When I first started climbing the ladder, I was obsessed with time management. Like many leaders in tech, I viewed my planner as the ultimate tool for control. I color-coded my calendar, mastered task batching, and achieved near-perfect calendar utilization. I was “doing it all.”
The painful truth? Despite my perfect schedule, I was running on empty. My body was stressed, my creativity was gone, and I felt detached from the very purpose that drove me. I felt like a high-performing machine that desperately needed a reset.
It was a major wake-up call that led me to this realization: the single biggest productivity lie is that we manage time. We don’t. We manage ourselves.
The Shift: From Hour Blocks to Energy Sources
This turning point is backed by decades of work in human performance. As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz argue in The Power of Full Engagement, the real currency of high performance is energy, not time. The logic is simple: a concentrated, fully engaged hour produces more value than eight distracted ones. You can’t perform at your best if your tank is empty.
Energy isn’t just physical. To perform and feel fulfilled, we need to manage four core energy dimensions:
- Physical Energy (The Body): How well do you sleep, eat, and move? Are you taking real breaks?
- Emotional Energy (The Feelings): What tasks, people, or environments leave you feeling cheerful, resilient, and connected? What leaves you frustrated or cynical?
- Mental Energy (The Focus): Is your work creative and deep, or reactive and surface-level? How are you handling ambiguity and complexity?
- Spiritual Energy (The Purpose): Do your daily actions align with your core values and your deepest why? This dimension fuels all the others.
The simple realization here is that certain tasks, even easy ones, can heavily drain your mental or emotional energy, causing fatigue far faster than a complex task that deeply engages your spiritual energy.
3 Core Practices to Reclaim Your Energy
This is about intentionally shaping your professional world to honor your energy sources. Here are three areas where I encourage my coaching clients to start making intentional shifts:
1. Filter by Purpose: The Power of “No”
The quickest way to stop the drain is to ruthlessly filter commitments based on your deepest purpose.
As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz emphasize, spiritual energy is the most powerful force for motivation, endurance, and resilience. If a task doesn’t align with your core values or goals (your “why”), it becomes pure drain.
- Audit Your Drains: Which recurring meeting, request, or relationship consistently leaves you feeling cynical or exhausted?
- Decide: Can you eliminate, delegate, or severely re-scope it? If a task is essential but draining, can you perform it when your energy is highest, or reduce the time you spend on it?
2. Refuel Through Contribution
When I looked at my energy sheet, I saw a surprise: giving back wasn’t a drain; it was a boost.
Inspired by research on “giving” as a source of energy, I intentionally added volunteering that aligned with my personal mission. Just as Adam Grant discusses in Give and Take, when your giving is purposeful and authentic, it acts as a powerful energy renewal tool. It reminds you of your capacity to make an impact, which feeds your spiritual energy.
Look for small ways to give expertise, time, or mentorship that align with your deepest values. This doesn’t take time; it creates energy.
3. Prioritize Strategic Recovery
We often treat breaks as a luxury, but they are a non-negotiable part of high performance. A simple change here is to redefine a break as a strategic recovery ritual.
- The Ritual: Don’t just check your phone for 10 minutes. Get up. Walk outside. Meditate briefly. Play an instrument. These acts of deliberate disengagement actively replenish your cognitive and emotional reserves.
- Connect to Joy: For me, this is often stepping away for a retreat, or playing my guitar in nature (as can be seen in this blogโs photo).. It’s an act that instantly shifts my emotional state and moves me back toward presence.
Start Your Energy Audit Today
If you’re still chasing the clock and constantly feeling tired, it’s time to try a different approach. Your career longevity, joy, and highest performance depend on how well you treat your energy.
Take a few moments and start your own energy audit. You don’t need a new planner; you just need to listen to yourself.
Question for Reflection: When did your last hour of work feel truly effortless? What energy source (physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual) was fueling you in that moment?
Further Reading:
- The Foundational Work: The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.
- Business Applications: Harvard Business Review on The Power of Energy Management: https://hbr.org/2017/10/manage-your-energy-not-your-time
- Practical Self-Care: How to Work Smarter and Faster by Managing Your Energy: https://www.betterup.com/blog/manage-your-energy-not-your-time
- The Academic Angle: Research on job crafting, work-life balance, and employee engagement often touches on energy and well-being in the workplace: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726715617028
- My Previous Post: The Power of Purpose: https://morschlesinger.com/2024/11/19/the-power-of-purpose/
Mor Schlesinger 
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