23. Tips to Optimize Your Energy So You Don’t Burn Out
Burnout is a serious problem. How do you best manage your energy so that you don’t end your weeks in a state of burnout? I have a bunch of strategies I use in my own life to optimize my energy, as well as a few things I’m currently experimenting with, and I’m sharing them all in today’s episode.
Especially with back-to-work, in-person, and the hybrid situations a lot of people are dealing with, burnout is a hot topic. There are big changes happening and it takes some getting used to. Having low energy is never a fun experience, so I’m inviting you to experiment with the practical tips and tricks I’m offering today
Tune in this week to discover how to optimize your energy so you can avoid burning out. I’m sharing stories from my clients and what’s worked for them in managing their energy levels, protecting their mental health, and avoiding burnout while still getting their most important work done.
If you don’t have the time or budget for ongoing coaching but you’re ready to jumpstart your success in your new leadership role, you don’t want to miss my new offer, The Leadership Accelerator. It includes a 90-minute kick-start session, and at the end of this session, you’re going to get a report detailing your strengths and how you can best use them in your role. You’ll also have set a clear goal and some action-steps to take over the next 30 days, two follow-up 30-minute sessions with me, as well as unlimited support on Voxer throughout the month. Click here to get started!
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
Why instances of burnout and mental health issues are increasing.
What’s working for my clients in helping them avoid burnout.
How studies have shown that your brain needs a break.
Why even short breaks throughout your day are amazing for protecting your energy.
Some practical tips you can try right now for optimizing your energy and avoiding burnout.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
Book a free one-on-one consultation to see if we’re a good fit for 1:1 coaching.
To thank you for being a listener and supporter of The Confident Female Leader, I am sharing a free guided meditation with you! Download your meditation here.
Get your free Guide to Becoming a Confident Female Leader
Full Episode Transcript:
This week we’re going to be talking about how you can optimize your energy so that you don’t burn out.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership, who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you. I'm Annie Framand; Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and over pleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I'm doing so good. It's getting hotter and hotter here in Puerto Vallarta. Not going to lie, mid-April here kind of feels like Montreal in the summer. I am enjoying myself, discovering new cafes in the area that are popping up. I'm also planning to go surfing with my love. I'm a beginner surfer, I actually have never surfed, and he has surfed before. So we're looking for a location that would be fun for him and that would not be too dangerous for me for my first surf. So we're having fun planning that.
All right, so today I wanted to talk a little bit about how you can best manage your energy so that you don't end your weeks with your energy fizzled out and end up burning out all of your energy. So these are my tips, some of the things that I've used throughout the years, some things that I'm experimenting with these days. And also some things that have worked for my clients.
So what I encourage you to do as you listen, is just kind of see if there's anything that you haven't maybe tried, if it resonates with you, if it's something that you want to try, just go ahead and experiment with it and see how it goes. So, I've been reading a lot recently on LinkedIn, probably I would say one post out of three is around how burned out people are right now in organizations.
With the back to work like remote/in-person/hybrid situation that a lot of people are dealing with right now, there's a lot of work. There's a lot of back to back meetings and things like that. And a lot of studies have been reporting mental health issues, burnout issues, and a lot of people are also facing that. In my own network, I'm seeing a lot of people also struggling with lower energy or burning out. So I wanted to suggest a few tips and things that have worked for me.
The first thing, and this comes from someone in my network that posted a couple of weeks ago about a recent study from Microsoft. This is actually something that I've been doing for quite a while, I would say probably about five years. But there is more and more data that shows that this is actually a really good practice to implement.
And so what it is, it's basically instead of having 60 minute meetings, so that's how we tend to get burnt out, right? It's like going from meeting to meeting. Instead of having 60 minute meetings, we want to be scheduling our meetings to 50 minutes. So if your first meeting starts, let's say at 9am, then it goes until 9:50 instead of going until 10.
And then another meeting, if it's 30 minute meetings, instead of scheduling them for 30 minutes, I would schedule them for 25 minutes. And so you'll go, let's say from 10 o'clock to 10:25 instead of 10:30.
Now, some of you might be doing that already. If you are, let me know how it's going for you. And if you're not, as you're implementing it if you want to experiment with this practice, also let me know how it goes.
So I've been doing that, like I said, for years. And what happens in the distance in between those 5 minutes or 10 minutes is that you can actually go to the restroom or just take a breather. Maybe go outside or chat with a colleague or whatever it is that you want to do.
What you don't want to be doing in between the meetings is just fitting in more work, right? So you don't want to be just opening up your emails and then writing a couple of emails in between the meetings. Now, you could do that if you want. But the thing is, you're just going to tend to burn out because you're going to be constantly active in between the meetings, and that's what we want to avoid.
So that's the practice. Now, the research that backs this up is a study from Microsoft. And they use basically EEG caps, which are basically the caps that you put on participants in the studies on their heads to detect brainwave activity. And the experiment had two groups of participants sit through four meetings back to back, with one group allowing 10 minute breaks in between each meeting.
And the data showed that the group who took breaks experienced a reset in brain stress activity. So it basically gave them that pause that they needed for their brain’s activity to reset. So the scientists from that study concluded that the transition from one meeting’s agenda to the next, right, so if you're going from one meeting to the next, compounded the stress of the employees because they were forced to switch and think about the new challenge immediately before they had closure on the challenges they were currently facing.
And basically what we call that for our brains, it's called switch tasking. So a lot of people have said that they love multitasking, accomplishing different things at the same time, going from one thing to another. And actually, that is counterproductive for our brains. And multitasking actually does not exist because our brains cannot biologically focus and neurologically focus on more than one thing at a time. It's called switch tasking.
And so when we're doing “multitasking,” what our brain is actually doing is that it's switching quickly from one task to another. Which tends to burn us out, deplete our energy, and basically make us less than less productive from one task to another.
And so basically, the study is showing us that we're doing the same thing when we're going from one meeting to the next nonstop. Which is why I was saying try to not fill that 5 minutes or 10 minutes in between the meetings with extra tasks, because your brain is not going to reset. What you want to be doing is taking that time to just take a rest, whatever that looks like for you, right?
Grab a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a glass of water, go to the restroom, whatever it is that you need to do. But really take a moment to reset. I mean, I work from home, I work for myself. In between meetings, sometimes I might do like a five minute yoga practice if I have time, right?
So I'll go to 50 minutes in my meeting and then I've got another one 10 minutes later. And then sometimes I'll do just a quick vinyasa. And then just that'll cycle the energy for me and it’ll get the blood flowing. And then I'm ready to sit back down again.
So whatever it is that you can do, but just make sure that your brain is resting. That's the first tip that I have for you. The second tip is I have actually started changing up how I schedule my days. And so you might have heard of batching, which is really good for our brains. You might be doing this already without knowing the word for it.
But it's basically clustering tasks of the same nature together because our brain goes faster and faster as it is executing the second task, the third task, the fourth task of a similar nature. So that makes us more productive. So, again, try not to multitask, so do them at the same time. But you can do them one after the other of tasks of the same nature.
And so you'll notice, for example, if you've got a day where you have a lot of meetings and you also have to get, let's say, budget stuff done. So what you'll do is like, you'll go from meetings to meetings. And then you've got to focus on an Excel spreadsheet with a lot of numbers and you’ve got to crunch the numbers and look at the data. And so it'll be difficult for your brain to do that after a full day of meetings. Not that you can't, but it's going to be difficult for your brain to focus after a big day of interaction with other people.
And so you'll notice, however, if you are doing your Excel spreadsheets on a day where you need to, for example, write emails, so there's a lot of like administrative tasks happening at the same time. It's going to be easier for your brain to process information, whether that is in numbers or in words, than if you are in a situation where you have to interact with people all day. So you'll want to try to have tasks of a similar nature together.
Now, what I tend to do is on Mondays, and of course I work for myself, so for those of you who don't, some of my clients are small business owners so that’s a little bit different than if you work in a large corporate setting and you're not your own boss.
However, regardless of your situation, for the tasks that you do have control over – You may not have control over a meeting that your boss scheduled, although one could always argue that you could always negotiate the time in the day in certain cases, maybe not in all.
But where you do have some leeway, see if you can batch your tasks. So, for me, for example, working for myself, there is a lot of learning that I'm doing. So there's concepts that I'm learning and that I practice, I experiment with. And then I teach to you on a podcast, I teach to my clients when I coach them. And so part of my work is to learn these concepts.
And so I tend to batch that on Mondays. Mondays are my learning days. They’re days where I get coached, as well. So I get coached. I work with my coach. I read some books. I listen to podcasts, things like that. So I'll do that all on Monday so that my brain is focused on learning.
And then on Tuesday, I call it my get shit done day. So that's where I'm going to do all the little tasks that kind of tend to add up from one day to another. I put them all in, I use Trello, it's amazing, I highly recommend it. I might have talked about it on the podcast before. I use it as the app, you can have it on desktop as well. And it really is a great way to organize all of your tasks. You've got different boards that you can use on there as well.
So I have just one rolling board per week. So every week I have a board open and then I have every day of the week highlighted with the different tasks that I do. And so Tuesdays will be my get shit done days when there's something I have to do, whether it's personal or professional administration, I'm just going to kind of do that on Tuesday. Tuesdays are the days that I record my podcast as well. So those are the days that the administrative stuff gets done.
Wednesday is what I call a content day. So that's the day where I will actually write content, where I will research the podcast. For example, if there's topics that I need to research, I'm going to do that on Wednesday. So learning is one thing, right? On Monday I'm going to read books, for example, on a topic that I'm interested in, let's say time management. I'll be interested in that, read a book on that on Monday.
But on Wednesday, I might look into some data that I need to pull, some stats or things like that. So I'm going to do that on Wednesday. And then I'm going to write the episode, for example, okay? On Tuesday, I record the podcast on Wednesday, I'll write the episode for the week after. So I'm going to actually write my emails on Wednesday as well. I'm going to schedule my posts, things like that. So that's my content today.
On Thursday, it's marketing and finance. So those are the days that I look at the numbers, I look at the sales, for example. I'll look at the marketing, what are the things I need to be doing to be marketing in the next week? What are the actions around that that I need to be taking?
And then Friday is whatever hasn't gotten done during the week that still needs to get done, I will do that as well. And Friday tends to be my networking day. So that's usually where I'm going to show up on social media.
That's where I might connect with people who are new to me in my network, people that I've met through different contexts. It could be through networking events, it could be through certifications that I've done. So I'll tend to connect with those people. I might do some coffee chats or things like that. So that'll tend to be my networking day.
So I'm going to batch those things, but this is obviously from someone who owns a business. Now, in your case, what you might want to be doing, for example, if you have employee meetings, you might want to ideally do them kind of back to back. You might want to do them on let's say Thursday mornings, or you might want to do them on Friday mornings or whenever that is for you.
If you have many employees, if you have a larger span of team that you're leading, your meetings might go, if you're doing one on ones, over more than one day. But what you want to do is be relatively consistent in terms of when you're doing those meetings and that you don't have like two meetings on Monday, and then one meeting on Tuesday, and three meetings on Wednesday, of the same nature.
And same thing if you're doing, like we said, like financial tasks, things like that, you want to try and do them on the same day. And why this helps is we talked about the batching, but also because your brain knows this is going to get done, right? If I've got some admin, for example, I just put it on the list. I know it's going to get done on Tuesday. When Tuesday rolls around, I'm going to get to it.
And why this has pretty much changed my life is that before, there was some procrastination going on and there was like some really, really long list of tasks that I felt like I was never getting through. And so I would end up hustling through my days and my energy would be depleted. And I would kind of force myself to get these tasks done. And I was discouraged because they would never all get done.
So now that I have them sorted by day, I'm a lot more productive. I know that today is finance day or tomorrow's content day, and it's already all planned. And so I'll get through my days a lot faster. Plus using the batching also is a better strategy for my brain.
The last thing that I want to talk about is how you use your energy. Some of us are morning people, some of us are not. And so you're going to notice that you have some energy dips throughout the day. I did this a few years ago actually, I did some energy tracking for myself. And I noticed that my most productive periods in the day were between 10am and 2pm.
And we're all different in this way. Some of us have very consistent energy. I look at my love, and he can work literally from eight to five every single day, very consistently and kind of nonstop. But he'll do it just really regularly. His energy is very regular, it's very consistent, one thing after the other. And he can kind of keep that going all day.
I'm different. So that's more like a marathon type of energy. I'm very different, I'm more of a sprinter. So I can go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go real fast for a few hours. And then I need to just rest, reset, go for a walk on the beach. I need to have these rest times and break times in between my high activity tasks.
So the way that I'm going to break it down as well, so I'll typically do my coaching in the afternoon. So I've got clients, I told you a little bit about how I batch my work. But my clients, so that'll be in the mornings usually, and I'll take the clients in the afternoon. Typically, I'll take clients three days a week as well, so I'm going to usually do those in the afternoon.
So because I know that I'm more productive to do these tasks between 10 and two let's say, or usually nine and two. So I'll tend to be going through my administrative tasks, or my content, or my finances, I'll do that in the morning. And then in the afternoon until the early evening then I'll be coaching.
So for me, that's the structure that works the best because I know that I can go, go, go, non-stop. And then I need a break and then I need to reset and do something else. So we're all different. I encourage you to kind of look at your energy highs and lows.
What I did, very simple: I had this Excel spreadsheet and there was hour per hour, day by day. And I would just like, for me, the way I did it is a percentage, you can do a scale of 1 to 10, you could do a plus or a minus. It doesn't really matter what method it is. But what I had is basically like every hour from like nine to five pretty much, and it depends on your schedule. Your schedule might be different, you might be on shifts.
But I was pretty much on a nine to five schedule. And then I would just kind of jot down how I felt. So it's your own subjective perception. How I felt that my energy was in that moment, like from 9 to 10 Monday morning I’d jot down, okay, my energy is like 30% now, because I feel like the week hasn't really started and I'm kind of still revving up.
And then at 10 I would jot back down, okay, now I'm feeling I'm at 60%, let's say. And then I would keep going. And then I could track my energy throughout the week, throughout the day. Is it higher, certain days of the week? Is it lower other days? Is it higher at certain times? Is it lower at other times? So you kind of end up knowing your rhythms, and which times of the week you're more productive or less productive.
So again, yes, I own my own business. It is of course easier when you do, okay? But you can still do this for the times where you have more flexibility, for the things that you have more flexibility on. And it'll just kind of help you track your energy.
It'll help you see also maybe why like at 4pm every day you crash, you know, you just have less energy. So you might want to not schedule a task that is requiring a lot from your brain because it will deplete your energy and you'll very likely burn out your energy.
So that's what I had for you ladies today. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast. Have a great week, everyone, and don't forget to rate and review the podcast and recommend it to a woman you know who could benefit from it. Have a good one.
Hey ladies, I have a new offer for you that I am super excited about. It’s called the Leadership Accelerator. I created this offer for new leaders and not-so-new leaders who tried navigating the transition from expert to leader on their own, but who just can’t seem to figure it out.
So, if you’ve been overthinking your every move and your every email, and if you’re still hustling every day to prove yourself in the job that you already have, which is keeping you in a cycle of overworking and people pleasing, this is for you.
Now, the Leadership Accelerator includes a 90-minute kickstart session. At the end of this session, you get a report detailing your strengths and how you can best use them in your new role. You also set a clear goal, only one, and some action steps to take over the next 30 days to help you reach your goal. And to help you achieve your goal drama-free, you get two 30-minute follow-up sessions; one halfway through the month and one at the end. In these sessions, I help you stay on track and remove any blocks that stand in the way of you reaching your goal.
The best part of this offer is that you get unlimited support for 30 days. So, for example, let’s say that you’ve been working on a presentation for your boss. And you’ve been really agonizing over that presentation that you have to make, overthinking every single word because you’re afraid of how other people are going to react. Now, what you could do is you can send me the presentation, and I’m going to give you feedback on it the same day.
So, no more wasting time procrastinating, looking at your screen, or chasing the words in your head. You have access to me for a month; whenever you’re feeling stuck in the moment, whenever you need to write an email, whenever you need a sounding board for a decision, at any time. It’s like having a coach in your pocket. Seriously, I wish I had that when I became a leader. It really would have saved me so much time and energy.
Now, if you want to find out more and grab your spot, you can visit my website at AnnieFramand.com/leadership-accelerator. See you there.
Thanks for listening to The Confident Female Leader podcast. Ready to dismantle the patriarchy with me? Come say “Hi” at AnnieFramand.com to learn more about how you can take this work deeper and apply what you’re learning.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership, who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you. I'm Annie Framand; Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and over pleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I'm doing so good. It's getting hotter and hotter here in Puerto Vallarta. Not going to lie, mid-April here kind of feels like Montreal in the summer. I am enjoying myself, discovering new cafes in the area that are popping up. I'm also planning to go surfing with my love. I'm a beginner surfer, I actually have never surfed, and he has surfed before. So we're looking for a location that would be fun for him and that would not be too dangerous for me for my first surf. So we're having fun planning that.
All right, so today I wanted to talk a little bit about how you can best manage your energy so that you don't end your weeks with your energy fizzled out and end up burning out all of your energy. So these are my tips, some of the things that I've used throughout the years, some things that I'm experimenting with these days. And also some things that have worked for my clients.
So what I encourage you to do as you listen, is just kind of see if there's anything that you haven't maybe tried, if it resonates with you, if it's something that you want to try, just go ahead and experiment with it and see how it goes. So, I've been reading a lot recently on LinkedIn, probably I would say one post out of three is around how burned out people are right now in organizations.
With the back to work like remote/in-person/hybrid situation that a lot of people are dealing with right now, there's a lot of work. There's a lot of back to back meetings and things like that. And a lot of studies have been reporting mental health issues, burnout issues, and a lot of people are also facing that. In my own network, I'm seeing a lot of people also struggling with lower energy or burning out. So I wanted to suggest a few tips and things that have worked for me.
The first thing, and this comes from someone in my network that posted a couple of weeks ago about a recent study from Microsoft. This is actually something that I've been doing for quite a while, I would say probably about five years. But there is more and more data that shows that this is actually a really good practice to implement.
And so what it is, it's basically instead of having 60 minute meetings, so that's how we tend to get burnt out, right? It's like going from meeting to meeting. Instead of having 60 minute meetings, we want to be scheduling our meetings to 50 minutes. So if your first meeting starts, let's say at 9am, then it goes until 9:50 instead of going until 10.
And then another meeting, if it's 30 minute meetings, instead of scheduling them for 30 minutes, I would schedule them for 25 minutes. And so you'll go, let's say from 10 o'clock to 10:25 instead of 10:30.
Now, some of you might be doing that already. If you are, let me know how it's going for you. And if you're not, as you're implementing it if you want to experiment with this practice, also let me know how it goes.
So I've been doing that, like I said, for years. And what happens in the distance in between those 5 minutes or 10 minutes is that you can actually go to the restroom or just take a breather. Maybe go outside or chat with a colleague or whatever it is that you want to do.
What you don't want to be doing in between the meetings is just fitting in more work, right? So you don't want to be just opening up your emails and then writing a couple of emails in between the meetings. Now, you could do that if you want. But the thing is, you're just going to tend to burn out because you're going to be constantly active in between the meetings, and that's what we want to avoid.
So that's the practice. Now, the research that backs this up is a study from Microsoft. And they use basically EEG caps, which are basically the caps that you put on participants in the studies on their heads to detect brainwave activity. And the experiment had two groups of participants sit through four meetings back to back, with one group allowing 10 minute breaks in between each meeting.
And the data showed that the group who took breaks experienced a reset in brain stress activity. So it basically gave them that pause that they needed for their brain’s activity to reset. So the scientists from that study concluded that the transition from one meeting’s agenda to the next, right, so if you're going from one meeting to the next, compounded the stress of the employees because they were forced to switch and think about the new challenge immediately before they had closure on the challenges they were currently facing.
And basically what we call that for our brains, it's called switch tasking. So a lot of people have said that they love multitasking, accomplishing different things at the same time, going from one thing to another. And actually, that is counterproductive for our brains. And multitasking actually does not exist because our brains cannot biologically focus and neurologically focus on more than one thing at a time. It's called switch tasking.
And so when we're doing “multitasking,” what our brain is actually doing is that it's switching quickly from one task to another. Which tends to burn us out, deplete our energy, and basically make us less than less productive from one task to another.
And so basically, the study is showing us that we're doing the same thing when we're going from one meeting to the next nonstop. Which is why I was saying try to not fill that 5 minutes or 10 minutes in between the meetings with extra tasks, because your brain is not going to reset. What you want to be doing is taking that time to just take a rest, whatever that looks like for you, right?
Grab a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a glass of water, go to the restroom, whatever it is that you need to do. But really take a moment to reset. I mean, I work from home, I work for myself. In between meetings, sometimes I might do like a five minute yoga practice if I have time, right?
So I'll go to 50 minutes in my meeting and then I've got another one 10 minutes later. And then sometimes I'll do just a quick vinyasa. And then just that'll cycle the energy for me and it’ll get the blood flowing. And then I'm ready to sit back down again.
So whatever it is that you can do, but just make sure that your brain is resting. That's the first tip that I have for you. The second tip is I have actually started changing up how I schedule my days. And so you might have heard of batching, which is really good for our brains. You might be doing this already without knowing the word for it.
But it's basically clustering tasks of the same nature together because our brain goes faster and faster as it is executing the second task, the third task, the fourth task of a similar nature. So that makes us more productive. So, again, try not to multitask, so do them at the same time. But you can do them one after the other of tasks of the same nature.
And so you'll notice, for example, if you've got a day where you have a lot of meetings and you also have to get, let's say, budget stuff done. So what you'll do is like, you'll go from meetings to meetings. And then you've got to focus on an Excel spreadsheet with a lot of numbers and you’ve got to crunch the numbers and look at the data. And so it'll be difficult for your brain to do that after a full day of meetings. Not that you can't, but it's going to be difficult for your brain to focus after a big day of interaction with other people.
And so you'll notice, however, if you are doing your Excel spreadsheets on a day where you need to, for example, write emails, so there's a lot of like administrative tasks happening at the same time. It's going to be easier for your brain to process information, whether that is in numbers or in words, than if you are in a situation where you have to interact with people all day. So you'll want to try to have tasks of a similar nature together.
Now, what I tend to do is on Mondays, and of course I work for myself, so for those of you who don't, some of my clients are small business owners so that’s a little bit different than if you work in a large corporate setting and you're not your own boss.
However, regardless of your situation, for the tasks that you do have control over – You may not have control over a meeting that your boss scheduled, although one could always argue that you could always negotiate the time in the day in certain cases, maybe not in all.
But where you do have some leeway, see if you can batch your tasks. So, for me, for example, working for myself, there is a lot of learning that I'm doing. So there's concepts that I'm learning and that I practice, I experiment with. And then I teach to you on a podcast, I teach to my clients when I coach them. And so part of my work is to learn these concepts.
And so I tend to batch that on Mondays. Mondays are my learning days. They’re days where I get coached, as well. So I get coached. I work with my coach. I read some books. I listen to podcasts, things like that. So I'll do that all on Monday so that my brain is focused on learning.
And then on Tuesday, I call it my get shit done day. So that's where I'm going to do all the little tasks that kind of tend to add up from one day to another. I put them all in, I use Trello, it's amazing, I highly recommend it. I might have talked about it on the podcast before. I use it as the app, you can have it on desktop as well. And it really is a great way to organize all of your tasks. You've got different boards that you can use on there as well.
So I have just one rolling board per week. So every week I have a board open and then I have every day of the week highlighted with the different tasks that I do. And so Tuesdays will be my get shit done days when there's something I have to do, whether it's personal or professional administration, I'm just going to kind of do that on Tuesday. Tuesdays are the days that I record my podcast as well. So those are the days that the administrative stuff gets done.
Wednesday is what I call a content day. So that's the day where I will actually write content, where I will research the podcast. For example, if there's topics that I need to research, I'm going to do that on Wednesday. So learning is one thing, right? On Monday I'm going to read books, for example, on a topic that I'm interested in, let's say time management. I'll be interested in that, read a book on that on Monday.
But on Wednesday, I might look into some data that I need to pull, some stats or things like that. So I'm going to do that on Wednesday. And then I'm going to write the episode, for example, okay? On Tuesday, I record the podcast on Wednesday, I'll write the episode for the week after. So I'm going to actually write my emails on Wednesday as well. I'm going to schedule my posts, things like that. So that's my content today.
On Thursday, it's marketing and finance. So those are the days that I look at the numbers, I look at the sales, for example. I'll look at the marketing, what are the things I need to be doing to be marketing in the next week? What are the actions around that that I need to be taking?
And then Friday is whatever hasn't gotten done during the week that still needs to get done, I will do that as well. And Friday tends to be my networking day. So that's usually where I'm going to show up on social media.
That's where I might connect with people who are new to me in my network, people that I've met through different contexts. It could be through networking events, it could be through certifications that I've done. So I'll tend to connect with those people. I might do some coffee chats or things like that. So that'll tend to be my networking day.
So I'm going to batch those things, but this is obviously from someone who owns a business. Now, in your case, what you might want to be doing, for example, if you have employee meetings, you might want to ideally do them kind of back to back. You might want to do them on let's say Thursday mornings, or you might want to do them on Friday mornings or whenever that is for you.
If you have many employees, if you have a larger span of team that you're leading, your meetings might go, if you're doing one on ones, over more than one day. But what you want to do is be relatively consistent in terms of when you're doing those meetings and that you don't have like two meetings on Monday, and then one meeting on Tuesday, and three meetings on Wednesday, of the same nature.
And same thing if you're doing, like we said, like financial tasks, things like that, you want to try and do them on the same day. And why this helps is we talked about the batching, but also because your brain knows this is going to get done, right? If I've got some admin, for example, I just put it on the list. I know it's going to get done on Tuesday. When Tuesday rolls around, I'm going to get to it.
And why this has pretty much changed my life is that before, there was some procrastination going on and there was like some really, really long list of tasks that I felt like I was never getting through. And so I would end up hustling through my days and my energy would be depleted. And I would kind of force myself to get these tasks done. And I was discouraged because they would never all get done.
So now that I have them sorted by day, I'm a lot more productive. I know that today is finance day or tomorrow's content day, and it's already all planned. And so I'll get through my days a lot faster. Plus using the batching also is a better strategy for my brain.
The last thing that I want to talk about is how you use your energy. Some of us are morning people, some of us are not. And so you're going to notice that you have some energy dips throughout the day. I did this a few years ago actually, I did some energy tracking for myself. And I noticed that my most productive periods in the day were between 10am and 2pm.
And we're all different in this way. Some of us have very consistent energy. I look at my love, and he can work literally from eight to five every single day, very consistently and kind of nonstop. But he'll do it just really regularly. His energy is very regular, it's very consistent, one thing after the other. And he can kind of keep that going all day.
I'm different. So that's more like a marathon type of energy. I'm very different, I'm more of a sprinter. So I can go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go real fast for a few hours. And then I need to just rest, reset, go for a walk on the beach. I need to have these rest times and break times in between my high activity tasks.
So the way that I'm going to break it down as well, so I'll typically do my coaching in the afternoon. So I've got clients, I told you a little bit about how I batch my work. But my clients, so that'll be in the mornings usually, and I'll take the clients in the afternoon. Typically, I'll take clients three days a week as well, so I'm going to usually do those in the afternoon.
So because I know that I'm more productive to do these tasks between 10 and two let's say, or usually nine and two. So I'll tend to be going through my administrative tasks, or my content, or my finances, I'll do that in the morning. And then in the afternoon until the early evening then I'll be coaching.
So for me, that's the structure that works the best because I know that I can go, go, go, non-stop. And then I need a break and then I need to reset and do something else. So we're all different. I encourage you to kind of look at your energy highs and lows.
What I did, very simple: I had this Excel spreadsheet and there was hour per hour, day by day. And I would just like, for me, the way I did it is a percentage, you can do a scale of 1 to 10, you could do a plus or a minus. It doesn't really matter what method it is. But what I had is basically like every hour from like nine to five pretty much, and it depends on your schedule. Your schedule might be different, you might be on shifts.
But I was pretty much on a nine to five schedule. And then I would just kind of jot down how I felt. So it's your own subjective perception. How I felt that my energy was in that moment, like from 9 to 10 Monday morning I’d jot down, okay, my energy is like 30% now, because I feel like the week hasn't really started and I'm kind of still revving up.
And then at 10 I would jot back down, okay, now I'm feeling I'm at 60%, let's say. And then I would keep going. And then I could track my energy throughout the week, throughout the day. Is it higher, certain days of the week? Is it lower other days? Is it higher at certain times? Is it lower at other times? So you kind of end up knowing your rhythms, and which times of the week you're more productive or less productive.
So again, yes, I own my own business. It is of course easier when you do, okay? But you can still do this for the times where you have more flexibility, for the things that you have more flexibility on. And it'll just kind of help you track your energy.
It'll help you see also maybe why like at 4pm every day you crash, you know, you just have less energy. So you might want to not schedule a task that is requiring a lot from your brain because it will deplete your energy and you'll very likely burn out your energy.
So that's what I had for you ladies today. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast. Have a great week, everyone, and don't forget to rate and review the podcast and recommend it to a woman you know who could benefit from it. Have a good one.
Hey ladies, I have a new offer for you that I am super excited about. It’s called the Leadership Accelerator. I created this offer for new leaders and not-so-new leaders who tried navigating the transition from expert to leader on their own, but who just can’t seem to figure it out.
So, if you’ve been overthinking your every move and your every email, and if you’re still hustling every day to prove yourself in the job that you already have, which is keeping you in a cycle of overworking and people pleasing, this is for you.
Now, the Leadership Accelerator includes a 90-minute kickstart session. At the end of this session, you get a report detailing your strengths and how you can best use them in your new role. You also set a clear goal, only one, and some action steps to take over the next 30 days to help you reach your goal. And to help you achieve your goal drama-free, you get two 30-minute follow-up sessions; one halfway through the month and one at the end. In these sessions, I help you stay on track and remove any blocks that stand in the way of you reaching your goal.
The best part of this offer is that you get unlimited support for 30 days. So, for example, let’s say that you’ve been working on a presentation for your boss. And you’ve been really agonizing over that presentation that you have to make, overthinking every single word because you’re afraid of how other people are going to react. Now, what you could do is you can send me the presentation, and I’m going to give you feedback on it the same day.
So, no more wasting time procrastinating, looking at your screen, or chasing the words in your head. You have access to me for a month; whenever you’re feeling stuck in the moment, whenever you need to write an email, whenever you need a sounding board for a decision, at any time. It’s like having a coach in your pocket. Seriously, I wish I had that when I became a leader. It really would have saved me so much time and energy.
Now, if you want to find out more and grab your spot, you can visit my website at AnnieFramand.com/leadership-accelerator. See you there.
Thanks for listening to The Confident Female Leader podcast. Ready to dismantle the patriarchy with me? Come say “Hi” at AnnieFramand.com to learn more about how you can take this work deeper and apply what you’re learning.
Enjoy the Show?
Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts.
