Week six of Dr Amantha Imber‘s energy experiments brings them all together in a kind of sort of daily energy accounting. If that makes any sense.

Starting with Week Three’s energy tracking.

Energy Tracking Process Recap

Tracking energy takes a few minutes at the end of the day to reflect and record your overall energy across three dimensions:

1. Physical – body’s vitality and stamina
2. Mental – focus and cognitive clarity
3. Emotional – mood and emotional resilience

Colour coding them like a traffic light:

• Green: Functioning at your best; able to tackle challenges with ease; feeling balanced and resourceful.
• Orange: Functioning adequately but not at full capacity; managing but not thriving.
• Red: depleted; struggling to function effectively; feeling overwhelmed, foggy, or exhausted.

For the most of the time, it’s going to be orange, unless you’re really depleted or operating at 100%.

Or maybe young and excited about everything as opposed to older and generally less excited about everything.

I graded myself consistently in the orange, but was aware of fluctuations in my mood and energy.

Three levels don’t give you as much scope for nuance as five, and if I take this technique onwards, I’ll give myself five stars to colour in.

Pat your head and rub your tummy

As well as tracking our daily energy, Imber asked us to deploy a daily strategy; energiser, rest, or boundary according to your needs on the day. When:

• you need a short-term boost in alertness, mood or motivation, pick an energiser.
• you feel like you’ve depleted one or more energy categories and need to properly restore (as opposed to pushing through), use a rest strategy.
• your energy is leaking “faster than a dodgy tap due to overcommitment,” consider a boundary strategy.

In each of the first few weeks, there were several options to try, so week six gave us the opportunity to try techniques we hadn’t used initially, like:

• splashing your face with cold water (energy)
• taking a walk after a meal (energy)
• enjoying five minutes of funny videos (energy)
• a few minutes to disconnect from all external input (rest)
• scheduled rest appointments (rest)
• vetting event/meeting requests (boundaries)
• delegating (boundaries)

Daily energy accounting outcome

For me, it was another insane week.

Despite having just got home from hospital, DB was not content to rest.

And when he did rest, he either slept, fidgeted, or grumbled.

Clever Girl and I are great lovers of routine, and neither of us do particularly well when there is no routine.

Energy Ebb and Flow

I’ve talked before about the ebb and flow, of my life and energy; of earning and spending energy pennies.

From that point of view, tracking my energy seems more beneficial because I was on top of how I was feeling during the day, and more importantly, why. Much better than that nasty non-specific crankiness.

I think in the long-term, Imber is going to recommend planning to incorporate some of these energy strategies into your life, but I’m not sure that planning them in will work.

Yes, I know. Feels like heresy.

But, knowing how I felt in energy accounting terms, made it easier to deploy different strategies as the hours went by. And yes, I used more than one strategy most days. Even if it was just five minutes of staring out the back widow at the chickens over the ditch.

So from that point of view, it was good to have a list of techniques to use for a quick recharge.

Overall, I graded myself mostly orange.

I’d hate to imagine what my week might have been like if I hadn’t been thinking about energy and using the strategies as well.

But I have set timers to remind myself yo take some lunch every day, and to get back to work once I’ve eaten.