It’s 3 o’clock and no matter how many cups of coffee you drink, you just don’t have the mental energy left to do much of anything. So what can you work on when you are dragging at the end of the day? Here are some low energy time tips that can help.
- Take a Break: Take a short coffee break and walk outside for 10-15 minutes. You may find that this short break away from your desk gives you enough replenishment to get back on track.
- Make Calls: I find chatting with people on the phone to be simpler than heavy brain work like financial budgeting or writing a marketing plan. So I will often make phone calls to clients and prospects during low energy times. This helps me market and is very productive.
- Easy Tasks: I focus on my toughest, most difficult tasks first thing in the morning when I am at most productive. I deliberately save back some easy, simple tasks for my low energy times. If your task management system allows tagging, start deliberately tagging simple tasks with a tag like “easy” or >3. Then do a search for this tag when your energy is flagging and start doing tasks.
- Learn: Low energy times can be also used for professional development. It is a great time to listen to podcasts or watch YouTube and other videos that train you on additional skills that will help you in your work. Look for courses, podcasts and videos on topics like time management, public speaking, management, delegating, software you use at work, or any other topics that will help you do your job better and prepare you for more responsibility.
- Research: Research is another simple task that I save for low energy times. I research things like new marketing strategies, productivity software, article topics I am writing about and other ideas. I “clip” my research to OneNote so that I can easily access it again later or turn it into reports.
- Read: This fits in with the learning and research ideas above. Usually our jobs involve a lot of reading to keep up with our industry. So keep this reading in a reading file and pull it out during low energy times.
- Plan: Another of my low energy time tips for the end of the day is to do some planning. You can plan your next article, next day, your next week or work on your 5 year plan. Plan in bullet points or mind mapping branches so that you can keep it fast and easy.
- Organize: Why not organize your office and work space during low energy times? Keep it small, don’t start redoing your entire office one day at 3 pm and expect to be done by 5. Start with a single drawer in a desk or credenza or a single book case. Organizing 1-2 of these a day can help clean up your clutter and make your work space more efficient.
- File: If you still have paper in your office, save your filing until the end of the day when you have low energy and do it then. Filing is fairly mindless and doesn’t take the same level of focus that putting together a new sales proposal or next year’s budget does.
I hope you found these low energy time tips to be useful. Please share this article/infographic with others.
For more time management help, visit our time management online school. Have some low energy time tips of your own? Let me know.
“Go home on time – you have my permission!” – Garland Coulson, “Captain Time”
