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Five ways to better manage your energy to stop you feeling frazzled

How energetic do you feel? Do your energy levels vary day by day? Maybe you override feelings of tiredness because you feel guilty about itting you need to take a break?

Often, we will look at our daily schedules and try to fit in what we can around the time we have. But what if we looked at how much energy we actually had in a day, rather than how much time?

For years people with medical conditions like M.E and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have used energy management techniques to help them decide what tasks they might be able to accomplish in a day. But could all of us benefit from these techniques?

Lauren Walker, from the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, and Charlie Thorne, who left her high-stress job as a lawyer due to burnout, both ed Nuala McGovern on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to discuss. Keep reading for their advice and to hear more about Charlie’s story…

Listen to the full interview

‘My body was pushing back after years of burnout’

Charlie Thorne was a lawyer for ten years in London before she became burnt out and had to take sick leave, before subsequently leaving her job.

"I was chronically stressed without really understanding that that’s what was happening to me," says Charlie. "I couldn’t get out of bed after a particularly stressful week. My body was pushing back after years of cyclical burnout. I’m still recovering a year on.

"We live in a society and a culture where stress and even burnout are sometimes referred to as things to wear as a badge of honour. You lose sight of the fact that stress, chronically, can be bad for you. I worked that out the hard way by burning out.

"It’s a societal problem. In my experience, there's often the rebuttal of: 'We're all stressed. But look, you've achieved this, you've achieved that.' Actually, what's the cost of pushing yourself to achieve those things? It's often our health and our longevity."

Occupational Therapist Lauren Walker

So, how can we better manage our energy levels?

Occupational therapist Lauren Walker says that by managing our energy levels and pacing ourselves better, we can avoid burning out the way that Charlie did. Keep reading for her advice…

1. Pace yourself

"The 3 Ps are ways of structuring your day and structuring your time, so that you're making the most of the energy that you have available," says Lauren. "Pacing, planning and prioritising.

"Rest is incredibly important for managing and recharging your energy, so look for ways to build rest breaks into your day. Little and often works best for some people, while others get more benefit from fewer, longer breaks. Try different approaches to see what’s best for you."

2. Plan your day

"Use a diary to structure your activities, build in rest breaks and create routines. Think about the times of day when you’re least tired, and plan to do more strenuous things then. Try to spread tiring activities out across the day or week, rather than doing them all in one go."

3. Prioritise what’s important

"Prioritising the things you want and need to do means you’ll have more energy available for those activities,” says Lauren. "This might mean delegating or dropping some tasks that are less important to you. But that by saying 'no' to one thing, you're saying 'yes' to something else you value more."

4. Rest your mind as well as your body

Lauren says it’s important to find ways to rest your mind as well as your body. It can be a case of trial and error, but activities such as breathing exercises, mindfulness, or listening to music could help.

“It’s not just physical energy, our brains use a lot of energy as well,” Lauren says. “Different people will find different things restful. If you have got an activity that's draining for any type of reason, building in rest before and after, or even during that task before you reach that point of exhaustion, can be really helpful,” says Lauren.

“It is about being really conscious and really intentional about what brings you joy and giving yourself permission to prioritise those energy-giving activities.”

5. Think about the different demands that activities put on you

“Different activities use up energy in different ways, and adjusting the demands of an activity can help to reduce the amount of energy it uses,” says Lauren. “As well as physical demands, think about the mental and emotional demands, and the demands of the environment, including light and noise.

“Consider whether you can change any of these elements to make the activity more manageable. Be conscious of the different types of demands that different tasks put on you. And that's not just physical energy, our brains use a lot of energy as well.”

You can listen to the full discussion with Lauren Walker and Charlie Thorne, as well as any episodes of Woman’s Hour you might have missed, on BBC Sounds.

the conversation on Twitter and Instagram @bbcwomanshour.

You can read the Royal College of Occupational Therapists' guidelines about managing energy levels here.

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