Optimizing energy levels

Whether you are a full-time investor, entrepreneur or employee, there are bound to be times when you suffer from some off-days which inevitably affects your productivity. This is perfectly normal as we are human beings and not robots that are built with high level of performance reliability. However, successful people tend to have a knack of optimizing their energy levels for better performance.

In today’s context, being hardworking is not enough to be considered a high performer in the workplace. You need to work smart and not just work hard. To be successful, it is important to harness your energy levels, which can vary across different age groups, environments and personalities. In my opinion, it is possible to manage and optimize our energy levels to bring out the best for work performance. To achieve this, one needs to adopt good habits and internalize them into daily life routine.

For example a professional top currency trader based in Singapore would devise a strategy of monitoring closely the international currency movements he is vested in. To do so, he would have to be disciplined in his daily activities because he couldn’t afford to let slip any unexpected major market fluctuations which may destroy his wealth. He would have to be focused and manage his energy levels well in order to make money from currency trading.

Physical energy level

If you always suffer from Monday blues or encounter problems waking up on time for work on a daily basis, you may struggle to maintain an acceptable physical energy level during office hours. Hence, you need to practice good sleeping habit and make it a point to avoid late night activities. This may sound relatively straightforward but you may be surprised many people don’t seem to get it, especially for those who just join the workforce. Please don’t make the following mistake that I committed in my first job.

I used to work in an US MNC aerospace company located in a far-flung western side of Singapore. The company was unique because its business hours started from 7am and ended at 4pm. The intent was to align its Singapore’s operating hours with its American Headquarter. Being a fresh graduate, I just grabbed the opportunity when the company offered me a position that came with a decent salary.

On hindsight, I should have carefully considered the working hours and the location of the factory. What happened subsequently was that I struggled big time trying to adjust to the working hours and my job suffered because I often fell asleep during meetings. The sight of an adult dozing off in a meeting may sound comical but trust me, it was highly unprofessional. The lack of sleep also caused me to become easily irritable and I found myself flaring up in office over the slightest issue. It was a disastrous experience and I became a big embarrassment in the office.

Needless to say, I lasted barely a year in my first job. In retrospect, I failed to cultivate a good sleeping habit back then to sustain the physical energy level required in my job. When I was an undergraduate, I would arrange my schedules such that I could get to nap in the afternoons. After entering the workforce, I was unable to kick this habit and apparently this affected my performance in my first job. I didn’t play the game well and lost the plot. With this confession, I hope you can do better than me.

Mental energy level

We all live in an increasingly busy world and there are so many issues constantly competing for our mental attention. By getting you to read my blog, I am also fighting for a few minutes of your precious time. Indeed, we may tend to overestimate our abilities in certain aspects but in my point of view, multi-tasking is a myth. Nobody can really do everything well at the same time. Managing our mental energy level at workplace is about assigning the right focus on the right thing at the right time. Take for example, I usually blog only on weekend evenings after my kids go to bed because this is when I will be free from work stress and family commitments. As such, my creativity juice tends to flow freely and this enables me to focus on writing quality content for my readers.

Many of us also have a tendency to work ourselves to the ground by volunteering carelessly. I know you don’t want to be perceived as being unhelpful or picky in taking on job assignments. But it is important to learn how to say no sometimes because you may subject yourself to abuse. By volunteering carefully, you can get to focus on the tasks that really matters and are able to add real tangible value to your career. You don’t want to spend too much of your times helping your colleagues on projects that yield little mileage or worse, negligible credits. Eventually you could end up being a mental nutcase or getting yourself killed from being overworked.

Optimizing energy levels also include strengthening our mental resilience to handle stress. One possible means of achieving this is to feel grateful. In today’s environment where retrenchments are so prevalent, being gainfully employed is a form of blessing. When you are bogged down by work, think positive and tell yourself that being busy with work is better than having too much free time with no income. So start feeling grateful and energize yourself to take on the challenges in your workplace. Remember tough times don’t last, tough people do.

Emotional energy level

Managing my emotional energy level remains the biggest challenge even in my current job. Some people may argue that there are correct and incorrect emotions to display at work but I beg to differ. Unless you are a robot, there are bound to be circumstances when you lost your cool or got angry when dealing with difficult customers or colleagues. In such cases, anger would be viewed as a form of negative emotion by many.

But instead of viewing it as a right or wrong emotion, I have learned to view anger as either an appropriate or inappropriate emotion to display at work. Sometimes circumstances may lead you to feel angry and it may be appropriate to show anger to get things done in an efficient or effective manner. On the other hand, there are some battles that are not worth fighting for and it may be inappropriate for you to waste your emotion energy on such causes.

A successful wealth builder with high degree of self-awareness is able to self-regulate his emotion energy level well. I have not reached that level yet but as each day passes, I am learning how to improve my Emotional Quotient (EQ). Every now and then, I learn something new about myself. Every mistake I made in the course of my obstacles helped me to grow and become a better version of myself. As I look back at my journey, I strive to note down my adventures in this blog with the aim of becoming the best version of myself one day. I hope you can join me in my journey and become a subscriber of my blog. Enjoy the ride.

Magically yours,

SG Wealth Builder