustion, stress, and burnout.

4. Visualize your way to satisfaction

To benefit from the menu and time management mapping, you will need to integrate visualization to make the most of your time and energy. We need to remember that life is a marathon and not a sprint. Those who insist on sprinting through life will pay the consequences through illness, injury, dissatisfaction, stress, and/or burnout, not to mention an untimely death. Rushing raises cortisol and pumps adrenaline through your system, giving you a false sense of energy. Like money, if you spend more energy than you have available, you will go into deficit, where, like financial debt, it makes it harder to climb out of negative energy and climb back into the positive energy account. If you gain traction and then overspend your energy, you will quickly fall into a deficit position again, where every round of overspending energy will leave you exhausted and frustrated.

One way to help make the most of your energy, like stretching a dollar, is to use visualization and check in with your feelings.

The early signs of entering an energy deficit are when tasks and activities feel harder, even the ones that used to bring you joy and satisfaction begin to feel draining. You need to look at a spectrum of activities, etc., from work related to pleasure, and where your energy feels taxed. It’s understandable if your energy becomes impacted when doing heavy or difficult tasks or activities. One would hope that, along the continuum, energy feels less drained during mid range tasks and even restored after engaging in enjoyable activities, such as spending time with friends and family. You know that you're in trouble when the entire spectrum feels heavy and draining. This signal is one of the most telling signs that you are burning out.

Visualizing how and when you will attack and accomplish any task will help you manage your time, efficiency, and energy best, preventing or reversing the energy drain on the spectrum of things to do on your menu. You may begin to enjoy what you used to love doing and even enjoy most of your tasks and activities, raising your overall sense of satisfaction and quality of life.

Visualization

1. Rather than jumping unquestioningly into your day and tasks, take the time to peruse your menu of things to do. Ask yourself and your energy which item(s) you are up for, and consider whether any of these items have an urgent deadline. Hopefully, none do, as you have mapped out your projects and activities in advance of due dates, which gives you the luxury of choosing what you do on any day and how long you wish to engage in that activity. That is the entire objective of creating a menu and a time management schedule, complete with task breakdowns, time estimates, and due dates.

2. You will have a sense of which tasks you feel like doing by taking a few long, deep breaths and exhaling slowly while tuning in to your energy. Are you tired, restless, anxious, or loaded with energy? Etc. Which task or activity do you “feel” like doing, and for how long? Just because it might take 6 hours to start and complete, if you have ample time before it’s due, you can choose how much time you wish to spend on it. Ask your body how it feels about any given task. Imagine doing the activity and see if your body feels heavy and stressed, which is often an indication that you will spend more energy than needed to start this task. Rather, if your body responds with a sense of lightheartedness or even excitement, you will not have to tackle any barriers or resistance during this activity. Instead, the perceived energy available when you think about engaging in this activity will feel like wind at your back, helping you move forward with ease. Doing so means using less energy to complete the task, which will also feel more pleasurable, giving you more energy and positive feelings as you do it. This energetic state will make the task feel easier, and this is an essential ingredient in preventing procrastination.

3. Once you have chosen the activities and tasks, visualize doing them and the order in which they are to be executed. Consider how much time you wish to devote to each, based on your time estimates and due dates. The vision in your mind should feel light, and the tasks should flow from one activity to the next, picturing where you will need to take a break so that you don’t overextend yourself and run out of steam. If your schedule feels too hectic or long, what can you remove from the list and do another day? Where will your breaks serve you, and what feels right in your energetic system?

4. Once you start an activity and have decoded the order of events, make sure to check your energy periodically so you don’t overdo your workload. For example, you may start cleaning your closets, which you estimated would take two hours. However, if you are 90 minutes in, with 15 minutes left to complete the task, and you are getting tired, stop what you are doing and leave those items for another day. Why, you ask, when there are just 15 minutes left? Because you may have soared through the first 90 minutes with relative ease, yet pushing through the remaining 15 will take up too much energy for what the task would require on another day. Pushing through uses more energy than it should, exhausting you and sapping energy that could better serve you for the next task that feels lighter. Also, pushing through will leave you more tired and feeling negative about the activity by ending on a heavier note. You will have less energy for other tasks, and more often than not, you will pay for the overextension by being extra tired the following day, when you could have stopped sooner, rested, and had enough energy to complete more tasks. If you overdo it, you will pay for it, and it will set you back in the long run.

Invest your time and energy well

Time and energy are limited resources. We cannot create more time or more energy. Rather, we need to optimize our use of both entities to make the most of these commodities and achieve our objectives with good health, optimism, and satisfaction. When we listen to our bodies and take the time to identify what we need and want to accomplish, we can lay out our objectives in advance and do them in the best ways possible to avoid burnout and increase efficiency and success.

If you would like to learn more about time and energy management, please reach out to me via my website here. Take care of your time, energy, and your health. You can’t buy more.

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Read more from Marianne Van Oyen

Marianne Van Oyen, Psychologist | Author

Marianne Van Oyen answered her call to serve others at the age of 21 and to help make the world a better place, one person at a time. She works primarily with adolescents, adults, and couples in person and virtually. Marianne has spent money, time, and energy in many professional development programs, learning many modalities of therapy to offer her clients the best service and results possible. She has also taken the same path to develop her skills as a writer, author, and publisher so that she can expand her reach.