290. Your Energy Audit: Why Your Days Feel Harder Than They Should

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Marissa: We spend so much energy trying to solve problems in our lives. But what if the biggest problem to solve is our own energy? What if we don’t need to make our problems smaller, but change the energy we bring to those problems?

[00:00:24] Welcome to Focus On This, the most productive podcast on the internet. I’m Marissa Hyatt.

[00:00:29] Joel: And I’m Joel Miller.

[00:00:30] Marissa: This is where we remind you of something you already know. It’s not about getting more things done, it’s about getting the right things done,

[00:00:38] Joel: both at work and in life. And today we’re talking about your most valuable resource.

[00:00:45] It’s not money, it’s not even time. It’s your. Energy.

[00:00:50] Marissa: Energy, man, this is a big topic and it’s something that a lot of us forget that we actually have agency over.

[00:00:57] Joel: Yeah. I mean, I don’t even think we think about it, right? Like we just show up and do the things that we’re supposed to do and hope for the best.

[00:01:03] Marissa: We think about it, we don’t have energy,

[00:01:06] Joel: right? Yeah.

[00:01:06] Marissa: And if you don’t think we do, just go talk to any mom of. A newborn or a toddler and just listen to them for five minutes and they’ll tell you all about their energy and how much of it they don’t have.

[00:01:18] Joel: Yeah, and I think we can broaden that to be any mom of any child.

[00:01:23] Marissa: Very true

[00:01:23] Joel: of any age. I don’t know any mom that is not tired.

[00:01:26] Marissa: That’s true. You guys are honestly doing the most.

[00:01:29] Joel: This goes back to something that Michael talks about in his book, free To Focus. If you’re not familiar with that book. It’s very worth going to get if for no other reason, and there are many reasons then this concept of the time energy paradox, which is that time is fixed, but energy flexes.

[00:01:50] So let’s talk about the bad news first because that’s true. You can’t get any more time in the day. You’ve got 168 hours in a week. You’ve got 24 hours in a day. We might wish that we had more, but they’re just not making it. You know, like there’s no printing press that prints more time. There’s no factory that produces more time.

[00:02:11] We just have what we have. And the problem with productivity solutions often is this, that they try to help us maximize that time by helping us get more done in less time. And that’s helpful to a point. But we often finish that process feeling drained and exhausted because we’ve been working like, you know, a hamster on a wheel in order to accomplish something.

[00:02:35] And we haven’t recognized the other part of this paradox, which is that energy can flex. Mm-hmm. You can steward your energy more effectively, so you can bring better energy to the time that you have.

[00:02:50] Marissa: Yeah. Well, and I think that in terms of our time, you know, we just think, gosh, it would be great if we had more time, but we obviously don’t.

[00:02:59] And therefore we try to cram more into our days, into our hours, into our working or waking hours. And like you talked about, Joel, we end up. Exhausted or burnt out even worse when we do this over an extended period of time. And for frankly a lot of us, we’ve just lived this fully, you know, we went through before we went through January, which talk about time and a time warp January felt like it was.

[00:03:25] A year long

[00:03:25] Joel: and like 30 minutes. Like it vanished. Yes. But in, in the middle of it, it was like the longest year of my life was January.

[00:03:33] Marissa: Honestly, it really was. But I, I do think there really is the good news here of we can steward our energy more effectively. And I think for most people who are listening to this podcast, we’re just trying to.

[00:03:46] Get through the day, get the things done that we need to get done, feel good at the end of it, and we’re not most of us conscious or thinking about our energy at any given point in the day, and we’re not playing to that energy in a way that can really help us and give us an advantage and a leg up

[00:04:04] Joel: a hundred percent.

[00:04:05] Why do you think our days feel harder than they should? Just a little question thrown out there for you, like, what’s going on?

[00:04:12] Marissa: I think there’s a lot of factors. I think the first of which is our screen time. I see these memes all over the internet that talk about how, you know, we go to work, we get on our.

[00:04:27] 15 inch, 14 inch laptop, you know, to get off work, to typically get on our smartphone, whatever size this is, I don’t know, five inches, four inches, to then sit down and in the night, in front of our 40 or 50 inch TV screen mm-hmm. It’s like mm-hmm. Time is. Most of our days, and this is really interesting, 37% of American workers have jobs that can be performed entirely at home, exclusively on computers.

[00:04:59] Which I’m frankly shocked. It’s not more than that. I think this is a new phenomenon that you know, is only cropped up in the last decade or maybe two decades if we’re being generous. Where work actually doesn’t stop. Like we can take work right anywhere with us. I mean, that’s true for at home. That’s true.

[00:05:15] If we’re traveling, I recently went on a trip to California and. Got on the plane ready to work because I was supposed to have the day off, but I felt like, gosh, I, I need to maximize this time. Typical. And uh, it was like, you know, what is it a four and a half hour plane ride? Yeah. To California. And I thought, this is awesome.

[00:05:33] Uninterrupted time. Well, I got on the plane and the wifi didn’t work the entire trip.

[00:05:39] Joel: That’s awesome.

[00:05:40] Marissa: Which was awesome. Um, but also frustrating and yeah, I think that we’re so used to being connected. Just to prove this, this is interesting. So in 2003, okay, so this is quite a while ago, 56% of American workers used a computer at work.

[00:05:58] So Joel, how high do you think that is in 2026?

[00:06:02] Joel: I don’t have the stat. I don’t know, but I would guess it’s close to a hundred percent. I mean, if you’re working, I can hardly imagine a context in which you’re not on a computer for at least part of the work that you do. Communication, the actual doing of the work.

[00:06:18] You may be a carpenter or something like that, but you’re probably still communicating through email or texts or whatever with clients, customers, but everybody is on a device.

[00:06:28] Marissa: Well, and even if, like you’re talking about, there’s some kind of trades where maybe you’re not necessarily on a computer all day if you’re a plumber or something like that, but you typically get home and.

[00:06:39] Start scrolling or streaming. Right. So screen time we often feel like is rest. I know I fall into this trap a lot, especially on the weekends. If I’m not doing things or engaging in kind of social activities, I feel like, oh, I’m resting by binging a new Netflix show. Mm-hmm. Or and scrolling and Instagram reels or whatever it might be.

[00:07:00] And you can really get into, you know what they call the doom scroll, where you can’t stop scrolling.

[00:07:06] Joel: Right.

[00:07:06] Marissa: The whole thing is engineered for us to do that. And you know, it feels like rest, but it’s actually very demanding on our attention, on our brains. If you think about the amount of dopamine hits that are happening that is not getting any kind of rest or relief,

[00:07:24] Joel: it’s, yeah, it’s super stimulating, right?

[00:07:26] That’s the whole point.

[00:07:27] Marissa: And you know this, if you have ever scrolled or streamed late at night and then you try to go to bed and what happens? Usually your mind will not stop racing. This literally happened to me last night. I got sucked in and all of a sudden I was like, oh my gosh, it’s 10 o’clock. I gotta go to bed.

[00:07:44] What am I doing? It was like, totally like I am. You know, a zombie just walking around, like not even aware of what was happening and got in bed normally should have been tired. And it took me probably at least 30 minutes to fall asleep. ’cause my mind was just racing.

[00:08:01] Joel: It’s so frustrating because we think that we’re kind of checking out, but we’re not.

[00:08:07] I mean, our brains are hyperstimulated while we’re engaging, you know, with our screens in that way. And that means that. The cognitive resources that we should be like refilling the tank that we should be refilling. Were draining while we think we’re resting. I read one study about adolescents that found that screen time drains their cognitive resources that they need for emotional regulation.

[00:08:32] And if you’ve ever parked a kid in front of a television. Guilty as charged. Um, you know that that’s true because they get done off of a screen bender and they’re a wreck. They can’t function well, and I think we would be. Kidding ourselves if we thought that we weren’t subject to the same basic force.

[00:08:51] Marissa: I think it’s just more apparent in children, they have probably less self-awareness and less self-control, and therefore it’s just, it’s blatantly on display.

[00:09:02] For us. I mean, we’re still struggling with the very same things that they are in terms of staying calm, you know, feeling irritated, resisting impulses, not the least of which is to stop scrolling or to stop screaming, right? And regulating our stress rather than spiraling. And I notice myself feeling more unregulated when I’ve consumed more screen time.

[00:09:24] And that goes for work too. So this isn’t just on the streaming side or the scrolling side. This is also when I’ve had a long day where I’m sitting at a computer. Just working. Even the strain from a light standpoint of the blue light on our eyes and what that is to our literal physiology in our bodies and what is all happening on a chemical level inside of us.

[00:09:48] It’s not good. I’ll, I’ll just say that, like it’s not good. We’re not meant to be, first of all, inside for this amount of time. Right. Let alone sitting in front of a screen to this degree. So. The good news is, Joel, that the same study you’re talking about found that time outdoors is deeply restorative.

[00:10:07] Mm-hmm. So not only restored attention, which we would assume, but it also helps reduce stress. So if you’re struggling with screen time, whether it be because like us, you have a job that requires you to be on a computer the majority of the day, or you are struggling stopping that Netflix show or you’re doom, scroll on.

[00:10:27] Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or X or name your poison, get outside. Outside is the answer. Being outdoors in nature is really the answer, even if it’s just for a few minutes. This is gonna help you feel more grounded and regulated, and it’s actually gonna give you the restoration that you need. Just a quick little tip here.

[00:10:49] I think we mentioned this a few weeks ago in an episode, but there’s a really handy device that you can get. You’re like me, you’ve been getting a lot of ads for this. They know their audience, but there’s a device called The Brick that helps you reduce screen time. Uh, we have a lot of people in our company who’ve been talking about screen time and how to reduce it and different strategies.

[00:11:11] Apps and devices and different things to help. Uh, but it seems like the clear winner is the brick. So if you’re struggling with this, if this feels like a, a big energy suck for you, I would encourage you to check that out

[00:11:23] Joel: since you bring up that word. Let’s just reground where we’re going for a second.

[00:11:27] That’s what this is all about. That rest is what brings us, what refills that energy tank that enables us to engage in what we want to engage in with more energy. So. If we’re not getting the rest that we need, and we’re kind of duping ourselves into believing that VEing out in front of yet another episode of whatever is going to be restorative, it won’t.

[00:11:51] And the most important thing you can do for your productivity and your joy is to just unplug for a little while, like get some actual rest and then refill your tank.

[00:12:03] Marissa: It’s not as hard as you think. It’s,

[00:12:04] Joel: it’s worse. It’s so much worse. Actually, it’s not. It’s literally just turning it off and going outdoors if you want,

[00:12:11] Marissa: and it doesn’t have to take long.

[00:12:13] I think we think that in order to make up for the screen debt that we’re in, so to speak, we have to have the same amount of time outside in order to get that level of rest. Like if we’re spending three hours in the evenings watching TV or scrolling our phone, we need three hours outside to have the same.

[00:12:32] Effect, so to speak, in terms of what we think is rest. And the truth is you could go spend 10 minutes or 15 minutes Yeah, outside and get a much higher return than you would if you’re scrolling. And there’s no negative of going outside, unlike the scrolling, unlike the streaming where. It really does take out that energy.

[00:12:53] It drains your body, it drains your brain. Just going outside for a short amount of time can really restore. So one of my favorite ways to do this, and I know Joel, you’re a big proponent of this as well, in the middle of the workday, if you feel that sense of drain on your body and your mind, you’re somebody who sits at the computer, just walk around your block.

[00:13:14] Totally provide in between meetings or take a, you know, 10 minute break. It, it really doesn’t take you as long as you think it does to walk around your block. For a long time I thought, gosh, I don’t have 20 minutes to go walk around my block and turns out it’s basically 10 minutes to do the whole, the whole loop.

[00:13:32] So,

[00:13:32] Joel: yeah,

[00:13:33] Marissa: and just that 10 minutes can restore my energy for. Several hours. And if you could do that just a few times a day, the ripple effect of that throughout your day is pretty massive.

[00:13:44] Joel: Just to put a number on it, like a leisurely stroll, you can do like a mile in 20 minutes. So if you’re walking quickly, you can do it even faster than that.

[00:13:55] You can do it in 14 or 15 minutes and a mile. Outdoors is tremendously invigorating. And one other little hack, if you wanna get away from your screen, that next Zoom call that you have. Do it by phone.

[00:14:08] Marissa: Yes.

[00:14:09] Joel: Like it’s so simple. We used to do it all the time. A phone call.

[00:14:14] Marissa: Yeah,

[00:14:14] Joel: it works amazingly. And you can do that while you walk.

[00:14:17] Put some AirPods in and just like stroll around the block. It’s pretty great.

[00:14:21] Marissa: And I have to say, this is maybe sexist, but I think it’s important to share. So I have several people who report to me.

[00:14:28] Joel: Do we need a trigger alert on this one? Like a trigger warning?

[00:14:31] Marissa: No, no, no, no. And. Some of those people are men, some of those people are women.

[00:14:35] And it’s interesting because I’ve done this several times with my team members where I’ve said, Hey, let’s just do a, a walking meeting. And so, mm-hmm. We’ll both put our headphones in and hit the road. And if we have things that we need to share. You know, if we need a spreadsheet that we need to look at or some kind of a document or something, usually we’ll text that ahead of time so we have it on our phone, or we’ll just say, we’ll just refer to that later.

[00:14:58] But it’s interesting, the men on my team, when I do a walking meeting. The conversations that I have with them are so much more productive.

[00:15:08] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:08] Marissa: Interesting than if I’m on a Zoom call with them. Like I have been tempted at times to say I’m taking those meetings completely offline onto just a phone call because of how much more productive and energizing they were than when we’re sitting across from each other.

[00:15:24] And there’s a whole psychological aspect to this. I don’t have the research in front of me, but there is research done specifically with men that says when they are side by side, men are more side by side versus women are more, um, you know, eye contact in front of

[00:15:40] Joel: Yeah, like face-to-face,

[00:15:41] Marissa: face-to-face.

[00:15:42] That men tend to open up and become more relaxed when they’re side by side. If you think about men, you know, they tend to engage in activities like fishing, golf, I don’t know, going to a sports bar, sitting next to each other, watching a game where there’s, there’s much more side-by-side activity than with women, which is much more face-to-face.

[00:16:00] So just a little tip. Obviously it works for anybody, but I have noticed that within my own team, which is kind of cool.

[00:16:07] Joel: Well, and to be perfectly honest here, we are staring at each other eye to eye through this, uh, platform Riverside that we’re using and I feel highly intimidated. So

[00:16:16] Marissa: Great.

[00:16:16] Joel: Just to confirm the point, a second ago you mentioned brain drain, and that kind of goes to another thing that we need to talk about, which is information.

[00:16:26] We are deed in information, and that happens in the work context. There’s like all the stuff that comes in about. Every decision that we need to make throughout the day, the, the various projects that we’re working on. But that’s also true when we’re out of work, when we’re standing in a line and on our phone following the news or.

[00:16:48] When we’re catching up on social media in the evening trying to follow the news or whatever, like we’re just inundated with information and that’s draining. So the time that we have to experience rest, we are often filling up with the very things that are draining us during the workday, making us less productive so that we bring less good energy to the project the next day and a lot more.

[00:17:13] Substandard energy because we’re just drowning in information.

[00:17:17] Marissa: I think one of the biggest contributors of this today is ai.

[00:17:22] Joel: I mean,

[00:17:23] Marissa: first of all, we have always, most of us listening have lived in an age where it’s like information overload. You can find information on any topic you want to at any given time of the day, no matter what long gone are the days when the TV shut off and you know all that at a certain time, like just any time of day.

[00:17:43] Any point, any topic you can find information about. And that’s even been compounded now with ai. And I think about this in my own life, every single little tidbit that pops in my mind. I go to AI and I’m like, tell me more about that. You know, what do I need to know about this? Summarize this topic for me, or translate it into my specific life.

[00:18:05] The truth is, I don’t need to know everything about everything. None of us do, and we frankly cannot even hold it in our brains. Right. And it’s too exhausting. And you know, if we think about the mental load that most of us are walking around carrying, a lot of this is due to ai. A lot of this is due to social media.

[00:18:26] If you think about in recent, very recent political events where we do not have the even capacity from an emotional, mental regulation standpoint to process that information, which may not be happening in our backyards, it may very well be. We had this huge ice storm that just happened in Nashville and really across the whole southeast and the eastern United States.

[00:18:52] That was really devastating and Nashville took a lot of the brunt of it. There’s still people without power. Weeks later, which is just mind blowing. But the mental load of just carrying that, walking around, you know, I’m driving down the street at night and noticing entire blocks that are just pitched black dark.

[00:19:11] Yeah. And yet I have no ability to do anything about that. Or what happened in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, and the magnitude of the emotional and mental load of that. So it’s not just the information, there’s like the the information aspect, which is true, but it’s also the emotional load. I think that’s happening.

[00:19:33] Joel: Well, when we talk about mental load, I think it really is both of those things. Like there’s a psychological tax and then there’s like a cognitive tax. They’re both happening and. The more plugged in we are, the more we have that, you know, like we have this sense in which it’s just information is just everywhere.

[00:19:53] It’s in the atmosphere and to process it just demands something of us. And when we invite even more of it onto ourselves, it just becomes a burden.

[00:20:03] Marissa: We’re not created. To deal with it. I think that’s the key here is it’s not like something’s inherently wrong with us and we should just have higher capacity for this stuff.

[00:20:14] It’s just that we literally weren’t created to process this amount of information, have this amount of things to think about and to do, and to process, not the least of which is the emotional burden of it all.

[00:20:38] Joel: You mentioned agency a minute ago. That’s where we need to come back to because we’re not victims. We’re like active participants in our own life, and we can choose how much information we consume. I think the recommendation, if you wanna have more energy tomorrow. Consume less information today, be a better consumer of the information that is coming in.

[00:21:02] Make different and better choices. That looks like opting out in some cases of news coverage. It looks like in your AI example, not being less curious perhaps about what’s going on in your life, but we don’t need to drill down on every thing that pops up into our mind. We don’t have to know all the details.

[00:21:22] We don’t have to know how to translate it into our lives. We just need to like get on with living and part of that, getting on with living looks like taking a break from all of this so that we can actually have more energy when we need it.

[00:21:34] Marissa: Well, you know, a lot of people engage in dry January where they give themselves a break from alcohol.

[00:21:39] Yeah. And it’s like we need a cultural movement of like. Whether it’s dry February or whatnot. But for social media, for media, really, I mean for news, for social media, all of that, an informational pause is what we need collectively. Can you imagine how much better off we would be if we, if there was a whole movement too of this?

[00:22:02] So maybe we need to start that, but I can imagine how restorative that would be to your energy of just you’re not putting things in your brain. That you a don’t have control over or that you don’t have to deal with right now. Like a lot of us have this whole mental load of all these to-dos that we need to think about for whether it’s ourselves, our families, our professional lives.

[00:22:24] It’s just like the constant stream of things is so taxing that if we just allowed ourselves to put some of that off for a period of time, like you’re talking about, taking that pause. I think we would have tremendously more energy than we would if we continue doing exactly what we’re doing,

[00:22:42] Joel: one of the ways that helps make that possible.

[00:22:45] Is having hobbies that are restorative and helpful that you can default to?

[00:22:51] Marissa: Yes,

[00:22:51] Joel: instead of the information vacuuming that we do, I happen to have one of those. I love to read novels.

[00:22:59] Marissa: Yes,

[00:23:00] Joel: I love novels. I could just read them all day long, but that conflicts sometimes with the next thing we need to do for improving our energy.

[00:23:10] Which is getting enough sleep. Yeah, because if there’s one thing I would trade sleep for, it’s reading another three or four or 20 or 50 pages, and that’s my version of the Netflix binge. I often cheat my sleep, and yet sleep is one of the primary recharging stations of our life. When you need to go plug your brain into something, sleep is the thing to use, and I cheat my sleep all the time.

[00:23:40] Just to read a little more.

[00:23:42] Marissa: Well, you are a little bit of a night owl, and I think you’re kind of one of those people that would often say, oh, I can get by with less sleep.

[00:23:49] Joel: Correct.

[00:23:50] Marissa: The truth is you probably could for a period of time, but over time that will have a real effect. I mean, the research shows this

[00:23:56] Joel: embarrassingly by the way

[00:23:58] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:23:58] Joel: Shows this.

[00:23:59] Marissa: We do need to get seven to eight hours of sleep a night. What’s interesting is over 35% of people are not getting that.

[00:24:10] Joel: Guilty as charged again,

[00:24:12] Marissa: is one of those people. I actually do get this. I’m pretty rigid about my sleep because I am not one of those people. If I do not get enough sleep, I feel it tremendously the next day, and so it’s really important to me to make sure I’m trying to protect those sleep hours.

[00:24:28] Make sure that I’m not scrolling. For me, Joel, unlike the novel, I have gotten this winter into doing a lot of puzzles at home. Mm

[00:24:37] Joel: mm-hmm.

[00:24:38] Marissa: Way for me to not be on screens and to really engage in something that is right in front of me. It engages my mind, but it’s kind of passive at the same time. And I usually will actually listen to a novel while I do that.

[00:24:52] But my, my biggest issue is. The curse of just one more piece.

[00:24:57] Joel: Mm. Yeah.

[00:24:57] Marissa: Talk about a dopamine hit. It’s like over and over and over again.

[00:25:01] Joel: 1000 dopamine hits.

[00:25:03] Marissa: I mean, really, if I’m staying up late, it’s because I’m just sitting there so sucked into to that. But I will say one of the things that has helped me with this, literally with the puzzles and not going so long.

[00:25:14] I think Joel, you guys have these at your house as well. There’s what are called circadian light bulbs. Mm-hmm. That you get that become less bright and have more red light. They have different settings and so it really helps. Right size your circadian rhythm from all the blue light that most of us are getting throughout.

[00:25:34] Yeah. And the good news is it actually adjusts the color of my puzzle just enough that it makes it more difficult that I finally say, okay, I’m done. Um, so it actually has

[00:25:45] Joel: That’s hilarious.

[00:25:46] Marissa: Yeah. Uh, it has helped me with that, but I think that the truth is. In some seasons, we do need more sleep than others, and certainly there’s other seasons where we’re struggling to get enough sleep, but for instance, if you’re recovering from sickness, obviously you need to be giving your body plenty of rest.

[00:26:05] Rest is where our bodies heal and do all of that restorative work. If you’re under a lot more stress or emotional load at work or in life, you probably need to be increasing the amount of sleep that you’re having. If you are coming out of a season of sleep debt, which I am, I just found this new feature out on my aura ring that it will actually tell me how much sleep debt I have.

[00:26:29] And I was recovering from a sickness. I went on a trip, um, we had this ice storm. There were a lot of things happening and I accumulated quite a bit of sleep debt. And happy to say I only have one hour. Sleep debt. So it says, I don’t know how it calculates, but it’s kind of interesting and I had a really good night’s sleep last night.

[00:26:47] Slept eight hours or so, and it really knocked a lot of that sleep debt off. So that was good to see. A couple other reasons that you may need to get more sleep if you’re experiencing a lot of hormonal shifts. So ladies, if you are in that perimenopausal state of your life, uh, which I know a lot of you are, that’s a great aspect.

[00:27:07] At different points in your cycle, if you are. Aging. I mean, there’s so many areas if you’re pregnant, there’s so many ways that our hormones fluctuate, and that directly affects the amount of sleep that we need. And also, if we’re in the middle of winter, here we are, you know, it’s the middle of February when this episode is airing, and we’re still in winter and we need more rest.

[00:27:30] I saw a thing the other day that said before electricity was invented in the winter, people were getting on average. Well, how many hours of sleep do you think people were getting Joel, before electricity?

[00:27:43] Joel: Before electricity in

[00:27:44] Marissa: the winter? Oh

[00:27:44] Joel: my gosh.

[00:27:45] Marissa: In the winter specifically?

[00:27:46] Joel: Yeah. I mean, probably 10 to 12 hours a night.

[00:27:49] Marissa: 11. So you’re dead on. Yeah. 11 hours was the average amount that humans were sleeping prior to having electricity in the winter because it’s dark so much longer and our bodies need rest.

[00:28:01] Joel: Yeah, I mean, that makes total sense to me, like when the sun is up. Longer. The middle of June is like where the longest day of the year is at the solstice and you could just go on for hours and hours and hours.

[00:28:14] Yeah. When there’s less light, that’s like a pretty clear cue that your body is gonna be getting less of what it needs from the sun, and as a result it’s gonna need to get more rest. Sometimes this stuff is not that complicated.

[00:28:27] Marissa: If you think about the, as humans, this is always weird for me to think about.

[00:28:32] We were actually not meant to live inside.

[00:28:35] Joel: Yeah.

[00:28:35] Marissa: First of all, we are animals. We are created to be in creation, in the world, in nature, in the outdoors, and we have since evolved to create these little micro climates inside of our homes that allow us to. Be warm and unaffected by the weather and all the things outside.

[00:28:55] And then we invented this amazing thing called electricity, which allowed us to have light at any time of day, which is completely disrupt how our we’re actually, you know, wired to be. And so if you think about us like animals, look at what most of the animals do in the dead of winter. They sleep a lot more.

[00:29:15] They, yep. They hibernate. If, you know, if they’re not just sleeping more, they’re hibernating. There’s more of this call to rest, and I think that we feel, it feels so disconnected for us and, and just like what? We would need more sleep in the winter than in the summer. Yes, we’re meant to be in sync with nature, and I think that this is a real disadvantage of having light and heat and all of that all throughout the day.

[00:29:41] Colder temperatures tend to lower your body temperature, which enables you to sleep better. All of these things work in tandem to create an environment where we’re getting. The most restoration possible, which is gonna lead to the best energy.

[00:29:54] Joel: I mean, the truth is like my mortgage company would not like it if I hibernated throughout the winter, but we’re not saying that you have to do that.

[00:30:02] All we’re saying is be aware of these kind of external forces and some of the ones that we’ve. Brought into our lives that not only make rest harder, but work against our own even awareness that we need the rest and then make some adjustments.

[00:30:19] Marissa: Why are we not getting enough sleep? I mean, what are, what are the biggest factors to this?

[00:30:22] Joel: We’ve covered a few of them already streaming. Playing video games. I mean, Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, joked one time that their main competitor is sleep. And you know, like we’re winning. He said, and I think that’s true. Like if you can watch one more very satisfying episode, that will of course leave you unsatisfied in the last 40 seconds of the episode.

[00:30:48] And then therefore watch one more episode that’s gonna work against our sleep and. Unless you have some self-discipline, which frankly is hard, especially when you’re tired. Another thing is just work. We already talked about this, but if you’re always on, you know, you mentioned the example at the beginning.

[00:31:06] We go to work, we sit in front of a screen, we leave the office, and we’re on our phone. Then we watch, you know, the big screen later into the evening. The reality is. It’s worse than that. Like we wake up and we grab that little screen off the bedside table and we look at it right away and we’re just on our devices all the time and a lot of times we’re working at various things at various points of the day.

[00:31:30] Like most of them. I read a study, this is now years ago, so this study is at least 10 years old that said that professionals engage with their work 72 hours a week. Now, if you look at the official stats on how long people work each week, it’s in the 40 to 50 range. Right. And people who work in knowledge work and things like that are often at the upper end of that.

[00:31:55] But the reality is that we’re engaging with our work more than that.

[00:31:59] Marissa: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:59] Joel: Because we’re checking our email when we wake up in the morning, we’re checking slack before we go to bed. We’re writing down notes for things that we remember about work. You know, sometime right after dinner or right before we go to bed or whatever, we’re engaging with our work all the time, and the smartphone enables us to do that.

[00:32:16] That’s not to like demonize smartphones, but it is to say work is accessible to us at all times and therefore because of lack of self-control or whatever, we engage with it. All the time. And so, you know, the video games, the television shows work itself. Those are like, those are factors for sure. Another thing is, you know, you mentioned I’m a night owl.

[00:32:40] I kind of am, all of us have some kind of chronotype, you know, like some of us are, are larks, you know, like we do great in the morning. Some of us are, what do they call ’em, like wolves, they’re like, or night owls. They’re great at night. I’m somewhere in between. I often get like a second wind around nine o’clock and I’m like, if I don’t go to bed, then I’m ready to go for like another.

[00:33:03] Three or four or five hours. So like if we’re not aware of how our chronotype is, we may be working against ourselves just by structuring our life with time cues that don’t map how we actually engage with the world. And then finally. We just procrastinate bedtime. There’s just so much cool stuff we could do before bed, like why go to sleep?

[00:33:26] Marissa: Why we could just keep listening to that novel and putting more puzzle pieces in the puzzle. So why would we do it?

[00:33:32] Joel: That’s totally my problem. You know, like I would ra, I’m reading Crime and Punishment right now, and to be in Ross Knik, cough’s, claustrophobic, fever driven mind. For just three more pages is really entertaining.

[00:33:46] I wanna find out why this man is so crazy.

[00:33:49] Marissa: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:50] Joel: And yet I will turn into him if I don’t go to bed.

[00:33:54] Marissa: It’s a slippery slope, for sure.

[00:33:55] Joel: Slippery slope.

[00:33:56] Marissa: Well, let’s talk about what you can do to increase your energy and overcome these challenges that we have in our day. So first of all, you can end your workday on time for your mind.

[00:34:10] To wind down, down, and we actually have a process for this. It’s called the Workday shutdown ritual. If you’re not implementing this into your everyday workday, I wanna encourage you to do it. It is so incredibly helpful when I talk with our double win coaching clients who are struggling with feeling like work never ends.

[00:34:28] There’s always more to do. So how do they actually stop working? Maybe they stop to go eat a meal or to pick their kids up, but they end up picking it back up later. I always ask them, do you have a workday shut down ritual? And most of them say no or yes, but I’m not doing it. And this is just a ritual that usually takes on average about 30 minutes, but enables you to literally shut down the day.

[00:34:52] So just like

[00:34:53] Joel: you’re just closing all these loops?

[00:34:54] Marissa: Yeah. So like you just shut down all these tabs on your computer. You’re literally shutting down the workday, so you’re thinking through any unchecked items on your to-do list that you need to either. Wrap up and finish before the end of the day or move to the next day.

[00:35:11] Right. Um, potentially just not do, depending on what, why you’re procrastinating doing that thing. It usually looks like closing out any conversations in Slack or text messages or email, you know, making sure that you’re trying to clear out those conversations so there’s not these big open loops throughout the evening, and it’s just gonna carry over into the next day.

[00:35:33] So you’re really shutting down your workday. I, I love this ritual. It’s one of my favorites. I have a 30 minute block blocked off at the end of every single day on my calendar, specific for this where I don’t take meetings so that I ensure that I can actually properly shut down.

[00:35:48] Joel: And just to state the obvious, for those that don’t know.

[00:35:51] This is in your full focus planner?

[00:35:53] Marissa: Yes.

[00:35:53] Joel: So if you are a full focus planner user, the Workday shutdown is near the front, and it’s a super helpful tool along with a Workday startup ritual and a morning and evening ritual to just put yourself into a position where you’re taking some control over your time, such that you can get done the things you need to get done.

[00:36:12] That helps you maximize your energy.

[00:36:13] Marissa: Yeah. And I think this is where you have to be able to define done also. Yes. So for a lot of us, we don’t know what done looks like because there’s always more work to be done, and so you have to define what done is for yourself. So usually for me being done is finishing that workday shutdown ritual.

[00:36:33] Even if there’s tasks that I’m transferring to the next day Yeah. Or you know, things that are just not gonna get completed, that’s okay because I’ve done, I know that I’ve done that. I’ve transferred those items or delegated them out or whatever needed to happen. And therefore I can say that I’m done for today.

[00:36:49] Doesn’t mean that it’s done forever, just means it’s done for today. So figure out how to define done. Next thing would be make going to bed more enjoyable with some kind of evening ritual that you look forward to. I think for a lot of us. It’s like we just come in for a crash landing at the end of the day, and it’s just like we brush our teeth and fall in bed and there’s no process, no ritual around it.

[00:37:15] That gets us excited to shut everything down and to start winding down. And so. Again, this is part of your full focus planner, and you can kind of think through what are some things that help me relax and unwind. So maybe that’s for you taking a nice bath each night. Maybe it is like me laying on my acupressure mat and really kind of listening to some calming music and allowing my brain to just quiet down.

[00:37:41] Could be prayer or meditation or something like that. Anything that is gonna help your brain and your body start winding down, you wanna include in your evening ritual and, and feel excited about it. You should look forward to this. At the end of the day, it shouldn’t feel like you’re wanting to just put it off all evening, which a lot of us do.

[00:38:02] Joel: Attractive is key to doing it. Otherwise we’ll just procrastinate it and resent it and all that other kind of stuff.

[00:38:09] Marissa: Well, and lastly is cutting out blue light. I talked about this a little bit earlier in the episode, but blue light really disrupts our circadian rhythm and prevents us from actually sleeping.

[00:38:20] So some of the things that you can do is. Have a cutoff for when you stop watching your screens or looking at your screens. Um, I have a setting on my phone if you’re watching on YouTube, where I click my hotkey three times and it turns red. Which takes all the blue light outta my phone, and as soon as the sun goes down and it’s dark outside, I put that setting on.

[00:38:40] So I’m not getting the input of blue light. You can get red glasses that will help prevent any blue light. Most blue light blocking glasses are clear and they’re not proven to work, so just key tips. Red, you actually want the, the color red in your glasses. And then like me and Joel, um, and most of our family, we all have circadian light bulbs that you can get.

[00:39:04] I think, uh, the brand that we have is called Healthy Home, but there’s several brands you can just search, uh, circadian light bulbs and put those in. I have them in all of my lamps and my pendants, and I really dim the lights. I turn those on to kind of the night setting. So that it emulates almost like a fire light, where it’s warm light, there’s not that blue light.

[00:39:25] We’re just gonna help you really relax and calm down before bed. So the goal here is obviously we want you feeling rested, right? That’s the key to getting more energy. And we need you to get good sleep in order to be able to feel rested.

[00:39:38] Joel: And I can just tell you, and I’m not being paid an affiliate commission by any of these companies Yeah, who sell these light bulbs.

[00:39:45] They’re incredibly soothing. At night when the lights are low and they’re ory. It just, I don’t know, it just, it’s very soothing. It’s

[00:39:53] Marissa: great. It’s when I’m sitting in front of a fire in the evening with no other lights on, where it just feels relaxing. It’s kind of. Semi hypnotic where it’s just like very relaxing.

[00:40:05] And that’s what they’re kind of emulating with these light bulbs, which is really helpful. And, and the other thing is that they’re usually flicker free. Most of our light bulbs are flickering all the time, which. We can’t see to the naked eye. But if you take your phone out and video most of your lights, you’ll see the flickering and that strain on your eyes, and your brain is more than you actually think.

[00:40:27] And so a lot of these circadian light bulbs are flicker free, which means even in the day when you have them on the regular daytime setting, which looks like any other light bulb, they’re flicker free, which is less strain on your eyes and your brain. So. Highly encourage you. Yeah. Not sponsored wish we were, but they’re fantastic.

[00:40:45] Um, so highly encourage you guys to check those out. They are expensive usually, but you typically only buy them I think once every 10 years. So, um, they last a very long time.

[00:40:54] Joel: And just think about how much you’ll be able to accomplish over the next 10 years if you’re fully rested and therefore productive.

[00:41:00] Marissa: Here you go. Gosh, we need, we really do need a sponsorship for these people. All right, Joel, what are the upsides of having more energy? Obviously, we know most of these, but can you just kind of round it out for us

[00:41:11] Joel: without, again, absolutely. Demonizing screens, that feels just like a cliche at this point, but you’ll have better emotional regulation.

[00:41:19] If you do, you’ll have. You know, less anxiety if you are just dialing back the screen time. If you have less mental load, you’ll have more clarity. The cognitive drain on your life will be less. You’ll just bring better thinking to the work that you do the next day. If you get more sleep, you’re just gonna feel rested.

[00:41:37] Like imagine that. Yeah. And when you do, you’ll bring more energy, more creativity, more all of that to the work that you do. And what that fundamentally means is. Just because time is fixed doesn’t mean you have to somehow get done less. You’ll actually be getting done more because you’re bringing better energy to the work that you’re doing.

[00:42:00] Marissa: A tip inside of the Full Focus Planner is in your weekly preview. Commit to one small adjustment to boost your energy. So maybe this next week you wanna think through, you know, we have that section in the weekly preview about rejuvenation, and so maybe you wanna implement a screen time shutoff where each day you stop looking at screens at eight o’clock at night or nine o’clock at night, or whatever time that is.

[00:42:25] Maybe it’s earlier for you. Maybe, uh, you wanna implement a strategy where each day you try to walk outside around your block three times a day for this week and just see what happens. See how that affects your energy. A lot of what our family tends to do with these types of things is think about it like an experiment so you can just kind of be your own little lab rat and say, okay, for this next week.

[00:42:50] What strategy do I wanna try to boost my energy and then just try it for one week and see if it helps. Maybe I’m gonna just go to bed at nine 30 instead of 10 30, and I’m gonna shut down screens an hour before I go to bed, and I’m just gonna observe what happens to myself. I’m not gonna commit to this for my life.

[00:43:08] It doesn’t have to be that big of a deal, but I’m just gonna see what happens for the next week. And you can do that inside of your weekly preview in that rejuvenation section.

[00:43:17] Joel: Another virtue of that. Just to say it is you don’t have to commit to doing all this stuff. Yeah. Like let’s say we’ve been remotely persuasive, it would be really easy to say, I’m gonna do all those things and then not get the benefit of it because you won’t actually end up doing it for very long.

[00:43:34] Just pick one or two and commit to it for a week or so and just see how it plays out. And if it works, great, add another one. You don’t have to go like whole hog to get the benefit of a few of these tweaks.

[00:43:47] Marissa: You can have a high return just from implementing small adjustments in your day-to-day life, and it doesn’t have to be a complete overhaul.

[00:43:57] You’ll be surprised at how dramatic the return is on pretty small changes in this area.

[00:44:04] Joel: Yep.

[00:44:06] Marissa: So much is outside of our control in our lives. We know that we feel that on a day-to-day basis, but we almost always have agency over how we choose to steward our energy. So hopefully that feels empowering and encouraging to you.

[00:44:22] And like we talked about, I wanna encourage you to just make one simple change this next week. What can you do this week to improve your energy, reduce the overload, and really help restore and flex that energy to your advantage?

[00:44:44] Joel: Thanks for joining us on Focus On This.

[00:44:47] Marissa: This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so please share it with your friends and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen or at focus on this podcast.com.

[00:44:58] Joel: We’ll be here next week where we’re going to talk about a really simple habit for decreasing the anxiety.

[00:45:05] In your life.

[00:45:07] Marissa: I am excited about that. So, until then,

[00:45:10] Joel: stay focused. Focused, stay focused.