Effectiveness Is All About Managing Your Time, Energy, and
Attention
I bet you think you’d be able to do a lot more if you had more
time. If so, you’re probably wrong. Having more time is only a piece of the
puzzle.
It’s not so much just the quantity of time that we should
consider, but the quality of time, too.
This is largely the foundation of the idea ofheatmapping your
productivity and the engagement threshold. In each case, time is only one
factor – with energy and attention being the others.
The fact that time is only one of three factors doesn’t discount
the importance of time, for having an abundance of creative energy or being
especially engaged doesn’t help much if you don’t have enough time to do
anything with them. Manifesting change in the world takes time, but that’s not
all it takes.
The reason why thinking in terms of time, energy, and attention
is important is that many of us operate as if more time equals more capacity,
when in reality it often doesn’t . Anyone who’s sat at their desk at the end of
the day in that awkward middleground where they’re neither working nor playing
understands this. Yet the overriding tendency is to sit there nonetheless
because the operating assumption is that more time working equals more work
done, evidence to the contrary is damned.
Instead of thinking just about how you’re using your time, think
about how you’re using your time, energy, and attention . I’ll wrap this up
with some questions for you to ponder:
On gaining time : What are you doing that you could either stop
doing or do more efficiently so that there’s less time seepage?
On using time : What would you do with any additional time that
you gain? Is the juice worth the squeeze?
On gaining energy : What could you do to increase your available
physical, emotional, social, mental, and physical energy?
On losing energy : What are the sources of energy drain in your
life? Is there something you can do to address those sources? It’ll probably
take more energy to deal with the cause than the symptom, but continually
applying band-aids has a cost, too.
On gaining attention : What really engages you? What are naturally
drawn to do?
On losing attention (being distracted) : What’s distracting you
or causing you to continually shift focus? Is there a way to alter your
environment so you’re less prone to be distracted by them?
Our TEA is precious and finite. Please treasure them and use
them wisely.
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