The Energy Audit & Daily Priorities

Read time: 4 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives Saturday Edition where I share insights from the brightest minds in business and life and how I'm applying them to my life.

I started working with a new client a few weeks ago. He’s a fitness creator who has worked with a large health & fitness company for the past 8 years but wants to start focusing on his own brand.

Over the years he has started an online community, taught multiple online courses, and offers training programs through an app. He has a great content, connections in the industry, and ambitions to grow. However, he struggles with organization and putting all the puzzle pieces together to effectively monetize the audience he has built.

I’m pumped for the opportunity to help him take his existing assets, simplify it, and put systems in place to scale.

Last week I got a text from him saying, “Can you really help me gain clarity, think that is my biggest problem. I’m struggling to keep up with all my obligations. Honestly just don’t know where to focus my time and energy and therefore it’s getting scattered and inefficient.”

He’s not alone in this problem.

When I worked at EY, I remember being on projects where I had to-do lists with 30+ things I needed to do. I would struggle to figure out which things to work on next. I’d end up just defaulting to whatever my boss needed most urgently.

Entrepreneurs don’t have that option. We are our own boss and have to make decisions on what to prioritize. But it’s not an easy task.

I adopted two methods for clarity from creator Sahil Bloom and Author Benjamin Hardy: The Energy Audit & Daily Priorities.

1. The Energy Audit

Here is how it works:

1. Make a list of every activity that you are currently doing in your business or want to start doing (a good place to start is looking at your calendar).

2. Estimate the # of hours per week you spend on each activity

3. Label each activity Green, Yellow, or Red.

• Green = Energy creating activities

• Yellow = Neutral activities

• Red = Energy draining activities

Once we have this information, we take the following actions:

• Green = Prioritize these activities

• Yellow = Delegate these activities

• Red = Delegate or remove these activities

The delegate vs delete decision is determined by tying the activity back to our goals and vision and assessing whether we really need to be doing these at all.

Many times we will find activities we are doing just because we've always done them and that they aren't actually contributing towards our goals.

When I did the energy audit with my client it looked something like this…

Right away, we notice that he doesn’t love long form writing. He knows the importance of writing blogs for SEO and email newsletters to nurture his audience, but it drains him. So that’s something we can outsource.

He’s excited to host sessions in his membership community and create engaging video content. So we are going to optimize his calendar around those activities. The admin stuff like editing, handling community logistics, and other admin tasks I will take off his plate or find contractors to help.

2. Daily Priorities

The Energy Audit helps determine what we should focus on at a high level, but it doesn’t answer the question of what to work on each day?

That’s where the daily priorities come in.

Every night I spend 15 minutes before I go to sleep to determine what my 3 priorities are for the next day. One of the biggest changes from corporate to entrepreneurship has been the lack of structure. At EY, my calendar was full of meetings that I didn’t schedule and tasks given to me by others. But now my calendar is blank unless I put something there.

When I first started my entrepreneurial journey, I would start my day without a clear idea of what I wanted to get done. I would scan the internet for a few businesses to buy, write half of a newsletter, and maybe have a call with my business coach. I would start many tasks and it was easy to tell myself that I could just finish it tomorrow or later this week. I wasn’t making any meaningful progress.

But when I started doing my daily priorities, that all changed.

I take an index card and think to myself, if I can just get 3 things done tomorrow to make it a successful day, what would they be? The 3 things vary from day to day. Sometimes it’s publishing a newsletter and sometimes it’s just writing a first draft. It could be going to the grocery store and meal prepping or it could be finalizing a deliverable for a client.

Something different happens in the mind when I wake up knowing what 3 things I want to get done that day as opposed to just figuring it out as I go.

I added a gratitude practice to the notecard method where I list 3 things I’m grateful for that day. It’s a quick and easy exercise that helps me reflect on what well that day and go to sleep on a positive note. Here’s an example from a few weeks ago…

Final Thoughts

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day grind. Going from one activity to the next. One meeting to the next. One task to the next. It’s been incredibly helpful to carve a little time out each day to get intentional with my priorities and time every 6-8 weeks to assess my energy levels.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew