21.09.2023

SUCCESS TECHNIQUES: THE REAL PROBLEM IS NOT A LACK OF TIME, BUT OF ENERGY

If you ask any entrepreneur how they're doing, there's a good chance you'll hear one answer (or at least some version of it): "I'm crushed." This response will usually be supported by some complaint about lack of time.

"When researchers surveyed Americans before 2011, about half said they almost never had free time, and two-thirds said they sometimes or always felt rushed (though a more recent survey suggests things may be improving),” reports the Greater Good Science Center.

None of the above is surprising. However, extensive studies of how Americans actually use their time show that most people have a lot more free time than we think.

"From 1965 to 2003, the average American workweek actually decreased by three hours, while leisure time increased," reported the same Greater Good article. According to current data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American has about five hours of free time per day.

Of course, many entrepreneurs are far from the average employee. Also, there are many people working in multiple places to make ends meet who would take this statistic as some type of black comedy. But the overall picture is clear. Time use surveys reveal that most of us have hours of free time that we use for activities such as watching television and posting on social media. Why then do people constantly complain that they don't have enough time?

"Energy makes time"

It's a complicated question, of course, and one that speaks to deep issues around how you envision your days. But a recent blog post by executive coach Mandy Brown cuts through some of that complexity to offer one of the clearest explanations of the phenomenon.

Your problem, Brown insists, isn't really a lack of time. The problem is the lack of energy.

This is not to say that time management is useless. Some tricks for setting aside time on the calendar can be helpful. Ultimately, however, they have a limited effect. The main problem is not how you organize your classes, but how you recharge your batteries.

“We all know that time can be stretched or compressed – we've experienced hours that stretched endlessly and hours that passed in a few breaths. We've had days where we've gotten so much done that we've surprised ourselves, and days where it seems like nothing has been accomplished. What distinguishes these experiences is not the number of hours in the day, but the energy we get from the work. Energy makes time," Brown writes.

Take the example of a person who likes to draw or sing. After a long day at work and juggling various household duties, this person rarely feels like he has time for his artistic hobby. When he has free time, he devotes it to sleeping or watching movies to recover from the endless workload.

One day, however, this man decides to go to the park and just paint, abandoning all his extracurricular duties. “He paints for hours until the sun goes down and the street lights come on. And, lo and behold, the next day he goes about his daily tasks again. The man realizes that half of them were unnecessary, although earlier they all seemed critical to him. Then he finds time to tackle a project he's been putting off for weeks," Brown wrote.

Your interests give you energy

Doing what you love - whether it's some form of art, gardening, cycling, etc. - gives you an energy that makes your time feel like it's expanding. Fatigue eats up energy and causes time to shrink, so one is too exhausted to do anything with the time one has.

The Greater Good article provides a bunch of research supporting this idea.

“The question we need to ask ourselves is not, 'How do I find time for this?' The better question is how does doing what I need to do create time for everything else?” Brown says.

Instead of searching for scraps of time to gather all the things you need and want to do despite your exhaustion, do more of the things you enjoy. You'll find that you somehow magically have the energy, and therefore the time, to get through almost everything else that life throws at you.