Energy Management Beats Time Management

Amy Evans: If you're tired all the time and you think that the answer is more discipline, more hustle, another 5 a.m. cold plunge, stop right now. That is not the problem, and it's definitely not the fix.

Welcome back to Women in Sales Leadership. I'm Amy Evans. I'm a sales leadership coach and I'm also a revenue coach, how to hit your number coach for CEOs and founders. And this show is for men and women in sales leadership, who are founders, who are CEOs, who want to elevate their careers and their lives without burning them themselves into the ground to do it.

Thank you for being here. I produced this show myself and it means everything that you are spending this time with me. Thank you. And if this episode lands for you today, send it to somebody that you care about, who you know is tired, who is burnt out, who is at the risk of burning out and can't find a way out of it.

This Is a gift for listening for you also. If you are someone who is interested in growing your business, in growing your career, and you are curious about working with me, come find me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com forward slash in forward slash alin Evans. That's two N's, alin Evans.

com. Here is what you're gonna walk with away with today. Number one, the actual habits that I wish I'd had. A decade ago, but I've been doing these things for the past two years and they have kept my energy so high.

These are the same techniques and tools that I teach CEOs and founders and revenue leaders on how to get themselves through the day to accomplish what they need to accomplish and not be left completely spent at the end of the day. There is a way to do it, I promise. And I'm gonna teach you that. The second one I'm gonna teach you about is all that extreme crazy stuff, the crazy stuff online, the ice baths, the 4 a.

m. wake up workouts. Most of that stuff is noise. It is noise.

And I'm gonna give you what actually works. And the third thing I'm gonna do is give you the how to actually break it down and get it done, the exact wind down and the midday strategy that will put you back in a position of having energy. And it will let you work hard all day long and still have energy for yourself, for your family, for whatever it is you like to do when you're not busy doing your work thing. So I'm saving the thing that surprised me most for the very end.

It's a 20-minute thing that I do in the middle of every single afternoon that most high performers. would never give themselves permission to do, but would make all the difference in the world for you. Stay with me. So this is what we are talking about.

You have been taught how to manage your time. You've been taught how to block your time. You've been taught how to maybe prep for meetings. Maybe you're using AI to help you.

All of that is beautiful. Don't stop that. But what you haven't been taught to do is how to get to the end of all those time blocked times that you've got chunked in all day long and still feel good. still have energy, not be cranky and snapping at your kids, not be cranky and snapping at your person that you're partnered with, that you're married to, maybe.

Like being someone who's joyful and has energy and is calm and aligned. ⁓ my gosh, could it possibly happen? Yes, I know it can. I tell you, I'm here from the future and I can tell you that you will get this done if you choose to adopt these things today.

This is exactly What I coach, I coach exactly how to do this. And it doesn't involve 4 a.m. wake up times.

It doesn't involve ice fast. And if that's your jam, great, go for it. I'm not gonna stop you. I'm just gonna give you the stuff that's low tech, that actually works and is so effective that you can start today to do this.

If you want to take something on, you can start today. And this is the episode that I man, I wish I had this a decade ago. So this is where always begins. Anytime you're gonna go on an experimental adventure like this, ⁓ I've been managing my time wrong.

And the way I learned that was through a whole bunch of learning that I do all the time. I learn constantly about leadership, about effectiveness, about energy. And so what I've learned was I hadn't been doing it in a way that was helping me. And it wasn't because I didn't have the b the willpower to do it.

It was because I didn't know the tools to do it. And I also didn't understand the kind of boundaries that I had to set for myself in order to be effective at managing my time, managing my energy, and doing all of that. I'm reading, I'm listening, I'm learning about the brain and all of the neuropsychology and all of the things that we can do to reprogram and rewire ourselves because that's what it takes for long-term change, long-term habits to just become boom. It just is who I am.

This is what I do now. And so you choose. It's a choice to say, okay, I'm going to start to live my life this way. And it becomes part of your habits.

It becomes part of your identity. And then before you know it, it's just boom. This is what I do. And the first thing is something everybody talks about.

They all love to talk about it. You have to have great sleep. Too much research out there. I'm not going to give you all the research.

The data is so clear. Come on, we know the difference between when we have a great night's rest and we don't have a great night's rest. But the distinction is being able to do it consistently and how to actually do that. Okay.

It's so easy to say, ⁓ I'm just gonna have a set bedtime and that's enough. No, that's not enough. And you can decide if you want to do it or not. I've learned that.

What works best for me is I'm a seven hour a night girl. Seven is my sweet spot. If I get a little bit more, it's actually too much. ⁓ if I get less, I definitely notice it.

I'm functional, but it don't feel great. So seven is my lucky number on the hours of sleep. And you maybe know for yourself what it would be. I would always suggest, like, go for a little more than less.

Go for the go for the eight if you think you're not sure. And What what really gets into this, like, okay, great, how am I gonna get more sleep, Amy? How do you do that? It goes just like anything that we learn how to do.

We go back to the beginning. It's like this backward planning. For me, I like to be in bed by 10, like asleep at 10. I'm talking lights out, I'm snoozing, yeah, maybe snoring, I don't know.

And so in order for me to get to 10 o'clock for like, I am asleep. I've learned that it takes me an hour to wind down. I have to begin my go-to-bed routine at 9 PM. So what does that look like?

That looks like I am TV off. No more computer. In fact, the computer is a whole tupper conversation. I can talk about that one another time.

⁓ computer, I mean TV off, computer off. I've stopped eating by eight o'clock PM. I don't eat. Past 8 p.

m. Why? It'll mess with your sleep if you do. You'd be uncomfortable.

So I don't do it. ⁓ so nine o'clock, TV goes off. If I'm looking at TV or I'm looking at a screen, that goes off. ⁓ I just like to be screen free for the hour before I'm in bed.

And so I sh I shut everything down. I start to go into wind down mode. And I do all the hygiene stuff, right? The wash the face, the brush the teeth and all those things and flossing and whatnots.

And I'm starting to turn the lights down low. I have dimmers. I'm a big dimmer person. And I'm in there just kind of getting my body ready to go.

Like we are getting ready to go to bed. And then ideally, somewhere that takes me about 10, 15 minutes or so. and then I'm starting to lay down by nine twenty, nine thirty at the latest. And often I'll actually start the window at 8 30.

So just to be honest about that, which means that my eating of a meal happens about 6 30. How do you do all this? Well, you got to figure out how to manage it. Y'all are smart, but I'm sharing you what works for me.

So that's this window practice. And what I've learned is that my brain just starts recognizing it's time to go to bed. My body starts recognizing it's time to go to bed. I get the temperature right, get it just cool enough, I get the lights down low, and I happen to be someone who likes to sleep to some green noise.

And so I turn that green noise on in my room. And sometimes I will read just a little bit of a book, but more often than not, I'm listening to some kind of bedtime wind down sleep meditation. My favorite, there's so many out there, but my favorite app is called Insight Timer. I've been using it for years.

My 75-year-old mother turned me on to it five years ago. So when she was 70, my mom taught me about meditation, which was so cool. And that's what works. No, no drinking water after 8 p.

m., no food after 8 p.m. ⁓ and I have my alarm set for I wake up at 5 30.

My wake up is a whole nother episode of what I do when I wake up every morning. But that's the go to bed part. And, you know, the earlier I've realized and noticed like the earlier I start winding down, the better my sleep is every single time. What I've also noticed is if I am wound up or worried about something, I will often journal.

I have a little leather journal, you know. You could do any notebook, whatever works for you. Don't use the phone. I'll talk about the phone in a minute.

But I like to h physically write out, like, here's what's bothering me or what I'm nervous about or need what I need to remember to do. I keep that by my bed in case by chance I happen to wake up because I would remember something while I'm trying to fall asleep. Phone goes off for me ⁓ nine o'clock. And I have set this up on my phone.

I can only access certain apps after 9 p.m. And in order for me to break my commitment with myself, I have to, you know, click an extra button on the phone. And oftentimes that's just enough of a reset for me to like my little internal boundaries ⁓ monitor, if you will, of like, okay.

If I'm gonna go try to look something up right now or just do something real quick, I have to click through ignoring the fact that I've turned on screen time for myself on my phone. And that requires me to have an active breaking of a commitment with myself. It's just an extra little step. Am I perfect all the time?

Nope, I'm not. No single human being is. However, it works really well for me. The only apps I can use are my meditation app.

Rest of my stuff goes straight into bedtime zone. That's the wind down. I go to bed, I go to sleep, it slides out. I listen to a meditation.

It's twenty minutes maybe on that sleep meditation. If you want to try the sleep routine, that is the number one thing I would advocate that you try to do out of listening to today. Okay. Next, if you're up for something else or you feel like you have your sleep under control.

I'm going to give you something that is just like, I can't believe that she does this. And you're going to probably hear me listen to me and say, How the hell would I do this? And I'm going to tell you how. Okay.

So we don't just get our energy and our brain refreshed at night. How many of you notice that around 2 30 or 3 o'clock, you start to feel a crash? Right? This again, proven with science that our bodies really start to dip in energy in the middle of that afternoon.

Could be, you know, what time you're eating lunch, could be just the fact that, you know, you've you've put in so much brain energy by this point in the day that your body needs a little bit of a reset. So what I have instituted over the past two years is a reset. And this is what the reset is about. 2 30.

I have it scheduled for me at two o'clock every day. That's my time. Two o'clock, nobody can book me. I my assistant has it held.

I don't let any clients book it. I don't let anybody book it. If I if I switch it, it's because I move it. I don't skip it.

And I've experimented with skipping it. It's not good. You for 20 minutes, 20 whole minutes, you do one of two things. This is what I do.

⁓ you have a choice to do it. What I do is I like to lay down. Now I work I work out of a home office, so this is easier for me to do. But I like to go lay down on my on my couch and I set a timer on my phone for 20 minutes and I put a little comfy blanket over me and I just rest my eyes for 20 minutes.

Now I don't fall asleep. They don't fall asleep all the way. And I typically lay there, but I can get into like a light rest. And inevitably there's mind racing.

There's all these thoughts that are happening. But about, I don't know, t five, 10 minutes into it, my body starts to like calm down. And I fall into like the lightest of lightest of like a nap. I'm still aware of what's in the room.

I can hear what's going on. You could call it a cat nap, whatever. That's what that is. And in that 20 minutes, it's like plugging your phone back in when the battery starts to get low.

I plug myself back in and I get up and I'm like, I can go until at least six o'clock and have great energy and great productivity to finish out the rest of my day strong. And what I used to do before I did that was I'd get to that point in the day, I go searching for some kind of a snack, generally something that wasn't all that healthy, MMs. gummy bears, whatever was around the office, or the cup of coffee. Okay, look, like if you're a coffee person, I love coffee too.

You cannot be having caffeine that late in the day. Go look up the reasons on the internet or your AI agent, whoever your assistant is on AI, and they're gonna tell you why caffeine after a certain point of the day is a bad idea. twenty minutes of this instead, we'll do it. Amy, how the hell am I gonna have time to do that?

You are wasting twenty minutes a day. At least I know this. And if you're saying I'm in back to back calls the whole time, then your ability to manage your own schedule, this is a challenge for you to say, you know what? I'm gonna bake this in.

Let's be honest, eating a meal, your midday meal at lunch, probably takes twenty minutes max. A lot of you I know are not taking a full meal break, twenty minutes. So to take another twenty minutes in the afternoon, that means you're taking forty minutes total. In the middle of the day to refuel your body with food and to recharge your brain with rest.

And then you can get back after it again. Give this a try. This is the one I resisted the most when it was suggested that I try this. And when I do it, I'm amazing for the rest of the day.

The other payoff that happens if you choose to do this 20-minute reset. is I when it's time for me to transition from being work mode to home mode, I'm better able to let it go. I don't walk into dinner with my kids or school activities or pickups or whatever it is that has to happen. I don't walk in and suddenly I'm cranky, I'm tired, I'm stressed out.

My kids are getting A better version of me. Super powerful. These two energy moves alone will make a gigantic difference in your life. They certainly have for me.

So these are the things that you can absolutely do. And I would give you the suggestion that there's a lot here in these two, these two winds alone. And I would suggest that you could just try one, pick one to try for a week. When are you gonna start shutting down?

When you're gonna let go of all the screens. And I'll tell you what I do for like that last before I actually start shutting everything down about 8:30. When I do what I do for that 30 minutes, you know, I I walk around, I I pick up, I pick up the living room, I You know, I go s check in on my kids who might have to be a little older. I check in on them and make sure they're okay.

I recognize I don't have to do bedtime, but I make sure they're good and then I can start going to bed. And that is that is what the routine is. Give this a try. And if this helps you today and you know someone who is feeling exhausted, who is feeling burned out, who is so freaking tired all the time.

Let them learn this information and see if they want to give it a go. And I invite you to certainly give it a go. And if you are looking to grow your business, you're either a founder or CEO or you're a revenue leader and you want to you need help growing your business, come grab time with me. If you're someone who's looking to grow your career, I still have time available for you.

I haven't shut down that part of what I do. I still work with leaders individually when I'm Come find me on LinkedIn at ALyn Evans. And if you want to forward this to a friend, that would be the deepest honor for me. Remember to go be the leader that you know you are, and we'll see you next time.