Mental energy as a resource

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about mental energy. There are days when I feel extremely productive and days when I feel demotivated for no obvious reason. There could be a variety of reasons for why I feel a certain way on any given day. To debug this further, I want to share my observations of how my own mental energy ebbs and flows. I hope you find this useful 🙂

What is mental energy?

This isn’t a scientific definition but here’s what I mean when I refer to mental energy:

Mental energy is the energy available to expend on mental activities such as handling emotions, decision making, creative thinking etc. If physical energy is the energy available to us to perform physical tasks, mental energy is the equivalent for mental tasks. So any action we indulge in when we are in a conscious state involves mental energy.

If you subscribe to the above definition and the analogy with physical energy, there are some interesting insights that we can leverage:

• We lose physical energy when indulging in certain activities and we gain physical energy by consuming more calories (for the most part). Similarly, mental energy can also be depleted and replenished by different activities.
• Mental energy is not fixed. Just like eating an energy bar before a run, we can increase our mental energy reserves to be able to handle challenging days. The goal is to always have more energy in reserves than what you expect to expend at any given time.

Now that we’ve established mental energy as something that can change, let’s look at what activities affect them. I am only listing the ones that I have experienced personally.

Things that boost mental energy

These are the most high-leverage activities we should be prioritizing. I personally believe that we all have a maximum level of mental energy that we rarely get to. So we should feel comfortable indulging in energy-boosting activities as much as we possibly can without worrying about diminishing returns. The biggest constraints to doing more of these activities is our limited time and physical energy.

Sleep

Getting good sleep is the single most important thing you can do to boost your mental energy. I’ve struggled to get good sleep most of my adult life. So I know the value of a good night’s sleep when I do get it on those rare days. When that happens, I feel powerful and ready to take on whatever challenges come my way the next day. On those days, I have a lot more patience, can solve seemingly hard problems and be extremely productive. Conversely, lack of sleep makes me feel terrible and I start the day with very little mental energy. Given how important sleep is for boosting mental energy, we should do absolutely everything in our power to optimize for it 🙂 (Meta: I have been struggling to write this post for a week but the words are now flowing after a good afternoon nap!)

Physical activity

The mind and body are so tightly coupled. I feel so much better on days I run for a bit or go out for a walk in the sun. It is no coincidence that winters (when we are stuck indoors) are associated with us feeling a bit down. So being aware of this relationship and scheduling regular physical activity can help our mind feel refreshed.

Fun

Fun is a catch-all for all activities that bring joy. For me, that’s watching sports, reading books, watching YouTube videos, writing and so many other things. The only criteria for an activity to be considered fun is that it should be something you do for yourself without any obligation. The anticipation of the fun activity can also boost our mental energy!

Often, I schedule fun. I know “scheduling fun” sounds a bit odd but given the benefits there’s nothing wrong with it! (When we can schedule dentist appointments, why should fun be left behind?) For example, I queue up fun things I want to read or watch before going to bed (the more ridiculous the better). So do fun things even when you don’t fully feel like it since it’s a medicine for feeling better 🙂

Social interactions

Prioritizing people and social interactions is the biggest most important shift I have made in my life. This has completely changed how I feel and what I value in life going forward. By scheduling regular chats and meetings with folks I enjoy spending time with, I am constantly boosting my mental energy. Every single person that I regularly interact with brings some value to me. This can be their perspectives, struggles, interests, learnings or their humor 🙂 I find myself looking forward to them since there is a mix of known and unknown – I know some things they will talk about but they will also expose me to some new things!

These interactions have such a positive effect on me that I either forget my worries temporarily (or even permanently if their challenges put mine in perspective!). This positive effect often lingers for hours or days after the interaction which makes me feel really good. Some have great recall value which means I get to re-live some of these interactions at a later time! My big takeaways have been:

• I need to continue prioritizing this over things in my life and be very intentional about it (more on this in a later section)
• Be the one to reach out to people since I have so much to gain! (don’t let ego get in the way)
• Find more ways to strengthen connection (share more things about yourself, learn more about them, do things together)

Things that drain mental energy

Needless to say, we should be fewer things that drain our mental energy. So, let’s start by identifying them.

Misaligned actions and values

There have been situations (mostly work) where there is a conflict between what I want to do and what I need to do. This on it’s own isn’t a big deal but if the gap becomes significant, then there’s a problem. Looking back, a lot of this can be attributed to a lack of alignment between my values and actions. Sometimes we put ourselves in situations where we do need to act in certain ways that don’t align with our values. But experience has taught me that doing this consistently takes a toll on mental energy. Now that I am a lot more aware, I am doing my best to avoid getting into such situations in the first place. For example, I have chosen not to lead certain projects (and I am thankful for the support of my colleagues) and I am much better for it!

Negativity

There is a lot of negativity around us and it’s up to us to decide how much of that is necessary for us. A lot of times we are not even conscious of the negativity that gets into our lives. Here are some things that have helped me in this area:

• Reducing negative interactions with people. This can be social situations, debates on contentious issues and sometimes tricky situations at work. I have found myself in situations where I like the people but the interactions turn negative. When this happens, I try to change the topic and steer the conversation to more positive territory. If that doesn’t work, walking away is always an option.
• Not reading or engaging with negative news. The whole media industry monetizes our obsession with negativity. So, as much as possible, I avoid spending too much watching or reading about negative events in the news. I do recognize that awareness is important (knowing that a global pandemic is happening is probably worth knowing!) but headlines are good enough for that purpose.
• Avoiding negative thoughts to fester is something that has helped me a lot. I am often alone with my thoughts and it inevitably leads to a negative spiral which results in me feeling demotivated. To counter this, I try to schedule more things in my day (even weekends) that I know will bring me joy, help me feel productive and give my mind less time to be idle.

Things that help conserve mental energy

These are activities which don’t necessarily boost or drain our mental energy. But they add value by reducing some of the burden on our brains and thereby help us conserve energy. So even if we don’t have things that boost our energy on a given day, we can still get through it by being smart about how we use the limited energy we do have. This is such obvious advice but still fairly underutilized.

Tools and Systems

I know there is a lot of obsession with productivity hacks and tools. I have personally found that by starting from scratch without any tools and experiencing the pain points, I am more likely to appreciate the tools and systems that add value. It is worth mentioning that the choice of tool really doesn’t matter but it is the mindset of recognizing that you need a tool or system that is more valuable. Here are some that I have started using lately:

• I am a big fan of Todoist. I use it not just for important work tasks but also simple every day tasks like picking up a package, ordering something from Amazon etc. At some point, I was using Quip and even Notes on iPhone but have settled on Todoist for now.
• I maintain a Google doc with a list of ideas for writing new posts. This is definitely inspired by advice from others but I started doing this only after trying some other basic approaches that didn’t work (maintaining drafts in WordPress, emailing myself some ideas etc). So now I have embraced the tool with a lot of conviction!
• I schedule calls with family and friends on my calendar so I never forget about it. Same for birthdays, anniversaries etc. I know how it used to make me feel when I forgot an important event or forgot to call someone. So why take the chance!

Batching

This is an idea that engineers will be familiar with. Most systems are really bad at context switching, especially our brains. One way we can be more efficient is by batching similar tasks together. Here are some concrete ideas which have personally helped me spend less energy overall:

• Scheduling all my meetings on 1 or 2 days a week. This gives me more time for deep work on other days. On a related note, I highly recommend Cal Newport’s book Deep Work which captures this and some other ideas.
• I check my email/Slack at specific times and respond to them all at the same time (still not perfect at this but improving). A non-obvious benefit of this approach is that I am more incentivized to respond quickly to messages instead of thinking about it too much and keeping it as a TODO.
• I am very aggressive about email filters for common categories of email. For example, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and categorize them separately with a new label so it doesn’t clutter my inbox. I read these emails in a single go over a few hours when I have some leisure time (usually over the weekend).

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Mental energy is an extremely important and often underrated part of our lives. I am constantly trying to be more self-aware, listening to my inner self and iterating on what works for me. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. I wish you great mental health 🙂