Energy Management
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings.
It's a long weekend here in the US: Memorial Day is considered the unofficial beginning of summer! I hope you managed to recharge and rest during this past weekend.
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I've been reading a book called The Engineering Leader by Cate Huston. It brought up the idea of managing your energy instead of your time.
This resonated with me because I found the idea very similar to another book I read in the past, The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.
Why manage "energy"?
I came across the Full Engagement book mainly because I was trying to manage my time and calendar, but some weeks, I didn't manage to close the important things, only the urgent stuff.
Then, reading around, I came across the idea that we might instinctively postpone certain activities because we're out of energy. So we might dread starting a task because it might be too daunting, require dealing with people we don't want to engage with, or for whatever other reason that would drain our energy past what we have available.
Renewal and Expenditure
This made me realize that while time is crucial, managing your energy is more important.
It can be the difference between delivering important tasks or not. I also realized that energy cannot be spent indefinitely. You need to recharge and renew your energy accordingly. It's like any other exercise, you exert effort for a period and recover for another period.
In practice, you need to "oscillate" between these two states.
Actual Renewal
One interesting bit was that renewal didn't come from not doing work; you must disengage from it. But do not force yourself to run away from it; instead, engage fully with another activity.
Sometimes, I would start reading a book but kept thinking about something stressing me at work. Instead of forcing myself to "forget" about that problem, I looked for another activity that would make me enter a state of flow and honestly not think of anything else.
Activities like sports (or building keyboards) are important for energy renewal.
Types of energies
According to the book, there are four kinds of energies to manage: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Each helps, but you need all four to achieve full engagement. Physical energy will give you quantity, and emotional energy will provide quality, mental energy will focus your energy, and spiritual energy will provide force in your energy.
Take stock of your current expenditure
A critical aspect of this topic is the introspection of where your energy is currently going.
Have you considered what you're currently dealing with or whether you might be burned out? During weeks, I always felt defeated because I didn't manage to close specific tasks, but at the same time, I felt some relief that I didn't have to deal with those tasks. From there, it is easy to fall into guilt for not doing tasks as fast as possible.
Celebrate all wins
The higher you're on the ladder, the less hands-on your manager might be. That means that you might be defining your priorities, and in some cases, that might mean you're taking some projects that are longer than "tickets" in a backlog, for example.
These longer projects might make you feel you need to be more helpful or wonder what you're doing here. There are strategies to break these into smaller chunks, but my main point is that regardless of how small, we should celebrate all the wins that occurred during a given week.
We need dopamine because we're no longer coding as before, doing more tangible tasks, or even picking up thankless tasks. That makes it harder for us to renew energy.
I'm feeling great!
If you've read through these descriptions and feel that you're doing well and can recharge and expend energy, congratulations! Second, you're in the right position to take on bigger tasks! Remember to talk with your manager to discuss taking on larger projects.
Your turn!
Have you ever considered managing energy? If you have, how are you currently managing it? Let me know by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
Things I discovered in the past week
- The problem with a root cause is that it explains too much talks about how defining the root cause of incidents hides the true nature of complex systems.
- Books to soothe your nervous system are relevant books to manage your energy! Also, subscribe to Emma Gannon's newsletter if possible!
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