How to do an Energy Audit

With all the turmoil happening, the leaders I work with are busier than ever. At the same time, they also need more energy and resilience than previously. In the COVID-19 era, people’s lives and routines have been disrupted and as they continue to work from home, most people have not created new routines. Instead, now they sit at their laptops from early in the morning till late in the evening. Many are exhausted and starting to burn out.

One practice I help groups of leaders do is to develop new habits that increase their energy each day. The first step is to shine more light on your current habits. To do this we have people do a 5-minute personal energy audit.

The energy audit helps you identify where you are fueling yourself and where you are ‘leaking’ energy.

Below are 10 questions based on the research about what increases or decreases people’s energy. Read through each of them and answer how well you are doing in each area. 

Energy Audit: Answer the Following Questions 

1. On average, how many hours are you sleeping? (sleep) ______
2. On average, how often are you exercising per week? (physical) ______
3. How well are you eating? (nutrition) ______
4. Do you schedule the most important work of the day when you are freshest (e.g., the first 2 hours of the day)? (productivity) ______
5. How much do you walk or move during the day? (physical) ______     
6. How frequently do you check email? (email) ______
7. Do you take a break mid-morning or midafternoon? (recovery) ______
8. How often do you check your cell phone in the evenings? (technology) ______
9. How is the energetic quality of time spent with colleagues, family, and friends? (social) ______
10. Do you have a spiritual practice that helps you? (spiritual) ______    

Which of these is the area where improvement would have the most impact on your energy and effectiveness? 

Maybe you identified that you’ve been skipping your periodic breaks. Or, perhaps you find that now that you’re working from home, you’re walking less. The answers to these questions are important because now that you’ve identified areas where you can improve your energy, you can begin to design your repeatable habits.

In the next post, I’ll show you how to create a Virtuous Energy Cycle which converts your habits from a to-do list into a daily routine. 

The above is an excerpt from my new whitepaper Recharge: 5 Steps to Increase your Energy in the Work from Home Era. If you’d like an advance copy, email admin@nicholaspetrie.com.