Latest / Work-Life Balance with Fexingo: Boundaries, Time Management, and Avoiding Career Overload / How a Weekly Energy Audit Reclaimed My Evenings
Transcript
- Lucas: I started tracking my energy levels at work about six weeks ago, and the results were honestly embarrassing — not because I was failing, but because I'd been ignoring something so obvious for so long. Luna: Oh, this sounds like one of those 'I discovered the secret to time management' stories. Lay it on me — what did you find? Lucas: So I'd been feeling wiped out by 4 PM every day, but I assumed it was just the volume of work — long hours, too many meetings, the usual. But when I actually logged my energy on a scale of one to ten every hour, I realized it wasn't about how many hours I worked. It was about what I was doing during those hours. Luna: Can you give me an example of something that surprised you? Lucas: Sure. I had this weekly client call — every Wednesday at 3 PM, thirty minutes, nothing dramatic — but my energy would tank from a six to a three during that call. And then I'd try to do my deep writing after that, which is just dumb. I was setting myself up to fail. Lucas: And listen — if you've gotten anything out of our episodes on career boundaries and reclaiming your time, the reason we can keep doing this ad-free is because some listeners toss a couple of dollars our way. It's not much, but it genuinely keeps the lights on — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've found value in these conversations. Luna: Yeah, and it's really just a small gesture — but it makes a difference. A coffee's worth means we can keep digging into these topics without chasing sponsors. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the energy audit — the real insight was that my high-energy tasks were happening at the wrong time of day. I'm a morning person, but I was spending my mornings on email and Slack, which are low-energy tasks for me. Then by the time my creative peak hit around 10:30, I was already drained from clearing the inbox. Luna: So you flipped it? Did you start doing your deep work first thing? Lucas: I did. I moved my email check to 11 AM, after my two-hour deep focus block. Within three days, I was finishing my most important work before lunch, and my evening energy was way better — I wasn't crashing on the couch at 7 PM. Luna: That sounds almost too simple. But I know from my own experience that the simple stuff is often the stuff we resist because it requires a habit change. How did you actually log the energy? Spreadsheet? App? Lucas: I used a plain text file — literally just a note on my phone with timestamps and a number. The key was forcing myself to do it every hour for two weeks. After that, patterns emerged that I couldn't have guessed otherwise. Luna: What was the biggest pattern you found? Lucas: That my energy drops weren't random — they were tied to specific types of tasks. Meetings with no agenda, for example, consistently drained me. But one-on-ones with my direct reports actually boosted my energy. So I started batching the draining tasks together and scheduling them right before lunch, when I was already winding down a bit. Luna: That's smart. You're not trying to optimize every minute — you're just aligning the work to your natural rhythm. How much time did you say you gained back? Lucas: About six hours a week — not in terms of working less, but in terms of feeling like I had genuine downtime in the evenings. Before, I'd be mentally exhausted but physically restless. Now I actually relax. Luna: I want to try this. But I'm worried I'll discover that my energy is just low all day — what then? Lucas: That's actually a common fear, but in my experience, most people do have peaks and troughs — they're just subtle. The trick is to look for relative differences, not absolute levels. Even a one-point shift in your energy scale can tell you something about what's draining versus charging you. Luna: Okay, so if someone wants to do this energy audit, what's the three-step method you'd recommend? Lucas: First, track your energy every hour for at least five workdays — just a number from one to ten, plus a note on what you were doing. Second, at the end of each day, look for patterns: what tasks consistently correlate with low energy? Third, redesign your schedule so that your highest-energy hours are reserved for your most cognitively demanding work, and your low-energy hours are for routine or admin tasks. Luna: And how do you handle days when you have meetings that fall in your high-energy window? You can't always move them. Lucas: You can't, and you shouldn't try to control everything. But awareness itself helps. If I have a meeting at 10 AM, I know that's when I'm sharpest, so I'll prepare more intentionally — set an agenda, decide what I want to accomplish — rather than letting it become a passive drain. Luna: So it's not about rigid time blocking, but about being strategic with your attention. Lucas: Exactly. And the other thing I discovered is that my energy follows a predictable cycle: high from 8 to 11, a dip after lunch, a second smaller peak around 2 to 3, then a steady decline. Knowing that, I now schedule my shallow work — like expense reports or scheduling — during the post-lunch dip, and I save my creative thinking for the morning. Luna: I love this because it's not about working more hours — it's about working smarter within the hours you have. And it's a very realistic approach for anyone who's feeling overwhelmed. Lucas: Right. And the biggest win for me was reclaiming my evenings. I used to feel guilty that I wasn't productive after dinner. Now I know: that's just not my energy window. And that's fine. Luna: So you're not trying to become a night owl. You're listening to your own biology. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the real boundary here — not a time boundary, but an energy boundary. Protecting your best mental state for the work that matters most. Luna: I'm going to start my own audit tomorrow. I'll let you know what I find. Lucas: Please do — I'd love to compare notes. And if anyone else tries it, we'd love to hear about it. Luna: Alright, that's a wrap for this episode. See you next time.