energy use and energy leaks

we use energy and we leak energy, and why this matters.

there are more separations between our work lives and personal lives than we can count. whether we have a business, vocation, or career, we tend to transition from a personal life mindset out of bed to a work life mindset while we eat breakfast, commute to the workplace, or start up a computer.

what kinds of things do we think about during this transition? what do we leave at home as we move to the workplace of the mind? what do we leave at work as we return to the home of the mind?

my guess for this divided state of mind, that our home mindset maintains what nourishes us energetically, and our work mindset maintains an economy of minimizing energy loss from the tasks we do for it. in other words, we maintain a source of energy at home, and lose this energy to work.

this isn’t bad at all! we should be using the energy we’ve gained and saved throughout the day and apply it to great and useful things for ourselves and others.

saving too much energy during a day or longer period of time results in restlessness, and is a great source of energy leakage. and this starts my line of thinking: how do we reflect on the energy we use and the energy we leak?

how do we more effectively use this essential fuel for our existence?

do you ever have those days at work where you feel brain-fried, but you’ve barely done anything?

a joke phrase for office-centered work is “death by Powerpoint”—to sit there, taking in slides without any real effort, yet by lunch you feel like you spent two months in solitary confinement. you come back home wanting to take a nap, watch a show, and fall asleep.

it’s like when you’ve been flying across the country all day and you somehow feel more tired from all the sitting.

but then there are days where you spent the whole day working on a project you were obsessed with, and by the end of the day you can take that same energy to the gym.

lots of effort was expended, yet now you want to crush some other project at home!

it’s pretty easy to identify what the second situation has that the first one doesn’t: a flow state that keeps someone engaged with their work the entire day.

it might be easy enough to state that a flow state helps maintain work energy throughout the day, but i believe that there’s something more.

there’s another angle to this process, because it doesn’t always require a flow state to feel upbeat after work. there are a lot of vocations and jobs that don’t give much of a flow state to the worker, yet they seem to feel driven until the end of the day.

what i’m seeing is that it centers around energy use and one’s self-concept—the subconscious and conscious collection of empowering and limiting beliefs that drive their identity.

what do i think about when i start leaking energy from something like “death by Powerpoint”? i’m thinking about all the things i could’ve done instead of this, how many other things there are to do today, and how obligated i feel to this presentation rather than feeling driven toward it.

energy is being used in spirals of thought that beat down on one’s self-concept. (thoughts, conscious and subconscious pop up: is this really my job? i don’t really do anything at work, do i? i must not really like this stuff if i don’t like this presentation. maybe i’m a boring person.)

our self-concept starts shifting toward negative boredom (there is indeed positive boredom!), a type of boredom that creates downward spirals of thoughts that needlessly uses up energy without the person having to do a single thing but passively sit in a chair. negative associations arise about work, vocation, and one’s direction in life.

so what happens when we are at least engaged and active with our work, if not in a full flow state?

engagement breeds competence, the feeling that someone is skilled at something. it causes us to believe more positive things about ourselves (i’m getting great results with my job. i do a lot of stuff for my co-workers. i must really like this stuff i’m so engaged with it. maybe i’ll have some good stories when i’m done with this project).

there’s a snowball effect of positive thinking, conscious and subconscious, that creates a drive within someone. even when energy is dropping later in the day, this drive can help power someone to use it effectively, and not feel exhausted or frustrated even when tired.

more simply, we’re working on our mindset—behaviors that result from our limiting and empowering beliefs, conscious and subconscious.

after an un-engaging day at work, our mindset is temporarily conditioned by our work experience, and we bring that depleted, unsatisfied energy home.

with an engaging day at work, our mindset is conditioned as well, and we bring a satisfied, depleted, but driven energy back home.

why is this important?

in any version of work, whether career, business, or vocation, we’re always going to expend our energy, but with this knowledge that energy is closely tied with mindset, we are given the ability—and responsibility—to monitor what uses our energy, and what causes a full-on energy leak.

if we get a grip on our energy leaks, we’re going to have more work and drive during work, but outside it. we can come how with this drive to work on personal projects that fulfill us and give us even more energy and resources for work.

again, the snowball effect is here, because our enhanced ability to give time and energy to our personal life helps develop more energy and productive use of time in our work life.

and my theory: the mindset transition between home life and work life will be more fluid, more creative, more natural than we’ve ever seen, because the work/life balance won’t be about a give and take, but a give and give in energy and fulfillment.

in some time, i’ll post a guide to identifying our energy leaks and what we can do to plug them, and then start channeling our energy into the tasks and work that instill drive within us for the rest of our lives.

thanks for reading!

—dom