How to Manage Energy for Higher Productivity #scottsthoughts

Welcome to success story. The most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott DeClaire. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the HubSpot podcast network. Now the HubSpot podcast network has incredible shows like the Hustle Daily. It's hosted by Zachary Crockett, Jacob Cohen, Rob Litterest, and Juliet Bennett Ryla. Now the Hustle Daily brings you a healthy dose of a reverent, offbeat, and informative takes on business, tech, and news, and it happens daily. So if you want to stay up to date on the latest and greatest and some of these topics are interesting to you, then you're going to love the Hustle Daily topics like Amazon's grocery strategy. The rise of the ugly shoe economy is AI, the secret to love, and America's sleep deficit problem. So if these are topics you want to get into and you love hearing up to date content whenever you wake up in the morning, go listen to the Hustle Daily wherever you listen to your podcast. In this video, I'm going to talk to you about managing your energy while completing multiple tasks or working on multiple businesses. Energy is one of the most important things you can do and please bear with me because this is not just going to be an area very high level video. It's incredibly important to focus on managing your energies, you go through your day and your life. If you do want to be successful in my personal life, I've done everything, every single diet, every single schedule, every single time blocking, productivity, task tool, I've done different sleep schedules. Anything that allows me to operate at my highest level, and this is what energy is all about. It's about constantly operating at your highest level. When you can constantly operate at your highest level, absolutely everything that you do is optimized. Everything that you do, you're completing at 110, 120, 130%, and you can only do that if you manage your energy. Too many people go through life, not understanding true energy to have a couple cups of coffee, but that's not really managing your energy. That's just sort of playing the catch up game and trying to stay awake and trying to stay motivated or alert throughout the day. But if you really understand what attracts and what adds to your energy levels, you will operate at a much higher level and ultimately make much better decisions in your personal professional life. So let's talk about energy and why this even came up. Part of what I want to do on YouTube is I want to start putting together videos where I teach things because I have the privilege of speaking to some of the most incredible people on the podcast that I host, the success story podcast. And on that podcast, of course, you have these long, you know, 45-minute hour long conversations that encompass multiple topics. But there's very key lessons that are pulled out from these incredible guests that I bring on. And sometimes there's a lesson that I think is really impactful or important. And I want to sort of go a little bit deeper on it. So I write a blog about it. I send it out to newsletter and I want to start bringing that to YouTube as well because I speak to some of the most incredible business leaders in the world. Why not double down on the value they bring, especially if I have some commentary or some insight to add on to it. So I spoke with Phillips, that's the CEO of one big media on the podcast. And he spoke about managing multiple businesses and he spoke about how he manages his energy while managing multiple businesses. And let's take it a step back because not everybody's listening here has multiple businesses. And if you do, that's great, but ultimately replace businesses with tasks. And I think that we can all agree that we have those and we have many of them. And sometimes we're not that great at managing all of them because we usually run out of time or energy or bandwidth. So what I want to, I want to help you understand how to manage your energy. But let's first start with focus because if you usually energy is equated to focus. If you're lacking energy, then your focus starts to wane a little bit. And it's harder for you to really pay attention to what you're working on. Or if you've ever noticed when you're writing an email or a document or putting anything together and it's late at night and you're tired, don't have energy. You look at it again in the morning or you look at it again a week later, you notice all these dumb mistakes you never would have made. That's because you don't have the energy to be working on that. And that's a whole other conversation about how much work you should be doing and when you should be taking breaks and whatnot. But focus equates energy and energy allows for focus. I personally subscribe to the idea in life that you can be in a few different states of focus and or being. So you can be in a state of flow, you've heard of flow state before, you can be in a state of panic or you can be somewhere in between. Which is where I like to operate and I'll explain why. So in a state of flow, you are so engaged with what you're doing. You're so hyper focused on what you're working on. It times seems to disappear. In a state of flow, you are absolutely useless to everyone else. This is great if you're trying to get work done on the weekend. This is not so great if you are trying to work in a team in a collaborative environment like most of us are and you have to be constantly communicating. Right. The other obviously, I don't think anyone's going to argue that being in a state of panic is not great. This is when nothing seems to be going right. You're always running after fires. You're always playing catch up. It always seems like nothing's going, you know, the world's caving in on you and you're just trying to survive and you're just trying to grasp for air. And it's a horrible place to be in and obviously that's anxiety inducing and you'll never make smart decisions there. Somewhere in the middle where you're cognizant of the problems and you're cognizant of the other things that are happening in your life. While simultaneously being focused is where you're able to stay calm. You can be cognizant of other things, other people, but you can ultimately be effective at the task at hand. And how you operate in this area is by managing your energy so that you can be as focused as possible, not going into flow state, but as focused as possible while still being with it. While still being part of the other world, being part of your world so that as people, you know, reach out to you and contact you and ask you for advice opinions as what happens in the day today on Slack or whatever on what's app. You can be effective and you can engage with other people in your business. So let's talk about focus. Let's talk about how do we achieve that focus in that state in between flow and panic. There are three primary sources of energy that allow you to maintain that focus in that state. The three primary sources of energy are physical, emotional and mental. Physical energy is the easiest type of energy to understand. So physical energy is the energy you get from exercise or from good nutrition or from good sleep. Emotional is a little bit more complex. It's the energy you get from your feelings. So it could be positive or negative emotions. If something goes right, you seem to have a sudden burst of energy. That's also why when you're working on something you love, it seems that you can work kind of forever. And when something goes wrong, you feel like you're just worn out, spread too thin. And in the last type of energy is mental energy. Mental energy is by far the most complex. It's the energy that you get from your thoughts. And when people usually speak about manifesting or writing down what you're grateful for in the morning and setting your mind right that way, that's mental energy. It's a very complicated topic because usually the things that allow people to have mental energy that actually impact their day to day, they vary from person to person. But ultimately, the thing that isn't talked about enough, but can actually legitimately impact your day. So three sources of energy, physical, emotional and mental. How do you optimize for each? So for physical energy, I mentioned this before, you can get up and move, you can get a standing desk, you can eat well, you can get enough sleep. Emotional energy can be directed by managing your stress, setting boundaries, expressing your feelings, mental energy, controlling negative thoughts, using positive self talk, focusing on what's important. Please do not just completely discount mental energy because it does impact you. And if you don't think it's impacting you, there's probably something that's nagging you that's actually detracting from your energy like your physical energy levels. They also sort of flow into your ability to actually focus. Do not discount mental energy as much as people who are listening to this may think that excessive focus on gratitude journals are a waste of time. I do understand the rationale and the logic. How does it actually impact you? There is a level of impact. So if you are constantly thinking negatively, it does impact your energy and in turn impact your focus. But ultimately, you want to understand and be cognizant and aware of these three channels as much as possible. So your physical, your emotional, and your mental energy, the ability to focus your energy is the most important thing in managing multiple tasks. Once you focus, you work towards your goals. You understand your goals. You understand how your decisions affect and impact your goals for your business or your certain tasks. If you do not have the energy and you do not understand how the things that you do, the actions that you take and the decisions that you make impact your work, you'll probably make poor ones or incorrect ones and cause other problems in your business. So you do have to be able to focus and to be able to focus, it cannot be a forced thing. It's just coming naturally because you optimized your energy. So when you optimize your energy, you are de facto focused on that task or that thing that you're doing because you already have the proper energy in place to allow you to do those things, which means that all the actions, all the decisions will be smarter, more well thought out and more beneficial to your business. Obviously it's easy to lose focus and it's easy to not optimize for energy because unless we're aware of it unless we're eating the right foods unless we're sleeping unless we're understanding our emotions and how they give us or just track energy from us, it's easy to lose energy and in turn lose focus. How does this all relate to business? Well, obviously if you're doing multiple tasks, which you all are in a day, it's important to understand how to optimize your energy, which in turn allows you to focus, which in turn allows you to do your best work. So across those three forms of energy, there is various things that you can always think of that will ultimately allow you to optimize against those three things. Number one would be to focus your energy on what interests you. So as an owner of five different businesses, so Philip is an owner of five different businesses, he's found a way to split his attention between all these businesses quite effectively because he's been successful at all of them. So what does he do? Well, he focuses only on what actually interests him. So this is tapping into his emotional energy because he's tapping into things that interests him, he's getting positive feedback from the actual thing that he is working on, which provides him with energy. So when you follow your interests and your passions, it does contribute to your output and your success and motivates you to stay committed. It gives you the energy to remain focused again and invested in what you're doing. It stimulates your creative process because you care about what you're working on, sparking your interest, again, pushing you forward, allowing you to do the dull parts of the job when you know that there is something that you high level goal that you're working towards is something that you care deeply on and is highly interesting to you. And lastly, when you are highly interested in a particular topic and you are motivated to get it done, sometimes it prompts you to go the extra mile to tap into hidden avenues and resources that you may have not thought of before because you never ultimately felt the pressure or the need to succeed at that thing. And I feel that when you are interested in a particular topic and you do want to succeed at it, your mind starts to come up with solutions that you will have never thought through if you're working on something that doesn't interest you. So ultimately focusing on things that do interest you is one of the key drivers to getting the energy you need to actually focus on the tasks at hand and to excel. The second thing, go all in on a thing that will allow you to become an expert in that particular field and this is an interesting point because it seems to run counter to the fact that Philip Stutz is managing multiple businesses, but let me explain. So what he's done over the course of his career is he's gone all in on a particular topic that has interested him. He's become the expert at that particular topic. He hasn't been mediocre at five or 10 things at once. He's been an expert at one thing at once. He has become the best at that particular thing and then once he's achieved that, then he moves on to the next thing where he doubles down and goes all in. So he is building one key thing at a time. This will allow you over the course of your career to be successful in multiple things, but ultimately you cannot be successful in multiple things simultaneously. One has to take precedent. There is always one thing that takes precedence. Now let's extrapolate this to the tasks that you're taking on in your day to day. If you have 10 tasks, you must prioritize in order of urgency and importance and then you must execute against that task until it's completed to perfection or until there's a blocker that you can no longer move past, but if you are constantly switching back and forth between tasks, you will run out of energy to do any of them effectively. The third thing that I pulled out of the conversation was self-awareness, extreme self-awareness and to understand how your own mind works. So the first two points were focused on the task that you're doing. So do the things that interest you go all in on one thing at a time. The third point was to understand how you work. Because if you do not understand how your mind works, if you do not understand what gives you energy or what attracts energy from you as a person, this is a very personal experience, then you will not be operating at your highest level. You have to understand how you work best, you have to understand the people that you work best with, you have to understand people to compliment you the best, and ultimately you have to maximize your energy and your focus by understanding how your own mind works. And then apply that knowledge of yourself to the businesses that you go into, the tasks that you take on, the things that you do yourself versus what you delegate. But that extreme self-awareness, your strengths and your weaknesses put simply is super important for you to succeed. And the fourth thing that you have to do to really be successful is to focus on yourself, but not in the mindset way, just focus on what you're doing. So don't pay attention to anyone else's lane. Don't pay attention to what your competitors are doing. You can do your research. But ultimately what's going to make you successful, what's going to make your business successful, what's going to make your project successful is you hyper focusing on that particular task and not worrying about if somebody is doing it better than you or not worrying about if somebody is doing it differently than you. If you focus on other people, you will always feel as though someone else is doing it differently or better than you and you will be very tempted to change the way that you're doing or to change course or to prematurely alter something because you see this shiny object over there that someone else is doing that seems to be working. There is a time and a place for pivoting for AB testing for doing things differently in a business, but you have to see things through to fruition before you do that. So do not focus on someone else focus on your own data points, focus on your own success metrics, your own KPIs to understand if what you're doing is working or not and set those metrics. But ultimately do not focus on what someone else is doing because it will tempt you to lose your focus on what you are trying to do and ultimately will detract from your success. So resist the urge to go bigger, better, newer all the time. Resist that because if you do always try to do bigger, better, newer, you will never know what's actually working and what's not based on your own quantifiable data. Remember at the end of the day what you have in front of you with your project, your task or your business is there because of your hard work, your creativity, your determination that has allowed you to get that particular thing to this point. And that's what will lead you to success if you focus on your goal with all of your energy and attention. So ultimately if you want to be successful in whatever it is that you are doing energy is incredibly important. You must focus how do you focus optimize your physical mental and emotional energy the day to day things that you can do which are very simple and straightforward. Do things that interest you focus on one thing and work on one thing at once. Have an extreme amount of self-awareness and ultimately don't stray or look to or concentrate on what someone else is doing. Always pay attention to what you're doing first and foremost. Now this is not a simple black and white cut and paste into your own life type YouTube video and it's not meant to be. It's meant to be a wake up call for you to be cognizant and aware of your energy and your focus because ultimately the more you're aware of your focus the more you will be successful. So use this as a kickoff point to understand all those different things that impact your energy and then your focus. And if you start thinking about it now ultimately you will end up in the right spot. Half of the battle is just being aware of the things that can impact the most important thing in your success which is the energy and the ability to get things done and operate at your best level. I hope you enjoyed. If you liked this, hit the like button. Please subscribe for more. Go check out the podcast. You can check it out on the same YouTube channel and if you have any feedback leave a comment below. Have a great one.