A tactical primer on how to get more done while enjoying every minute of it. Useful for anyone who is hungry to learn and aspires to do their absolute best at work and at home.
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Turing Fest 2021
Hiten Shah Manage your energy, not your time
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Hello. I'm Heaton Shaw, and today I'm gonna talk about how to manage your energy, not your time. There's actually three topics that I'm gonna go over. The first topic is gonna be leadership. The second topic is actually gonna be about how to manage your energy, not your time.
And then the third topic is gonna be about happiness. And so I'm gonna jump right in, and get started. So first of all, I wanna talk about kind of let's call it the nerdiest topic today that I'm gonna talk about, which is basically leadership.
And when it comes to leadership, I have a few things that I've learned over the years, that I would love to share. So first, what is leadership? And I have a very simple answer for you on what is leadership. Leadership is clarity, and nothing more, nothing less.
And that's the piece where when I'm spending time with companies that I'm involved in, whether it's my own company, startups I advise, or have invested in, and I'm an advisor investor to about four or five hundred companies now. And I also have my own company that I run, and a couple others that are kinda businesses that I'm involved in.
When folks are struggling with leadership and leading the team, I just go back to this kind of first principle, if you wanna call it that, which is that leadership is clarity, and you need to be a clarity delivering machine. And all the things that I'm gonna talk about in this talk today are gonna come back to this idea that leadership is clarity, and everything has to do with getting your **** right, so to speak, so that you're clear when you communicate with the team.
You're clear about what the business needs are and what you're doing in your business. You're clear about kind of what you're doing yourself in your role, whatever your role may be. And I do believe also that everyone in a company has an opportunity to be a leader and to lead in whatever ways that make sense for their responsibilities and the kind of job function that they have.
So one really big piece of this is that even on the bad days, you need to deliver clarity from whatever chaos is going on. And this is the requirement to lead in today's world. One of the reasons is the world is moving so fast, and I'll give some examples of this later, that you don't have a choice but to make sure that you are clear, and the decisions you're making, the way you speak, the way you communicate, the way you deliver clarity is, impactful and resonates with the folks that you're working
with and the people that you're leading. One of the biggest things that I see with companies is that what ends up happening in people is that there's a lot of indecision, and indecision can come in many different forms. One of the biggest forms of indecision is when folks are faced with a situation, let's say, somewhat of an urgent situation, and they spend a lot of time trying to get information or data or try to really assess why something went wrong.
And I have a really strong thesis on this. And so what happens is let's say that there's a crisis that just happened. And, you know, your first impulse is usually to figure out, oh, what went wrong? How did it happen? But typically, when you're in the in the middle of a crisis, so let's say that, like, all of a sudden, and this is gonna be a good analogy, but all of a sudden, you had a, your office is on fire.
You're outside the office, you went to lunch, no one's in the office, let's say, just to keep this a very clean, example, and your office is on fire, and you're walking back and you see that the office is on fire. Your current state is that the office is on fire.
Your current state isn't in a place where even trying to figure out why it's on fire or anything like that matters. You need to figure out what to do to get from the current state you're in to the desired state. And so the key there is to make sure that you're focused on what's your desired state.
Well, the fire is put out. It's not, I understand why the fire happened, because you're in the middle of the fire. And so what a lot of folks do in those situations is try to figure out why did the fire happen. And that's not very impactful when you have a desired state that you're not in yet.
And so what I recommend when it comes to indecision and crisis and these kind of things, just as an example, is don't worry about why the fire happened to start. Focus on what the current state is and what you're dealing with and what state you wanna be in next, and just do everything you can to get to that state.
Get all the information you need to get to that state. And then once you're in that state where you kinda solve the problem, then you can look back and figure out why did it happen, how do we prevent it, what should we do to make sure that like, if it ever happens again, we're better equipped than we are this time.
But you can't do that when you're in the middle of a crisis or in the middle of a situation. This is something you can use for even small situations in your organization. It'll just help you because our normal tendency is to figure out why something happened instead of figuring out what's the desired state I wanna be in next.
So that's my little rant on, indecision and how it wastes time and energy. So now to speak about time and energy, this is what I really wanted to share because the way that people operate is very different than the way I operate is what I've been told.
And so wanted to give an example of of something kind of out of left field. So, I'm I'm on Twitter. I just have a few followers, about two hundred and sixty thousand and, growing. And I very recently changed my profile picture to what they call an NFT, which is for anyone that doesn't know what it is, it's basically an it's called a non fungible token.
And the idea there is that we're basically buying and selling JPEGs, is the funny way to say it, and they're on the blockchain. But but the reason I'm sharing this is when people see my Twitter and see me talking about NFTs and and decentralized finance and cryptocurrency, even though my business has nothing to do with that, they wonder how how I have the time for all these things.
And the thing is, I focus on my energy and whether I have energy for these things, not whether I have time. And so I wanted to show this example because I'm very public with my Twitter, and I talk a lot about business and startups and growth and leadership and and how to how to basically build build a new business from scratch.
And then I also talk about NFTs and sometimes cryptocurrency and what's going on in the world of finance. And it seems like there's a lot of these different things and that I'm doing a lot of different things, but at end of the day, what enables me to do that is two things.
One, I have this philosophy that could drive you mad, which is the only way to do more is to do more, And I truly believe that. And then I have this other philosophy that's very focused on, which I'm gonna share today, is focused on managing my energy for things, not managing my time for things.
Because I believe that time is always gonna be finite, and that's just a reality of what we live in. And so when people tell me about time management, I get worried when they tell me I'm trying to manage my time and things like that.
The reason is if I talk to ten people, nine of those ten people, if not ten of those ten people, will tell me they've had Zoom fatigue in the last year and a half, two years, basically, year and a half since, the pandemic.
And they talk about how they're going from meeting to meeting, and it's always on video, and they're just dead by the end of the end of the day, so to speak, and don't have energy for their life and and all that because they were in, like, ten meetings, back to back, that were Zoom meetings, and they had the video on, and they had to talk to people, and they it was just draining.
That is not appropriate for someone to continue doing that and expect to, like, be happy and be satisfied and and actually do their best work. And so that's why, like, when it comes to time management, I think that there's so many theories that are out there about calendars, and someone has, like, a light bulb moment and says, oh, I need less meetings on my calendar, or I need to do big chunks of, like, deep work in making maker work, not manager work, and that means that I need these big chunks on my calendar
and all these kinds of things. Those solutions are not the best, and that's because they're not solutions everyone can do. They're just solutions that some people have figured out work for them, and then they almost have a ritualistic process where they structure their day, they manage their time, and there's all kinds of principles around that.
I'm not here to say these are bad. What I'm here to say is there's another way that makes it so that if you have a strategy like this where you're time boxing and managing your time, you have you have a way that you can basically also manage your energy or focus on your energy, not your time, and end up having less Zoom fatigue, if any at all, and less meetings that are draining you.
And that's the key to doing any kind of work in today's environment, especially when it's remote work and all of those things. So I really focus on managing energy, not managing any of my time, and that's what helps me take care of all the things I wanna take care of and also do so many different things because I've found a way to basically manage my energy, not manage my time.
And, you know, I even tweet about these things, so you'll see a bunch of these tweets coming up. This one is all about basically this idea that I myself do my best work when I have energy for the work I'm doing. Doesn't matter what time of day it is, doesn't matter what day of week it is, this is what I focus on, and I've learned to do that.
And and I've learned that this is how anyone can do their best work, not just me. So let's start with some really basic stuff. I put a bunch of carbs and and and great food at the top with the emoji because I like emoji, But I did tweet this, quite a while ago, a couple years ago, and this is this is where my starting point was on how to manage energy.
Because I really believe having consistent energy throughout your day is really important. So let me just go through these, quickly. So obviously caffeine intake can be good and it can be very bad. And, a lot of us, are or were, somewhat addicted, if not very addicted to caffeine, in particular coffee.
So I actually quit coffee. I love the taste of it. I have nothing against it, except for one thing, which is it was spiking my energy and not giving me consistent energy throughout the day, and then I would need more coffee. Again, I know this is a typical story.
Not then I'm not here to **** on coffee or anything like that. I actually really like it. But for me, it wasn't working. And so what I started doing was drinking more tea, drinking matcha, drinking other types of sources of caffeine that are more conducive to consistent energy.
And there's a bunch of scientific reasons why tea has a they have a compound called theanine in it, helps mellow out the caffeine. That's a compound that's not available in coffee. Limiting sugar is really important because that's another thing that can spike, your blood sugar essentially and and give you inconsistent energy.
I'm probably preaching the choir on that. Everybody kinda knows this. Eat when you're hungry. I think that's important instead of eating because you're stressed out or dealing with something. Eat when you're hungry. Don't eat if you're not hungry. Sometimes I skip meals just because of this philosophy.
Works out really well for me. I drink lots of water. I've always got a water bottle or something like that right next to me. I think that's actually extremely important and something that's a very low hanging fruit to have good energy. This one around moving past negative emotions, is very powerful, and it's one of the baby steps that I used.
And and again, baby steps are the next one too. And then meditation too. These three things are more about myself or yourself and how you take care of yourself and you thus take care of other people in the process. And so what I mean by that is if you're in a meeting and you hear something and it kinda triggers you, it's your job to do something about it, not anyone else's.
And it's on you to control your triggers and things that kind of agitate you in that way. And so I really focus on understanding what my triggers are, and any negative emotions and working through them consistently. And then in meditation, like I tend to focus on those kind of things and basically give myself the room and space to kinda work through any of those negative emotions or anything that has come up throughout the day.
Again, these are kind of the basics, but I am gonna talk about a process that you can use to help yourself. And look, at the end of the day, the reason I have a heart here is because when you figure out how to manage your energy, you're coming into every experience with love, you're coming into every experience with generosity and kindness, and you're also basically bringing your heart to those experiences.
You're not sitting here and kind of blocking yourself from bringing your kind of full self, if you wanna call it that. And I think that's very important in life, in order for us to all be happy. So one thing I like to say is you aren't really busy.
You just don't have energy to do more because you manage your time, not your energy. And here's the key to this. Time materializes when energy is available. So you're probably wondering, how do I do this? You know, you have a hard job or, you know, sometimes, you know, I feel tired by the end of the day and all these things that I mentioned earlier.
Well, this is how I do it, and this is what I suggest to everyone. And I have these emoji here because I call it the cut the the measure twice, cut once kind of strategy. And so what you wanna do is you wanna figure out what gives you energy and what takes it away from you.
And so generally speaking, the way you do this and the way I would recommend doing it is during each interaction you have throughout your workday, whether it's a meeting or a one on one with somebody or even some work you're trying to do, figure out whether it gave you energy or it sucked energy away from you or take took away the energy.
And just start logging that in some way, whether it's mentally, writing it down, whatever you prefer. That is the simplest thing you can start doing, even if you have a very impacted job or you have lots of meetings a day or you feel drained, it's actually even more important if you start doing that.
And then this is where the measure twice. So just make sure you do that for a little bit, and then the cut once part comes in when you basically sit there and realize that you can make changes, and you can reduce the amount of things that don't give you energy or take it away from you and increase the amount of things that give you energy.
And sometimes it's also a meeting you have to be in, but you you wanna change your perspective on it Because with with that change of perspective, you'll have more energy, and that energy will help you produce the time you need to do things.
That's the trick. Figure out what gives you energy and figure out figure out what doesn't, and then tune it. Change it. Change your mindset on it. Remove those meetings that don't give you energy. Get away if you can from the people that don't or change your perspective on those people so that you can kind of, essentially make the time by focusing on your energy.
Because if you have energy for things, it's like those moments when, like, you were working for, like, hours and you kinda, you know, put your head up, and all of a sudden you realize it's been hours, but the work was great. Those are the kind of things that, I would highly recommend that you, focus on.
So, I tweet a lot, as you've probably guessed. I started talking about remote work, before even the pandemic, so this was back in twenty eighteen. We talked about what gives me energy at work as one of the key questions to ask, and also figuring out what takes away energy.
You also wanna ask yourself in these remote environments, how can you manage your own time and productivity working remotely, and think through what are the things you can do, whether it's like my cofounder who generally should have snacks right next to her. Otherwise, she's gonna be thinking about food all the the whole time, just because she's she's always hungry.
You know? And that's just her. For me, it's the water. The water makes a big difference because I tend to talk a lot, and so my mouth gets dry. And so the water helps, but also I believe drinking water versus eating something actually gives me more energy physically, essentially.
And then things that are really important in a remote work environment are basically you getting out of your house when you can. So I started with that one instead of the other one that I'm gonna get into in a second. But that's really important because maintaining your sanity requires us to move around.
I mean, we're human beings. We we like to move around. So a lot of folks have not been moving around, so I would recommend figuring that out for you. I go for walks when I can, or I even just walk around the house, while I'm on a call or something like that.
And that's been kind of my tricks for myself. Then we have, are you willing to improve your email and text based communication skills? I believe the number one thing you can do for remote work is improve your communication skills, in particular email and text, and if you can improve those and learn how to improve them, you're just gonna have a better time at work.
So that was all about managing energy, not managing time. Hopefully, you got a couple things that you can do and do right now, and that will make you a better leader because you will be more clear if you're managing your energy, not your time, because you won't be tired.
Now I wanna talk a little about happiness using a pretty big tweet thread that I that I did, and then I have a recommendation at the end, for anyone that it resonates with. So number one, you'll never make everyone happy, and so you should stop trying.
And you should spend your energy to make yourself happy instead. I know this might sound crazy, but I promise you, if you make yourself happy, you're gonna make everyone around you happy. And in this case, for myself, this is very personal to me, I used to actually confuse my own happiness with other people's happiness until I realized a very simple truth.
And the truth is basically that when I was trying to make others happy, I was aiming to be the best meeting of their day. I would meet where they wanted to. I would discuss what they wanted to. I would only think about how I could help them.
And my whole self worth was tied to the positive feelings they had about me. And I thought I was being selfless because I was focused on the other person. But instead, I realized I was actually being selfish because I was so focused on the other person that they would only see certain parts of me.
They would not get the full experience, and they would only see that helpful, positive, and encouraging part, which I know sounds great and is positive, that's wonderful, and it was working for me. But I missed out on making true, authentic relationships, and I also was not, I was projecting a perfect version of myself to everybody around me, and my happiness, most importantly, was tied to them.
While what I've learned and realized is that happiness is actually a very personal thing, And it isn't anyone else's responsibility to make you happy, and no one can control or realistically even influence another person's happiness. So, you know, I've just completely come to the conclusion that happiness is deeply personal, and any attempts to try to make yourself happy by making other people happy will eventually lead to some kind of burnout on your end just because you haven't been focused on yourself.
So it really does come from what they call within, and you get the choice to be happy. You don't make that choice for anyone else but yourself. And even when you're trying to make thing trying to find the things that make you happy, it's an endless journey anyway.
So you're almost on a lifelong mission to to make yourself happy and be happy regardless of what is happening around you. And this is really a key distinction. I was just doing all the wrong things. So, you know, one way to kinda figure out whether you're in a state where your happiness is either tied to others or tied to things outside of yourself is if you notice yourself or even others saying, I'll be happy when.
And for me, I was controlled by, and you might not be, there might be a different version of this for you. Like, I'll be happy when I have this amount of money, or I'll be happy when I find a great partner or whatever.
For me, it was I'll be happy when I make other people happy. And that was the story I was telling, and that was the way I was operating. And it was just not very good for me, but I thought it was for so many years.
And at the end of the day, I relied on these other people to make me happy and the experience that they had with me and the positive feedback that I got from them. And instead, what I see now is that I need to be happy with myself, and those feelings are tied to my own emotions and my own ability to be happy.
And so what I've been doing is basically focusing on not other people's happiness, but my own happiness, my own energy, and finding all the stories that actually connect me to my emotions and my feelings. And all of this has led to countless discoveries about myself, including this idea of focusing on energy, not focusing on time.
Because when people focus on time, they get stressed out. They feel like they're busy. They feel like they don't have time for things. But when you focus on energy, you focus on the right thing. You're focused on bringing your energy to experiences. You're focused on making sure that energy is strong and good and available to you.
And so that's the kind of main thing I would leave you with, which is at the end of the day, managing time is what we're taught. In school, we are told to go at a certain time and leave at a certain time and eat at a certain time and go to this class and that class and the other class at a certain time.
And even at work, if you were going into an office, you would sit there in an office and you were told when to do certain things. And at this point, with remote work, working from home, that's not the reality we live in. We have to take a lot of agency and a lot of control over our experiences, our time, so to speak.
And the way to do that is by making sure you're spending your energy in the right ways, and then the time just shows up for all the things that you actually have energy for. And last but not least, I would like to share, a book that I found to be very helpful for a lot of people.
I've read this book about five times over the last few years, and it's called The Courage to be Disliked. And the tip I give to people is that if this book resonates with you, the title, then you should read the book. It's as simple as that.
Because there's so many of us that wanna be liked by other people that we kinda have driven ourselves into a corner or or put ourselves into a corner, and we can only see things one way. This book will shed light on what real happiness looks like and how you can actually create a better experience for yourself and then for everyone around you.
Thank you. My current company is Nira. It's at Nira dot com, and we apply a lot of these things internally and make sure that everyone is focused on the right things and focused on their energy, not necessarily trying to manage their time. Appreciate it.