How to Manage Your Energy Like a CEO

Have you ever felt like you needed more energy to get through your tasks for the day? People focus on time management, but that fails to consider natural energy levels. Tasks don’t only take time, they also take energy. 

When you have more energy, you can complete tasks faster and more effectively. This post explains energy management and three ways you can be more productive.

Why Energy Management Matters

Energy management matters because we have a limited supply of energy for each day. Ego depletion is the prevailing theory on this. Psychologist Roy Baumeister conducted the following study on this concept.

They had experiment participants wait in a room together. One group was told they could eat freshly baked cookies, while the other group was told to eat beets. The group who couldn’t eat the cookies had to actively resist the temptation to do so, which drained their energy. 

After that, the participants had to try to solve a difficult puzzle. The experimenters measured how long they worked on the puzzle. They found the group that ate the cookies spent double the time on the puzzle as the other group. They had more energy because they hadn’t already drained it trying to refrain from eating cookies.

Ego depletion means that each time you make a decision or complete a task it drains energy. Every day you have a limited supply of energy. This energy is replenished at the start of every day after a good night’s sleep.

To this day, this theory of ego depletion is the most widely accepted explanation of energy levels.

Ask yourself, at what time of day do you notice making sub-optimal decisions? Ego depletion shows that suboptimal decisions usually occur during low levels of energy, which is usually at the end of the day for most people.

Now that you know what ego depletion is, the next section will teach you how to effectively manage your energy to accomplish more throughout the day.

Manage Your Energy Like a CEO

We can work with the ego depletion theory to plan more effective days. Specifically, you can use these three methods to maintain higher energy levels and achieve more throughout the day.

• Schedule tasks around energy levels
• Take breaks to maintain energy levels
• Automate, eliminate, or delegate decisions

Schedule Tasks Around Energy Levels

Schedule the tasks that require high energy levels when you have the most energy. For many people, this tends to be earlier in the day. Conversely schedule low energy tasks when you have less energy. For example, you could respond to low priority emails later in the day.

Take Breaks to Maintain Energy Levels

From personal experience, if I spend too much time on one task without taking any breaks my energy levels seem to drain exponentially. 

Instead I prefer to use the deep work method. I completely focus in shorter intervals (like 30 minutes), then I take a quick break (like 5 minutes).

I found that I can accomplish more tasks in less time using this method. Additionally, the breaks help me maintain higher energy levels throughout the day. Because I have higher energy levels throughout the whole day, I can accomplish even more.

Automate, Eliminate, or Delegate Decisions

Have you ever wondered why Steve Jobs always wore a black turtleneck? Ego depletion explains it. Since each decision you make throughout the day drains your energy, some CEOs eliminate as many little decisions as possible.

You could do this too by wearing a signature outfit or even just by picking your clothes out the night before.

Another trick is to write your to-do list out the night before so you don’t waste any precious energy the next day thinking about how to spend it.

CEOs try to automate, eliminate, or delegate as many trivial decisions as possible so they can focus their energy on more important things.

What decisions or tasks could you automate, eliminate, or delegate so you can spend your energy on more important things?

Next Steps

You’ve learned about the theory of ego depletion, which explains that your energy levels are limited each day. You also learned three techniques to manage your energy effectively each day in accordance with ego depletion. 

Consider how you can schedule tasks around your energy levels, take breaks to maintain your energy levels, and finally automate, eliminate, or delegate decisions.