Energy level management is important when it comes to improving key work habits or pointing out productivity corners where you can improve. “Energy” defines the desire to do something, your drive, vitality, and the degree of intensity you can put into a task or activity. Something essential that is closely related to the other “resources” you need daily: Time and Attention.
Taking care of and knowing how to manage that Energy is not a minor detail when you want to work intelligently. And within that management/interest is the know what things take away that Energy from you or they take it away silently: the Energy thieves. (So much has been said and is still being said about the “thieves” of Tiempo and so little about these others.)
The Three Great Families of Information
One of these Energy thieves is the disorganization of Information. Specifically, it is broken up into numerous places. What makes the organization, consultation, search an expensive task? It takes time, of course, but it also wears you out.
By “information,” I mean the three large families of Information that we handle today:
- Tasks: work projects, pending lists, upcoming actions, reminders, and their corresponding subtasks, dates, notes, etc.
- Notes/Ideas: Around your work, you generate and manage many ideas, suggestions, clues, notes of improvements, web page references, etc. And, of course, lots of meeting notes.
- Files: presentations, text documents, PDFs, spreadsheets… the classic basis of daily work.
Scattered Information = Constant Wear
Many people have all this distributed (really scattered) in different places: email (in a thousand folders), messaging apps, notes on their mobile phone, WhatsApp conversations, notes on paper, local hard drives, and hard drives in the cloud, etc.
Finding something in a system so dispersed and lacking structure translates into a constant and silent loss of Energy that, as if not attracting attention, does not seem to need immediate improvement. But little by little, it scratches a key ingredient of your daily productivity.
What system do you currently have for your Information? Have you thought about it, designed and optimized it according to what you need? Is it unified, is it convenient-fast? Does it save you Energy and Time? Or, on the other hand, does your consultation generate micro losses that accumulate?
Most people answer these questions with another question: “And what application do you recommend?” And hit the apps! Yes, of course, you have to use them, but adding another one to the salad you already have today will only worsen the problem.
Adapt and Tune your System to what you need.
Redesign your system (or tweak the current one you have) following these two main pillars:
- Simplify and Unify– Dramatically reduce the places where you have all your Information. Consolidates and centralizes large families of Information in one place. Or in the smallest number possible. So, for example, I have three apps or places where my (1) tasks, (2) notes, and (3) files are.
- About and Facilitate: Consulting all this Information must be comfortable, agile, and possible at any time and/or place. So saving, finding, or looking at something is a fast process that barely takes you.
When a person wants to improve the way they do things, there are many details and habits that they can act on. This one I just told you about is often overlooked or underestimated when it is an operational aspect of every day that impacts your performance, even if it does not attract attention.
Of course, there are more Energy Thieves to consider, but information dispersion has skyrocketed recently. Do not allow details like this to silently take away your Energy (or Time), which you increasingly need for your projects and priorities.