I’ve been reading a few things about energy management lately. I occasionally do, but I see less discourse about it than I do about time management in relation to productivity. For me the thing that always gets in my way is energy management rather than time.
It’s been helpful, mostly in terms of IDing which energy I’m lacking (out of phyiscal, mental, emotional, spiritual). When I’m tired it usually translates as physical so I don’t wind up doing anything. IDing the energy I’m lacking has, in these early days, been a bit more of a prompt to do something else (ie, after an intensive mentally-draining gaming session with friends, I go for a walk to clear my head. Mental exhaustion was solved by letting my brain rest with music and movement.)
There isn’t really a problem with this per se, except for noticing things I haven’t previously. Like how much of the energy I expend is mental in nature.
For instance, in job searching. As it turns out, having job search (and lack of progress) ties up all my mental energy for anything. Writing is hard, because it’s in the queue behind ‘get an income’. Certain high-intensity hobbies are impossible to think about because they’re in the queuestack behind ‘get an income’. Blogs get delayed because they’re stuck in the queue behind … you get the idea.
The financial stress ties up the whole queue and makes it hard to even remotely see the bottom. Escapism is the only mental energy I can find aside from that particular queue, probably because I’m loopholing in through the emotional intake.
Like I said, not really a problem, to know the queuestack is there. It’s something of a relief to know that there are some things which will by definition become easier once that queue has been emptied a little.
But knowing that it’s full and why is still making for some terrible days when I feel overwhelmed by things I can’t control, so much that I have trouble enacting things that I can.
Things are hard right now and I still can’t see past the end of March. Given we’re in March, that unseeable time is looming fast.
But at least I do know a little but more about my energy types. And I have enough experience to know that by the time I come out the other side of this, whatever happens, I’ll have learned something out of it. It’s just being on this side that sucks the most.
Aurichalcum Publishing 