Energy Management

More important than time

Look for the simplest path and conserve your energy.

Simplicity. Brevity. Directness.

Man, we tend to overcomplicate things. And to overthink them. We tend to create more pressure on every decision and more anxiety over every interaction simply because we’re overthinking it.

The most recent example for me is video.

For a long while now—years, really—I’ve wanted to make YouTube a regular part of what I create. I wanted to have a show that would draw in millions of subscribers, and become part of my platform, extending my reach and helping me find more readers and sell more books. And I’ve done a lot of YouTube stuff over those years, including a regular live show for Draft2Digital. But for some reason, I kept flubbing it with launching something of my own.

I couldn’t decide what the topic should be, for a start. I had the Wordslinger Podcast, which was mostly aimed at indie authors, but I really wanted to branch out from the author-centric audience and create content that appealed to the sort of people who would read my books. So I dabbled with posting content about the things I learn in my research, such as bits of weird history or science, tidbits about human psychology, that sort of thing. So that was a general topic.

The problem was, I get bored talking about the same thing all the time. But there was an even bigger problem than that—I couldn’t decide on a format.

Time and energy are really valuable commodities for me (aren’t they for everyone?). And really, I’m finally realizing that it’s about energy more than time. Because it’s true, we can’t make more time. But we actually have loads of it, if we’re willing to stop lying to ourselves. There are pockets of time everywhere. We convince ourselves that time is short, though, because what we really lack is the energy to use that time.

Think about it this way: You get up at 6AM, go to work, spend all day doing work things, and when you get home you’re exhausted, ready for dinner and some TV, and then it’s off to bed by 10PM.

“Energy management is more important than time management.”

That’s sixteen hours of your day. If you’re being truly honest with yourself, was every minute of that sixteen hours filled? Or… and hear me out… was there an hour her, fifteen minutes there, half an hour of driving and three hours of idly watching TV that you might have put to use on something productive? True, right?

But you didn’t. And the reason you didn’t use that time is because you didn’t have the energy.

See what I mean? Energy is the key here. Energy management is more important than time management.

Now, back to the video thing… what kept me from doing video more often was the absolute dread I felt ever time I even thought about it. And that dread came because I kept thinking about all the steps I would have to do in order to record, edit, post, share, respond to comments, yada, yada yada, etc.

I dreaded all of that because the process I came up with, the format I landed on for any given show, demanded a complicated set of steps. It demanded that I expend energy and (yes) time, both of which I felt were in short supply. And of the two, mostly energy was running short. I have books to write! I don’t have the energy to do that AND record, edit, post, share, respond to comments. And all those yadas? Fuhgetaboutit!

Now I’m going to confess that I’m still dealing with that sort of thing. I’ve posted exactly one YouTube video since August, and that was yesterday. So to be completely transparent here, I do not have a track record yet.

But I do have a simpler idea.

“The truth is, real professionals are consistent.”

Yesterday I was able to get up and run right through my entire routine. Make the coffee, write in the journals (there’s a lot of journaling… it’s kind of the biggest chunk of my morning), do some marketing, do some work on the book, write a blog post. And then I recorded a video. And to make it easier, I made it simple: Talk about the blog post, edit that in the simplest way possible, post it.

And for comments… I have the app on my phone alerting me when one comes in, so I can reply to it then and there. Or I’ll circle back around once per day and answer all the comments I’ve left unanswered.

My previous attempts at doing YouTube stuff revolved around building a very complicated and complex show. I wanted it to be like the sort of thing I used to produce for radio and television. I wanted it to be “professional.”

But I realized that adding complexity doesn’t increase professionalism. The truth is, real professionals are consistent.

By keeping things simple, I’m increasing the odds that I’ll get more done. The work becomes an easy thing to manage. I enjoy it more. I’m able to do it more consistently, with less energy and less anxiety.

Will I keep this up? Well, let’s see. But I think the key to all things is to examine what you’re doing to see if you could remove some of the complexity. Find the simplest way to do what you intend to do. You can always complicate it later.

Manage your energy. Be precious with it. Energy is the resource we need most, and the one that lets us better utilize all that time we have.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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