I’ve spent years working on improving personal and group productivity. When someone asks why I’m so productive I respond by saying “I must be.” I can be easily irritated about wasted time, and inefficient processes.
But it’s not really about time. It’s about energy.
Let’s work from first principles in physics. Energy is conserved. Time is tied to the fabric of space and is not conserved. Time is experienced and is not a constant. Momentum is mass times energy. Friction is about degrading energy of a system. I’m sure you can extrapolate from physics to human relationships and organizations.
We’re biological entities. Just as chemistry cannot be fully explained by physics, biology cannot be fully explained by chemistry. Somehow, mysteriously, energy and biology have different dynamics which are not fully explained by equations. Like time, energy is experienced in flexible ways in biological systems.
Think of your personal experiences – there are some activities, some moments, which energize you, seemingly giving you more energy than you expended. These are always associated with focus and intensity. There is sharpness, not fuzziness. They feel crystalline and solid, even if we cannot fully explain them. They’re memorable.
The desire for this feeling of focused energized whatever-this-is can be addictive. It’s significant that people who overdose on opioids, when brought “back to life with Narcan,” are not grateful, but angry and furious – you destroyed their high. Joy in the wrong things leads to anger and dissolution, not integrity of being and purpose.
By contrast, consider your experience with boredom. No energy for what’s around you, but an odd kind of energy driving you to find something worth focusing your energy. (Doesn’t have to be good for you, you’re still seeking it!)
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The Self-leadership paradigm must be energy management (including focused attention), not time management. You can manage your energy and decide where to put your attention. You cannot manage slippery, subjective time.
No one is paid for their time. Oh, we use the language of hourly wages, and fee for hours. But we pay for value delivered. It’s simpler to pre-decide a rate for hour. If we were truly paid for our time, then we could sit at home doing something else and we’d still be paid. I’m paid an annual salary, partitioned into pay periods. I can calculate my effective hourly rate. There are some hours when I provide amazing value to the Company, and many others I don’t – this is the 80/20 nature of the knowledge work and leadership which I’m responsible to deliver. “The worker is worthy of his wages” (Leviticus 19:13) but the issue is not time, it’s energy and value delivery.
Sometimes as parents we talk about “quality” time and “quantity” time with kids. All the quality comes from energetic focus, not passive co-habitation of the same building. Pastor Kent Wagner used to tell our congregation, “There are only two kinds of marriages; those being worked on, and those which aren’t.” I think this is true for most relationships. It’s about energy: input, flow, experienced output.
I frequently recommend The Power of Full Engagement to leaders. The authors recognized that top athletes develop specific rhythms for recovery after expending energy. There are effective recovery rituals between points in tennis, between sprints, pre- and post- marathons, over seasons of sports. Recovery rituals maintain one’s ability to perform at high levels over years. The Jewish people were instructed that sundown the beginning of the day – family togetherness and rest coming before the workday. The Sabbath was God’s recovery design for the work week. These are crucial concepts for lifelong productivity.
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Time does have a certain kind of power. Creation is affected by time. Our ability to work is affected by time. Time constrains us as we strain against it. “Time heals all things” – cute, partially correct in experience, but energy is required for healing. “Time erodes all things” is true in entropy-reality universe, but there is no erosion or decay without energy transfer.
The idea of eternity challenges our imagination. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV) I suspect that life in perfect fellowship with God and with one another, unstained by sin, would not feel long, because the energy and focus is in proper balance. As Seth Godin noted, long is not the problem, boring is.
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We must pay attention to energy flows for anything and everything we care about.
Our sun releases the energy equivalent of 4 million tons of matter each second, about 4 x10 to the 26th power in watts, of which only a tiny fraction hits planet earth. Ultimately all our energy, aside from nuclear power we engineer (which imitates the sun) and geothermal sources, comes from this fractional energy of our sun. Fossil fuels represent a store of ancient solar energy. Wind and wave power is derived from uneven heating of the planet. All our food comes from photosynthesis – three cheers for Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase! Even at our most primitive state we swim in a world of massive energy transfer and interactions. Prior to engines, we relied on the energy of the wind, the rivers, and the bodies of men and animals. Most people are quite surprised to learn their basal metabolic rate, the number of calories our bodies burn at rest.
Energy consumption is at the back of everything we hold dear. In geopolitics, agriculture, trade, manufacturing, and transportation, you can always begin with energy. It’s the single most common factor across every aspect of civilization.
In all the enthusiasm for ai, cryptocurrencies, robots, and EVs, I rarely see a discussion about the massive electricity requirements. It’s difficult to find good numbers on the amount of energy required to manufacture and transport the components that are used to build giant windmills and solar farms, and batteries of all kinds. We should be sober and include these in net energy calculations.
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Have you ever considered the return on the watts of power flowing through your body? Measured your contributions as return on watts used? It’s depressing. Small numerator, large denominator.
Which brings me to the inexhaustible, unending love and grace of God, the most perfect energy source we experience. Our contributions are teeny, we’re highly inefficient, yet dearly loved. It’s not about you, me, or us. We can’t earn it, and certainly don’t deserve it. The beauty comes because God chose people to be the vehicles and conduits of His truth and grace to the people around us. This is the most important energy transfer of all.
