Ever feel like you don’t have enough time to be more productive in your business? That you’d be further ahead if only you could fit more into your day?
While we get things done within this measure of “time”, what’s often missing is to consider your energy. In this video, I’ll show you why your energy is more potent than your time, and how to work with that to get more of the important work done.
Here’s the transcription:
When we think about time in our business we often feel we don’t have enough of it; how often have you said to yourself ‘I just don’t have enough time – I’d like to do [this thing] but don’t have capacity for it’.
How often have you felt that you would be further ahead if only had more time, if only you could fit more in a day, if only you didn’t have other commitments that need your time within a day or within a week?
And of course that’s true to an extent. We get things done within this measure called time.
However the element that’s often missing is to consider your energy.
How draining or lifting something is for your energy makes a massive difference to how much you get done, to how you feel about the work you’re doing, and to the outcomes of that work.
When you’re doing tasks that really drain you, that feel like wading through treacle and exhausting; they can feel like they take you forever to do something that should be really simple.
Using a Time Diary
One of the exercises I’ll sometimes use with clients is to do a time diary.
This is really useful when you’re trying to work out where the next place is to free up space & time for yourself, either through releasing tasks you don’t need to do at all, identifying the ones take longer because you find them more challenging, or where could you leverage your time or use automations and systems.
What we do is look at not only how long does the thing take, but how do you feel doing that thing? Does it fly by, does it feel actually quite soothing to do some admin tasks, or does it feel gnarly and difficult to do?
Something that can surprise people is that tasks that feel quite gnarly might only take 15 minutes to do, but they have felt so, so much longer; it’s felt like you’ve been doing that task for for 40 minutes
And the reason that’s important is that it has a resonating, rippling impact on how you feel about the work you are doing, the decisions you take & what you actually get done.
When you are doing something gnarly, all kinds of things come up in your brain; stories like ‘I’m not good at this thing’, ‘I should be faster’, ‘I’m really frustrated’.
And of course when we’re telling ourselves those stories in our head, we’re lowering our energy, our vibration, we’re going into a lower energy state.
It’s so much more difficult to do the deeper work that’s important to how you show up in this world when you feel deflated.
Noticing Your Energy
Many people look at how to save time in their business – but the most important thing is actually your energy.
If you’ve looked at how to streamline your business, make it more efficient, enable it to grow and it’s never quite worked for you, this is a key element to shifting things.
To create your best work, it’s being in flow, in higher energy. Not necessarily energetic / frenzied – this can be soft – but vibrant, aligned, alive.
You want to spend as much time as possible in that place, and reduce the tasks that drain you; to create your business strategy, systems, and support around that.
Here’s how to work with this. The first step is to notice 2 things;
- how you spend your time,
- and what lifts or drains your energy
Pay attention to the tasks you do today or this week, and look out for those energy drains. Identify them, name them. See them. That’s the first step to shifting them.
If you’d like support to make those shifts in your business, identifying what to change and putting in the strategy & systems with coaching and accountability, this is what I help my coaching clients with. I invite you to check it out – and if you get a nudge that it might be exactly what you need – book a clarity call with me.
Thanks for watching, see you next time!
