Managing Our Time vs. Managing Our Energy
A few years ago, I attended a leadership development workshop where the facilitator asked us to map out how we spent our time each week. It was a familiar exercise, colour-coded calendars, task lists, meetings, deadlines.
But then she asked a different question:
“How does your energy move through your week?”
The room fell silent.
Everyone could account for their hours, but few of us could describe how our energy fluctuated, where it drained, or how it renewed. It struck me then, and it still does now, that leaders are trained to manage time, but rarely taught to manage energy.
The Limits of Time Management
Time management is a concept born of industrial efficiency, the idea that productivity is a function of organising hours more effectively. In leadership, it’s become a badge of competence: the full diary, the early start, the constant accessibility.
But as I’ve come to see in both research and practice, we can manage our calendars perfectly and still feel depleted.
In sports science, this would be unthinkable. Athletes don’t just track time; they track load, physical, mental, and emotional. Coaches structure training cycles around stress and recovery, ensuring that energy systems adapt rather than collapse.
In contrast, many leaders operate as if their energy is infinite, compressing recovery into weekends or holidays, and wondering why motivation and creativity erode long before the year ends.
Time is finite; energy is renewable. The challenge is learning how to restore it.
The Energy Perspective
The energy-management model was popularised in organisational psychology by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (2003), who argued that “performance, health, and happiness are grounded in the skilful management of energy.”
Their work, rooted in sport science, identifies four primary energy domains:
Physical energy - stamina, rest, nutrition, movement
Emotional energy - mood, connection, sense of meaning
Mental energy - focus, clarity, and cognitive flexibility
Spiritual energy - alignment with purpose and values
What I find compelling is how each domain influences leadership presence. When we neglect physical recovery, we lose clarity. When emotional energy runs low, empathy suffers. When spiritual energy wanes, we lose connection to why the work matters.
In high-performance environments, hospitals, boardrooms, changing rooms, leaders often experience all four domains under strain simultaneously. And that’s when burnout begins to take root.
Lessons from Sport: Periodisation and Recovery
Sports science offers a powerful framework for leaders: periodisation, the structured alternation of work and recovery to optimise performance.
Athletes don’t train maximally every day; they cycle intensity. They rest deliberately. They understand that recovery is part of progress.
Imagine if leadership worked the same way.
What if we built our schedules not just around tasks but around energy cycles, high-focus periods followed by renewal breaks?
Research on ultradian rhythms (Kleitman, 1963) suggests that humans naturally operate in 90-minute cycles of peak alertness followed by dips in energy. Leaders who align with these rhythms working deeply for a defined block, then pausing, report higher productivity and lower fatigue.
The principle is simple: we don’t need more hours; we need better rhythms.
Medicine’s Lesson: Micro-Rest and the Science of Renewal
In healthcare, where long shifts and emotional intensity are common, researchers have begun exploring micro-rest, short, intentional pauses to recalibrate body and mind.
Even two minutes of deep breathing, stepping outside for sunlight, or sharing a brief reflective conversation has been shown to reduce stress hormones and restore attentional capacity.
The same principle applies in leadership. I’ve observed executives who take “micro-pauses” before difficult meetings, closing their eyes, breathing, and asking, What energy do I want to bring into this room?
That moment of awareness doesn’t just restore composure; it changes culture. Teams notice when leaders regulate themselves, it signals that self-care is part of professional excellence, not its opposite.
Energy Intelligence as a Leadership Competency
Energy management isn’t just a personal wellbeing tactic, it’s an emerging dimension of leadership intelligence.
In my own research, I’ve started to use the term energy literacy, the ability to read, interpret, and regulate one’s own energy patterns and those of others.
Energy-literate leaders can sense when a team is in fatigue or overload and know when to push and when to pause. They model renewal as part of performance. They understand that emotional climate is as critical as operational planning.
In coaching, we’d call this “reading the play.” In medicine, it’s “situational awareness.” In leadership, it’s simply good stewardship of people, purpose, and potential.
What I’m Learning
The more I explore this, the clearer it becomes that energy is the foundation of all self-care practices.
Time is a container, energy is what fills it.
Without energy, no strategy or intention can sustain itself.
So I’ve started asking new questions in my own life and research:
What renews me and what depletes me?
When am I at my best and how do I design for more of those moments?
How can I embed recovery, not as a reward, but as part of my leadership rhythm?
These are deceptively simple questions, but answering them requires honesty and sometimes, the courage to slow down.
Closing Thought
We often measure leadership by productivity, the visible output. But perhaps the truer measure is sustainability, how long we can lead with clarity, compassion, and creativity.
Managing time organises our days.
Managing energy sustains our lives.
The leaders who last in sport, business, and medicine alike, are those who learn that distinction early, and live it daily.
Next in the series: “Relationships as Recovery - The Social Dimension of Self-Care.” We’ll explore how human connection serves as both a source of resilience and a form of collective self-care in high-performance environments.