I’ve been doing a lot of stuff lately and sometimes I think, “I just don’t have time to do another thing.”

Then I go watch a movie for 3 hours.

Obviously I have the time, what I don’t have is the mental energy to do anything else. There are tasks that need to be done, but they take mental energy to do them. When you use up your supply of energy you have to do something mindless to get it back.

For instance, I’m way behind on retouching images for models . But I’ve done things, like read two books, and watch movies. I could have used that time to do images, but I didn’t.

I didn’t because retouching takes extreme focus and I just don’t have the energy for that kind of focus.

So don’t beat yourself up for not having enough time and then doing something that obviously was a waste of time. It’s probably because you just don’t have the mental energy to do more.

It’s not time management, it’s energy management.

If my hypothesis is true, then what about time management? There is some point to being effective with your time, but often extreme scheduling breaks down after a short time. Why? Because you don’t have the energy to work 20 hours a day. At least I don’t. So you schedule everything and then when you run out of energy you stop and think you failed time management.

We need to also manage our energy levels. Some of the same principles apply. You need to know what is most important and spend you energy first on those things.

You need to not waste your energy on unproductive things. Anger, fear, jealousy are some of those things. Getting worked up about things out of your control drains your energy.

I believe that exercise can increase your energy reserves. I also think the food you eat has some impact on it as well.

I found this a bit of an epiphany and am still working it into my life, but I thought I’d share it with you right now.