Every day I came home to work on my business

I couldn’t.

Somehow my body couldn’t move itself to the workspace and start to punch the keyboard.

Every single thing that I did felt heavy.

Then in the evening I’d just fall asleep in front of the work.

I had trouble focusing.
I had trouble finishing anything.
Damn, I had trouble to GET TO WORK.

What was going on there?

Simply said, my body didn’t have enough energy to keep going.

I had the time. (A few hours a day)
But I didn’t have the energy.

That’s when I realized something.

Time isn’t what we need, but energy.

You can easily build a business with 4 hours a day, if you have high energy in these times.

High energy → higher motivation
High energy → higher focus
High energy → you need less time to do something

But if your energy is low, even 16 hours of work per day won’t produce the outcomes you want.

Here’s the thing:

Low energy → It’s harder to keep going → energy gets even lower

High energy → It’s easy to keep going → you get energy from the work itself

You can have unlimited time for a trip, but if your car has no fuel, it all doesn’t matter.
And manually moving the car is pretty damn exhausting.

Same with human energy. We have a limited amount of energy every day.

But when we exceed this amount, we’re borrowing from the amount of tomorrow. And that’s what leads to burnout.

So how can we maximize our energy?

Well, first of all we need to understand that there are 2 reasons why we can have no energy (or why we can have energy)

1. We are too stressed → exhaustion

2. We are too tired

Before you do something, you need to identify what kind of energy you need.

1. Relaxation
   or

2. Arousal

I was basically tired. So what I did was I went for a run immediately after coming home. Therefore I had:

• energy boost

• higher focus because of blood circulation in the brain

• healthier daily routine

You can also take small naps if you want, but make sure they’re no longer than 20 minutes. Everything that wakes you up is great here

• cold shower

• listening to some energetic music

• etc.

It depends on your personal preference.

At least in my experience what works best is moving the body. Exercise. Going for a run. You can also combine that:

Going for a run → cold shower (that’s what I did)

But what if you’re too stressed?

Then you need to calm down.We want to do the opposite of arousal there.

• Meditation

• Breathwork

• Going for a walk

Sounds whoowhoo, but it works insanely well.

Same as with tiredness: you need to try stuff out and find what fits your preference.

Basically everything that calms you down is great here.

Takeaways

Next time you have no energy, figure out whether you’re

• tired or

• stressed

And then either

• wake your body up or

• calm your body down

That’s how you create energy.

It’s literally not more complex than this.

Quote of the day:

„I'm not obsessed about time. I'm obsessed about energy management. If you have time, but you have no energy, you're not going to accomplish anything anyway.“
— Daniel Ek
Founder of Spotify

Wishing you a great day.

Talk soon.

Eli