Rather Than Managing Your Time, Consider Managing Your Energy

Time can be measured, while human energy is abstract and intangible. But it can still be managed.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

In recent years, advice on time management seems to be a burgeoning business. The turmoil of the pandemic even underscored the importance of making the most of the minutes and hours of our days.

Ricardo Sunderland has a different take on the issue. His focus is not on minutes and hours, but on energy.

Sunderland is a partner at Egon Zehnder, a global leadership advisory firm with offices in 36 countries. His book is The Energy Advantage: How to Go from Managing Your Time to Mastering Your Energy.

For decades we’ve heard a lot about the importance of managing our time, but relatively little about the importance of managing our energy. Why?

“Time can be measured, while human energy is abstract and intangible,” Sunderland says. “This flies in the face of many management mantras that unequivocally state, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ There is, however, a mindset shift emerging—one that believes everything is energy, that we are energy, and by mastering our energy we gain access to an unlimited source of energy.”

Recently, he says, this mindset shift has started to spill rapidly into the workplace, influencing a change in the definition of success.

“Achievement is no longer enough to be successful,” Sunderland says. “People also want to feel happy at the same time. Before, people were concerned only with thinking (mental energy) and doing (physical energy). But that success formula no longer works. Today, it’s essential to add feelings (emotional energy) and inner self-experience (spiritual energy) into the mix for people to learn how to be able to connect to and manage their energy.”

There are obviously several forms of energy—physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, etc. How are these various forms of energy interdependent?