96. Time Management vs Energy Management: Which One Matters More?

You’ve probably spent a lot of time (see what I did there 😉) trying to master your schedule... but what if time isn’t the problem?

In this episode I'm unpacking the difference between time management and energy management — and why your to-do list may feel impossible even if you technically have the time to get it all done.

\Spoiler alert: It's not just about time. It's about how you feel in the time you have.

Whether you’re a private practice owner, school-based SLP, or balancing multiple roles at work and home, this episode will help you shift the way you think about productivity — especially if you’re neurodivergent or often find yourself overcommitted, under-energized, and overwhelmed.

Here's What I'm Covering in This Episode:

• The real difference between time management and energy management
• Why “more time” isn’t always the answer (and what to focus on instead)
• Common signs you’re ignoring your energy — and what it’s costing you
• Why neurodivergent brains especially struggle with managing energy
• 3 simple strategies to start managing your energy (not just your time)
• What a productive day actually looks like (hint: it’s not about crossing everything off)

🔗 Links & Resources:

• Join the SLP Support Group to catch the follow-up FB Live:"5-Minute Energy Boosters That Actually Work"
  
• Ready for more personalized support? Book a free consult to learn how I can help you build a productivity system that works for your brain — not against it.
  

To find out how I can help you improve your work-life balance, click here.

Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!

Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp

Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists. I'm Theresa Harp, an SLP and Productivity Coach, and this podcast is all about how to build a successful career as an SLP and still have time for yourself and the people and things you love. So if you're ready to ditch stress and burnout for a more balanced and fulfilling life than you are in the right place. Let's dive in.

Hello podcast listeners. Welcome back to the show. This is episode 96. I'm gonna be talking about this concept of time management versus energy management. This is something that I've thought a lot about, but it's. Top of mind because recently I've had actually a couple of different coaching clients bring this up in some capacity.

They might not have called it this same thing, but they've, they've basically mentioned to [00:01:00] this, mentioned this concept or a, uh, alerted, oh my gosh. Can I talk, alluded to this concept and I thought this is something that everybody. Needs to hear. So I'm gonna be talking about the difference between energy management and time management and which one matters more.

So let me start out by saying this, this sort of harsh truth, if you will, dose of tough love. You don't necessarily need more time. Your day, you need more energy for the time that you already have. Right? Have you ever gotten to a certain point of your day, whether it's right after lunch, or maybe it's towards the end of your workday, but you know, you still have things that you have to get done.

You still have clients that you have to see, [00:02:00] but there's. Zero energy to actually do those things where you just feel yourself crashing, right? So many of us think about time management. We, we obsess about time management. We focus on time management, but we overlook the energy management. And that's the thing, in my opinion, that matters most.

Okay? So if you're. Not thinking about energy and how to manage it and how it impacts the way that you spend your time, the things that you do and don't get done in your overall work life balance, then you are missing the mark. So let's talk about what these two things are. Energy management versus time management.

How they're similar. How they are different. Okay. Time management, you all know, right? This is focusing on hours, scheduling appointments to-do [00:03:00] lists. I have X number of hours, I should get X, Y, z. Done. Okay. That's. What we all know and what we're all familiar with, but when it comes to energy management, what I'm talking about is the mental, emotional and physical capacity.

So your mental capacity, your emotional capacity, and your physical capacity. That's what I mean by energy management. Energy management focuses on prioritizing you as the person, how you feel, how you function, how you are doing. So. If we're operating our calendar from a place of time management, we would say, okay, I've got one hour of time.

Here's what I'm gonna get done. If we are operating our calendar from energy management, [00:04:00] we might say, all right, I am feeling pretty depleted. What can I do right now with the current energy that I have? So. Do you see the difference? Do you hear the difference? And I want you to think about what resonates, which one resonates with you.

Okay. So as SLPs, as PTs, as OTs, as related health professionals, as moms, as spouses, we are essentially trained to pack every hour of the day because we could. Theoretically pack every hour of the day with a task. There is always more to do than there is time available. That's just the way that it works.

There will always be more that you can do, but there will not always be more time. Now, this doesn't mean that you should pack your calendar that way. That doesn't mean that you should approach it that way, but I'm just [00:05:00] telling you that we will always have more responsibilities and more tasks than we will time overall.

Okay. Whether it's IEP meetings or session notes, or session prep or, I don't know, uh, home life, right? Running your, running your household, cleaning your bathroom, cleaning your toilet, running errands, grocery shopping, cooking, whatever. Okay. We could fill those hours with tasks if we wanted to, but we cannot do this because of our energy.

Our energy is finite, and I would offer that those of us who have a DHD, we struggle even more so with this because we often underestimate how long something's gonna take. Just sort of like time blindness, right? We're touching on time blindness here, [00:06:00] and we often over commit. To the things that we're gonna put on our list and the things that we're gonna put on our calendar.

So if you have a neurodivergent brain, you are battling with those pieces, those added factors, okay? But the challenge on top of that is our energy will change. We can't always predict what our energy is going to be when we're setting up our calendar, when we're writing our to-do list. So that's sort of like an unknown.

It's a wild card. Right. And then add to that, when our energy does dip, when we're feeling quote unquote low in energy, when we're feeling depleted, our brain starts telling us that we have failed. Yeah, our brain is sort of processing that like it is a failure. Like we have messed up. We've fallen short.

Instead of just [00:07:00] recognizing that these are normal rhythms, these are normal biological rhythms that happen because we are not robots, right? We're not robots. We're human. We're not broken. We're not lazy. We are just overscheduled and overextended. Okay, so let me talk you through some examples of what this might look like in terms of, let's say, how can I say this?

So examples of that could be indicators that you are not quite managing your energy. Appropriately or as best as you could. Okay. I don't, I don't wanna imply that this is like a right or wrong way to do it. 'cause it's truly not what I'm saying here. But I wanna sort of give you some examples of how this might show up because we're all very well aware of the time management struggles, right?

And examples of poor time management. [00:08:00] But I think we're less familiar with examples of poor energy management. So. Let's say poor energy management might look like scheduling your sessions. If you have that capability to schedule your own sessions or your own evaluations, maybe you schedule all of your evaluations back to back or all of your sessions back to back, because that time was available, that time was open, it was free.

But then as you're. In it, you hit a wall. You start to realize when the, when the time comes and when you're actually in, in that day, in that, in that schedule, right? You start to, your, your energy starts to dip. You start to run low, the batteries are running on empty, right? This might also look like you saying yes to a meeting.

Or a, an appointment during a time of day that you don't [00:09:00] typically schedule something. Maybe because it's sort of your free time or your quote unquote calm time or your downtime and you say yes to it and then. You've got that on the calendar and leading up to it, you're feeling anxious, resentful. It's draining your energy before you ev have even gotten to that point because you're telling yourself, oh my gosh, like I don't normally work this late.

I don't normally get up this early. I don't normally, I have this much going on in one day, so you're already in, in advance. You're anticipating. That this is gonna be problematic on your energy. And so the result is that you drain your energy before you even get to that point of day, before you even get to that appointment or that meeting.

And then once you arrive to that time, to that session, to that appointment, whatever it is, you're already operating from a deficit [00:10:00] and you're, you've sort of like psyched yourself out for it. Okay. Another example of how this might show up would be maybe you are trying to write an evaluation report or a session note when you are absolutely exhausted.

Okay? Raise your hand if you can relate. So I, I totally get this. I, I see clients, we work that, that struggle with this. We work on this in one-on-one coaching where it's like, okay, I'm exhausted, but after I get off this call with you, Theresa, I have to still write six session notes that are behind and I've gotta start this evaluation report because it's due.

Tomorrow, or it's due in two days, but I'm exhausted. And so sometimes that might result in you doing it, but it takes way longer. Maybe four or five times longer than it should or than it would typically. Maybe it results in you completely avoiding all of [00:11:00] it and shutting down entirely and not doing it at all and feeling bad about it.

Maybe it results in you getting like a burst of energy and you do it and you're like, you know, pulling a late night or pulling an all-nighter even to get those things done and then afterwards you're. You're done. Like it's, you're spent, there's absolutely nothing that you can give, and you're paying the price for it in that, that following day, or even in multiple days that come.

This can often, or this can also show up at home in your personal life. So for me, I don't know about you, but for me it's like, okay, when the kids get to bed, I'm gonna catch up on X, Y, Z. But when I get there, my brain is mush and ex, this is. Especially interesting for me right now. An example that I wanna offer is last night how this showed up for me.

I had signed up for a new program that I'm in. It has some really [00:12:00] awesome, um, webinars and content and resources and like all these fun, exciting things, productivity tools, stuff that I'm really excited about that I love, right? I get to the end of my day and I. I truly wanted to do those things so we're not talking about like an evaluation report that you, let's be honest, don't really want to do.

Overall, I'm talking about stuff that I actually wanted to do. I was, you know, the nerd in me was excited, but when I sat down after bedtime, like the kids all went to bed and I sat down and had some free time to work on it, and I wanted to work on it. Even then, my brain. Had other plans. My brain was like, no, Theresa, like, you cannot process this information right now.

You're maxed out. You can't take this on. And I was trying too. I really was trying and I wanted to do it, but I just couldn't, it just wasn't clicking. Now that's maybe more of an A DHD thing as well, because the end of the day, I ha my meds had worn off. I have no [00:13:00] very little energy at that point. So, you know, a lot of competing factors or a lot of different variables that are at play there.

But the point being is that this doesn't only apply to things that you have to do. It can also apply to things that you want to do. Right, like if you want to go meet up with a friend, and it's like when you say yes to the, like the fun things and exciting things that you wanna do, and then when the time actually comes to do it, you're absolutely exhausted.

Even though it's a fun thing that you wanted to do and you're like, oh God, I don't really know if I can have the energy to like get out of bed or get off the couch, put on real clothes and like go be a human. Right? So. Yeah. That's another way of how this shows up. It could also be, this one comes up for me a lot like skipping lunch or skipping a break where it's like, oh, I don't wanna, I don't, I'm in the zone, I'm in the flow.

I don't wanna stop. I've got so much that I wanna get done. I'm not gonna stop. I wanna just keep, stay in this momentum. [00:14:00] And then, and I do. But then afterwards I just crash. It's just, you can't. There's nothing left that you can give, right? Because I ignored my personal needs, my core needs, and thought that I could work through them and be fine, right?

And I really, again, wanna echo the neurodivergent piece of this. Whether you have or suspect you have a DHD or not, maybe even if you have a a neurotypical brain, this can still be true for you, that you might struggle with. Time management. Right, but the, the energy management, the egu energy regulation, I was gonna say ululation, the energy regulation is not easy when you have a neurodivergent brain.

I. Because we aren't necessarily recognizing these things when they're happening. We aren't necessarily able to anticipate when these sort of [00:15:00] crashes or or lows are gonna hit us. And. Usually when we're making plans, we're making them when we are in a place of higher energy, but then we're executing them when we're in the place of lower energy, right?

So these difficulties with energy regulation are really common, and they're often misunderstood. Okay, so nothing has gone wrong. Whether you are neurodivergent or neurotypical, this is something that we can all relate to. So what I wanna offer are some strategies that will help you with managing energy, not just your time, okay?

Not just your time. And, and a bonus to this, if you will, before I share these strategies, is. What can happen when we start incorporating energy management along with time management is that we often wind up working in, [00:16:00] how do I say this in? We're not going against the current, we're not swimming upstream.

We are going with our normal rhythm and flow. So we're, we're sort of going with the flow in a way that. Whether you know, our body, our minds are already in that place. So instead of then me trying to fight with my energy, if I am planning. My tasks and my time with my energy in mind. It's like half the battle because now I'm not trying to drum up energy when it's not there.

Now doesn't, this is not foolproof. This is not a hundred percent, but these are some things that I think so many of us overlook that can really go a long way. Alright, so, so strategies, like I mentioned, first strategy that I have for you is to do an energy audit. You might know this already, but most likely you don't.

What are the times of [00:17:00] day where your brain and your body feel best? Think about your day. Kind of go through from morning to night and notice when do you tend to have more energy? When do you tend to have less energy? At what point in the day do you sort of hit that natural slump? Because we all have it.

And on top of that, in addition to that, what tasks are energy producing and what tasks are energy spending because there are certain things that we do. Our day that can give us energy and there are certain things that we do in our day that are going to take energy, and that doesn't necessarily mean that one is right and one is wrong.

It's just this is an added layer that you can use as you're evaluating what to schedule when. [00:18:00] So my mini challenge for you when it comes to this strategy of an energy audit is to track your energy for three days and notice the patterns. Okay? Track your energy for three days and. I would encourage you to do at least one of those three days, be a weekend, and then have the other two be a workday or be workdays.

And I want you to notice when do you have more energy? When do you have less energy? What factors are affecting your energy? Maybe the amount of sleep that you've gotten the night before, the amount of food or the quality of the food that you've put into your body, the people that you're spending your time with, the tasks that you're spending your time on, how do they affect your energy?

You're going to walk away with so much more information that you can use to optimize your time management. Okay, so that's [00:19:00] strategy number one, an energy audit. The second strategy that I wanna offer is stacking high energy tasks with high energy times. So think about the tasks that you have that require a, a higher level or a higher amount of energy.

Right. So maybe it is an evaluation report that might require a, a higher level of energy from you and try to. Coordinate if you can, your schedule so that the tasks that are going to require a lot of energy are scheduled during a time when you happen to have a high amount of energy. So if you tend to be a morning person, maybe you do the work, the tasks that require the most amount of focus and effort and cognitive load that, that have the [00:20:00] highest cognitive load.

You do those in the morning. When you have more energy to give more energy, that's just naturally available to you. Maybe you schedule some of the low energy tasks, the things that you could do without having to really focus a whole lot. The things that you could do while you're on the couch watching Netflix for those times when you tend to have lower amounts of energy, right?

So I wanna acknowledge this will not work for every. Task. This won't work for every person who's listening, all of the, you know, every day, every week, but. You have more control over your schedule than you think you do. So even if you're listening to this strategy and your brain is saying, Nope, not gonna work for me.

I don't get to schedule my sessions when I want. They're scheduled for me, or, nope, not gonna work for me because I don't get to take my lunch when I want to take a lunch, or I'd be [00:21:00] lucky to even get a lunch. Right? So just notice that and catch it because that may or may not be true. There may also be other elements of your day that you can control when it comes to your time and comes to your schedule.

We underestimate, in my opinion, the amount of control that we do have and we overestimate the. Amounts of control that we don't have. Does that make sense? I'm like saying this out loud and listening to myself and I'm like, I don't know if that actually makes sense, but hopefully you follow me. Right? A lot of times we think that we can't control our schedule when we actually can, or we control it in ways we can control it in ways that we might not have considered.

For example, maybe you can't take your lunch whenever you want, but maybe you know that in order to have. Higher levels of energy and to feel your, feel your best. You need tofu, fuel your body with protein. And so maybe you are [00:22:00] squeezing in a protein shake or you know, a quick snack in between sessions. So yeah, you might not be able to take your lunch when you want to, but at least you are building in some of that energy in a way that you can, right?

You're controlling what you can control and. Focus less on what you can't control. Focus more on what you can control. All right, so that's the second strategy that I have. Scheduling your, your tasks according to when you have more energy and when you have less energy. So sort of keeping those things in mind.

Okay. The third strategy that I wanna offer is to build in some buffers when it comes to energy. So I've talked before about leaving room for the margins and your schedule, trying not to over schedule yourself and building in some, some sort of breaks and, and stuff like that into your schedule. I want you to think about this [00:23:00] as it applies to energy.

So after you've done your audit, right, and notice what you've noticed, where can you build in? Some energy boosters to help you maintain whatever level you need to maintain as you're going through your day. So maybe you know that there is one client in particular that tends to drain you. Okay, we're not talking, I'm not talking bad about clients.

I'm just saying we all know some sessions require a little bit more energy than others. Some sessions require a lot more energy than others, so think about what are the ones that require more energy and can you build in some white space before or after those sessions? If you know that you have something on your calendar that tends to take a lot of energy from you or might leave you feeling drained afterwards, notice that.

[00:24:00] Account for it. This is an opportunity, like I was saying, for you to operate with more control, for you to exercise more, control over your time and over your schedule, instead of trying to muscle your way through the day, build in those energy buffers, those energy boosters, when you can stop over overbooking yourself without allowing yourself time for recovery.

This is not about being a hero, right? Busy is not a badge of honor. There are things that you can do to help yourself maximize your energy and still be productive in the process. These don't even have to be big boosts. These could be little moments, right? It could be walking away from your computer, stepping outside into the sunshine or into the, you know, fresh, getting fresh air.

This could be sitting in silence for five minutes. Side note related, but side note, my daughter's homework, my first grader's homework the other day was to spend five [00:25:00] minutes doing nothing, and I was like, what? She told me what she had, what she had for homework. At first, she caught me off guard, so I was like, wait, what?

And then when I confirmed that I did in fact hear her correctly, I was so impressed. I'm like, absolutely, this is a great homework assignment and I'm gonna do it with you and I'm gonna do it with you with a smile on my face very willingly. So we just sat there for five minutes. We were outside at the park on a bench and we just sat for five minutes deep breathing.

It's amazing how long five minutes can feel by the way, right? Time is relative, but five minutes can feel like a long time when you are sitting and trying to do nothing. So just wanted to offer that little, that little example there of, I guess, life imitating art. Right. Okay. So those three strategies, just to recap, number one, an energy audit, and I gave you the challenge of tracking your [00:26:00] energy for three days and noticing the patterns.

Number two. Is scheduling the high energy tasks during high energy times and vice versa to the best of your ability. And then number three is building in some energy boosters and energy buffers into your schedule as best you can and don't get stuck in all or nothing thinking here. Don't get stuck in it.

You do not need to do this every day for extended periods of time. A little bit can go a long way. Alright, keep in mind we've all heard this, this sort of saying, which I know is cliche about you cannot pour from an empty cup. Right? Or you have to put your own oxygen mask on first. It's cliche, yes, but it's true.

And it's also. Scientific like this is neuroscience happening. This is brain [00:27:00] happening, right? Like this isn't just what you wanna do or what you can do. This is actually your physical body at work here. So stop seeing rest as a luxury. Stop seeing rest as a reward and start seeing it as a right and a requirement.

It is something that you are entitled to. You don't need to earn it. You are entitled to it, and the only one. Can take those moments of rest is you. No one can do that for you. You have to do that for yourself. And I also wanna offer, think about what you consider to be a quote unquote productive day.

Notice what, if anything, you need to shift or redefine a productive day [00:28:00] doesn't have to mean that you had a lengthy to-do list. You crushed it all and got it all done, right? What if a productive day is one where you spend your time and invest your time with intention? You honor your capacity. You allow yourself rest.

To me, that is a much better version of work-life balance and a much better version of productivity than crushing a to-do list. Alright, that is it for this episode, but I wanna invite you to join me in the SLP support group because this week I'm going live on Wednesday at 12 Eastern and I'm gonna be talking to you about five specific strategies.

Not just what we're talking about today, but [00:29:00] five specific tangible things that you can do to boost your energy. I'm talking five minute energy boosters that you can do anywhere, anytime, that will help pour into you so that you can show up as your best self and do your best work. So make sure you're in the SLP support group so you don't miss out on that.

If you're not in the group, you can always click the link in the show notes to join. And as always, if you want more one-on-one customized support, this is exactly the type of thing that I help my coaching clients do. So you can click the link in the show notes to schedule a console, and I'll let you know how I can help you with this exact concept.

Accept. Alright, thanks for tuning in. I will talk with y'all next week. Bye.