(How to) Do Good Well by Optimizing our Time, Energy, and Attention
"Because you are alive, everything is possible." (Thich Nhat Hanh) | "Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" (Mary Oliver)
I’m so glad you’re here
Thanks to everyone who read about (how to) do good well with kindness, compassion, and connection last month. As mentioned, things are bananas while I’m teaching; I’m doing my best to keep up. Speaking of which, I’m pleased to share that in early May UF’s 5th annual “Business for Good Lab: Sustainable Business Consulting” wrapped. 48 UF students worked on teams helping 15 companies to complete the B Impact Assessment in hopes of becoming Certified B Corporations (like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, TOMS, Eileen Fisher, S'well, The Body Shop, Kickstarter, to name a few). Together the 15 companies gained a total of 835.15 points on the B Impact Assessment; 10 teams scored 80+ making them eligible for B Corp certification. Much more, including stories from our students & Company Collaborators is available in our Impact Report. If you know of a company interested in participating next year (we typically run in the Spring semester), please give me a shout or complete the interest form linked here: http://go.ufl.edu/businessforgoodlab.
We’re now two weeks into the “Emerging Enterprise Consulting: Collaboration & Capacity-Building for Changemakers” course, created with the Partnership for Reimagining Gainesville, where UF students are working with 12 entrepreneurs & changemakers in hopes of making their ventures as innovative, sustainable, regenerative, resilient, compassionate, and impactful as possible. It’s just a quick 5 week sprint, grades are due the last week of June.
I’m swimming in information related to Strategic Venture Plans, Impact Business Models, Hybrid Venture Models, Sustainable Funding Strategies, Impact Reports, etc. and I had planned to share this month about leveraging the power of Impact Venture Models (this year I’ve totally geeked out on Hybrids, especially “sibling” for-profit/non-profit ventures)– I also considered sharing an update on the development of AACSB’s new competencies of Societal Impact Leaders, however, I find I’m still focused on “what matters most” – as mentioned in the last two posts. Perhaps it’s because last Friday was the 6th anniversary of my Dad’s Memorial Service in 2017 when nearly 100 people gathered with my brother & I, to be present with us, as we celebrated our Dad’s life (when we were just beginning to learn to move forward without his presence). I continue to think a lot about “what matters most,” especially as it relates to the precious resources of our time, energy, and attention.
Optimizing our Time, Energy, and Attention
Today, I’d like to share actionable advice (that I’ve learned from others with far more expertise) around optimizing our time, energy, and attention for productivity *and* joy, focusing on what matters most— in case it’s of help to you (I also very much respect that many folks— especially those with dependents (children, elderly parents, etc.) and those with super demanding work— often have little capacity to choose where their attention goes).
The “Times Left exercise” mentioned in an earlier post, from Dr. Cassie Mogilner Holmes, in an episode of Hidden Brain continues to resonate (starting at min 41:18 if using the 53:00 min long web version; the mobile version is 1 min 30 sec longer, so please adjust accordingly). I find myself wondering how situations might have played out differently if I’d approached them as if they were the *last* time I’d ever get to do that thing, gather with those people, visit that place, speak with that person, etc. And when listening to others share (or even hearing headlines on the news) I can’t help but wonder how things might be different if we all lived our lives in such a way – not taking things for granted– and I imagine I’m not alone in this (as there are countless clichés for this sentiment).
3 Lessons on Optimizing our Time, Energy, and Attention
“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything” (David Allen)
It’s not about time management, it’s about energy & attention management.
I’d been thinking and sharing about how precious our time, energy, and attention are for a years before stumbling on this clear & concise article by Thanh Pham on the TEA (Time, Energy, and Attention) Framework. He explains that time, energy, and attention are the three pillars of productivity. Here is what happens when they fall short:
Someone who has Energy and Attention but no Time is overwhelmed.
Someone who has Time and Attention, but no Energy is exhausted.
Someone who has Time and Energy, but no Attention is distracted.
He offers tips & tools for now to cultivate more time, energy, and attention in our lives by optimizing three components of each:
Time: Systems, Strategies, and People
Energy: Sleep, Rituals, and Motivation
Attention: Focus, Goals, and Mindsets
Though I’ve not yet done a deep dive into his recommendations, it was profoundly helpful for me to understand that it’s not just a lack of time that’s the problem– our time, energy, and attention are all interrelated and integral to our effectiveness.
In 2021 when I began Optimize Coach Training with Heroic (they’re both a Certified B Corporation & Public Benefit Corporation), one of my favorite lessons was on the Genius Work equation. Heroic founder, Brian Johnson, explains why consistency is a key component in this followup.
Genius Work = Time x (Energy x Focus x W.I.N) to the power of Consistency
(W.I.N stands for What’s Important Now)
In Fall 2021 I also learned from both Optimize Coach & Supercharge Your Productivity with Khe Hy of RadReads that:
Humans only have optimally 3-4 productive hours in each day, be sure you’re aware of when those are for you and as often as possible, set aside that time to do your most important work.
And again from Optimize Coach ala Cal Newport, I learned to:
Be productive before you are responsive (aka “be creative before you’re reactive,” getting blocks of focused deep work done before checking & replying to emails).
While it’s not possible to eek another hour out of a 24 hour day, or set back the clock, as much as we might want to, we can learn (and become skilled at practicing) the 7 fundamentals for optimizing our energy & attention: sleep, move, eat, breath, focus, celebrate, and prosper (prosper literally means “move forward with hope”).
Admittedly, until beginning Optimize Coach training in 2021, I thought thought the best approach to time management and working efficiently & productively was:
Focus on what’s most important
Set everything else aside
Work! Work! Work! (doing whatever it takes— working 18, 20+ hours a day, 6-7 days a week, and during crunch times of the semester, pulling all-nighters if needed) 🙈
Learning the Genius Work Equation, as mentioned above, was incredibly impactful for me as I’ve always known I’m a morning person, I’m far more productive from 6am to noon than I am from 6pm to midnight, yet I somehow expect myself to be maximally productive during both windows (when I first began working in academia, I had a boss who advised, “you can sleep when you’re dead,” after I mentioned that I’d pulled an all-nighter during finals as I was struggling to keep up with students’ emails and an upcoming grant application, etc). Now that I understand how critical sleep is for both our productivity *and* our overall health & well-being, in addition to at least 1-2 hours of movement with some time outside each day, I try to make it a priority to get a good night’s sleep (certainly more than just 3-4 hours). I still fall short during finals and other stressful times of the semester, but at least my daily baseline is now much higher than it was before. If you’d like more info, I’ve compiled some of my favorite info & actionable advice from thought leaders in the “Importance of Sleep” section of this note.
Other recommendations for optimizing energy from experts, include:
-Improve your nutrition (avoid or minimize consuming things that cause inflammation — including, and most importantly, sugar— alcohol is the most potent form of sugar).
-Make a list of your energizers & enervators, it’s just as important to reduce (or ideally eliminate) enervators as it is to increase energizers.
-For peak performance, if possible, time your activities around your energy (rather than expecting yourself to be pedal-to-the-metal working full speed on a slide deck or spreadsheet or paper for four hours straight, alternate between activities approximately every 90 minutes. If possible (clearly not everyone can do so, depending on their responsibilities), resist the temptation to check email or social media until after you’ve completed your most important tasks of the day.
"My attention is the most valuable resource I have. I can protect it with an information diet." (Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist, Bit.ly)
Our attention is our most valuable resource.
There is a much longer story here (I fear it’s both way too long and TMI) about how I came to realize I could choose what to pay attention to, I could try to craft my consumption of media & information, selecting only those inputs that contributed to my well-being– I stopped reading fashion magazines when I was 17 as I realized both the ads & articles made me feel badly about myself, I stopped watching TV in the early 1990s and I’ve not owned a TV since 1996 as I realized the same (the ads & articles made me feel inadequate *and* I simply didn’t have the 2.5-5 hours/day that the average American spent watching TV in the 90s), and I choose to be super sparse on social media (actionable advice around why & how to seek digital wellness from the Center for Humane Technology, the folks behind The Social Dilemma, is here. Their podcast is great too).
While I’ve not yet finished reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, his interview on OnBeing is fabulous. One of the key takeaways from his work is that we only get 4000 weeks of time in our lives (if we’re fortunate to live an “average” life-span), much of that is spent earning a living, caring for our dependents, adulting, etc... He encourages us to be conscientious about how we choose to spend our time— when we have free time— taking care to invest it in doing things we love.
I love how Khe from RadReads offers a similar point— in a number of blog posts he encourages us to think about optimizing our time so that the people we love most get our best energy (for more, see: https://radreads.co/10k-work, https://radreads.co/time-audit, https://radreads.co/hourglass-principle, https://radreads.co/die-with-the-music, https://radreads.co/why-bucket-lists-are-bs).
Where are you focusing your time, energy, and attention?
While the over-functioner in me wants to ask about *your* top tips & tactics for optimizing your productivity 🙈... what I’d really love to know is who and what are the people and things which matter most to you? And what can we do (both in our own lives and together in this world we all share) to make it possible to focus more of our precious time, energy, and attention on the people & things that give us a sense of belonging, identity, purpose, and meaning?
In short, who are the people & what are the things you love most *and* what are you doing to ensure they get your best energy & attention? I’d love to hear.
Resources for more info:
More info on the perspectives on time, energy, and attention and the TEA Framework (where I learned of it first), from Ness Labs is here: https://nesslabs.com/time-is-not-a-measure-of-productivity, https://nesslabs.com/illusion-of-productivity, and https://nesslabs.com/tea-framework-of-productivity.
Here is more info on how to optimize our energy & the tips for time (energy) management from Heroic.
More info on how multitasking is a myth, it’s actually task-switching and it erodes our productivity is here:
-from Cal Newport on Deep Work
-from Fast Company on Multitasking
-from Khe of RadReads on retraining our ability to focus on what matters most
Cesare Pavese said, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
I learned from Heroic that we can get (and give) a lot of energy from mere moments; Professor Barbara Fredrickson calls these “micro-moments of positivity resonance,” and Khe from RadReads recently shared about the value of such tiny moments here.
Thank you for reading along. Feel free to reach out if you have questions, comments, or concerns; I’m happy to do my best to be of help. And if this wasn’t your cup of tea, I hope you’ll offer me the grace of sticking around for a few more posts before you decide whether or not to remain subscribed. I’d love to hear what resonated with you (so I can do more of that in future posts), or you can simply tap the heart below with your quick vote of encouragement, as a nudge for me to keep the posts coming. Next time I’ll likely share about Impact Business Models & Hybrid Venture Structures.
With gratitude & excitement,
:)
Kristin
p.s. #1: If you’d like to learn more about what I mean by “creating strategic impact,” give me a shout and I’ll gladly share with you a quick Guide to Planning Your Impact Strategy that I’m cooking up.
p.s. #2: As mentioned, each post ends with a pair of gifs (sometimes they take a few moments to load, thanks for your patience), one that shows me falling, followed by a gif of me flying. Learning to fly on my mat (first by falling countless times) has helped me navigate falling, failing, and challenging situations off of my mat— practicing courage, kindness, gratitude, hope, grace, and joy with myself and others.
In this month’s share, I’m attempting a “chin stand” aka formidable face pose (Ganda Bherundasana in Sanskrit) — which I’d practiced for over a year before discovering it was an actual pose, I just thought it was a fun transition that feels like flying, done between sides during Sun Salutation Bs. In 2014-2015 (after doing my first forearm stand the year prior) practicing chin stand was the gateway to floating & flying for me and brought me tremendous joy (it really does feel like *flying*).
p.s. #3: As mentioned last month, my dear longtime friend and editor extraordinaire, Amy has edited *almost* everything of importance I’ve ever written. She recently returned from a month-long adventure abroad and is now planning a move, so I didn’t bug her about editing this post. I take full responsibility for the mess here (apologies to Amy who is likely cringing when seeing the run-on sentences above and my many other go-to errors 🙈). Next month’s post will be much tidier thanks to Amy’s amazingness.
