The Pomodoro Method, Notion, bullet journaling, time blocking, body doubling. How many time-management systems have you used? How long did they last before you gave up on them, still unhappy with your low energy and high hours spent behind a desk?
New studies show that time management may be a waste of time and that the key to greater productivity is managing our energy.
What Is Energy Management and Why Is It Important
Around 40% of our daily activities are chronic and require little to no decision-making. That means 60% of your day demands your attention and decision-making. Every little decision you make costs precious mental energy, a resource that, like time, is finite.
It’s not just a matter of “muscling through,” either. Even the disciplined and healthiest person will have a build-up of glutamate in their brain, a byproduct of metabolism, that isn’t cleared away until you sleep. This glutamate affects the functioning of our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for problem-solving and decision-making. We make better decisions early in the morning and are more likely to impulse buy late at night.
It doesn’t matter how much you block your time; if you aren’t working efficiently, your brain will get burnt out quickly, and you’ll make bad decisions. Energy management seeks to capitalize on the brain’s higher levels of energy in the morning and after breaks while allowing it to rest as it gets tired.
How to Schedule Your Day Around Energy Management
So, time management isn’t necessarily the answer, and grinding away despite being exhausted is a recipe for disaster. What else can you do? Scientists recommend these tips for better energy management:
- Do your challenging tasks early in the morning: It’s common for people to open up their laptops and head straight to their emails. This is fine since you’ll want to catch urgent matters, but don’t get caught up answering the mundane, non-urgent mail. Save that for the afternoon when your prefrontal cortex is maxed out on decision-making and ready to coast on autopilot the rest of the day. Instead, after ensuring you’re not missing any urgent matters, head straight to your pressing concerns: high-stakes decisions and creative projects.
- Do busy tasks later in your work day: Lunch rejuvenates our brains, and we get a short hour or two of heightened decision-making ability. Schedule busy work tasks—bookkeeping, emails, housekeeping—for an hour or two after lunch.
- Take small breaks: Studies show that short breaks can replenish your decision-making ability. Go for short walks, take a lunch break, and get up to stretch. This won’t prevent glutamate build-up but will help you remain alert all day.
- Wait to make big decisions in the morning: If possible, don’t make big decisions in the afternoon. You may not always be able to wait, and that’s fine, but get in the habit of sending “I’ll think on this” emails.
- Let yourself cool down if you get emotional: Emotional regulation takes up much emotional and physical energy. If you get heated in an email or overwhelmed with a task, your prefrontal cortex will struggle more than usual. So, instead of powering through, get up and walk, take a few deep breaths, or do something mindless for a few minutes until you no longer have to focus on emotional regulation and the task at hand.
If you’re a CEO, business owner, or manager, this can help you structure your team. Meetings have long been an employee’s biggest gripe against their productivity, and when you have your meetings could be a big reason why. Research shows that between 10-12 in the morning is best if you need to make decisions, and around 2:30 is best for meetings where attendance is important but employees aren’t needed to make big decisions. This allows your team to dedicate their early morning productivity to their critical individual tasks.
What Type of Tasks Are Morning Tasks
What should your to-do list say in the morning, when your prefrontal cortex is primed for decision-making? This will depend on your unique position, but, in general, the tasks that take the mental energy are:
- Big, urgent decisions
- Creative projects
- Organizing and evaluating information (researching)
- Resolving choice trade-off (two good options, no clear decision)
- Emotional regulation
- Impression management (meeting outside partners or management)
Try to filter of these tasks into the morning so you can do the lower-energy tasks in the evening.
Stress and Decision Making
If you’ve had an overly stressful day, is it better to push through to the end or call it quits a few hours early?
Research suggests you’ll be better off giving yourself time to rest after a stressful day, rather than forcing yourself to keep working.
When you make decisions under a great deal of stress, you tend to:
- Decide based on habits instead of new information.
- Make illogical decisions based on your fight-or-flight response instead of good problem-solving.
- Become more tired quicker, aiding bad decision-making.
So when you start seeing red, pack up and leave a few minutes early; it could save you from making a bad decision.
Stress-Management and Higher Productivity
Stress is the killer of productivity, not to mention what it does to your mental health. Although it may feel like we’re working better when we have that fire under us, studies show that stress wears down the brain quickly and results in habitual-style decisions. So if you want to keep up a steady pace and make decisions that will launch your work forward, you need to have good stress management.
There’s a lot of good tips out there for stress management; it’s important to find what works for you. While a run in the morning may be great for some people, the high cortisol levels of exercise can be a hindrance to others. To find a stress management technique that works for you, try to journal about what makes you feel relaxed, create a buddy system to hold yourself accountable for anti-stress activities, or find a stress management therapist to help you get your stress under control.
Employees Are Only Productive for 3 Hours
Yep, you read that right: the average employee is only truly productive for 3 out of 8 hours a day.
Why?
The 8 hour work day was informed by the Industrial Revolution for factory workers, and was actually a step up from the 16-hour days that were the norm. When Ford Institute cut the work day to 8 hours and upped wages, productivity increased. The rest of the industry followed suit. But this was still primarily in factories: where employees rarely exercised creativity or made important decisions.
In today’s Information Age, employees are tasked with creating, deciding, organizing, researching, and leading. The strain on our prefrontal cortex is greater than ever before. And although social media screen time has a hand to play, it’s not the main culprit.
Employees and Managers can benefit from instituting an energy-management time system, where the highest energy tasks are completed in the morning and rest is allowed after a high-energy day.
Published By: Aize Perez
