What could you say “no” to today to free up energy for something more important?

It is so easy to let life fill up with lots of little chores and obligations (and even fun things we enjoy doing!) without us really noticing.

Often habits around what we do everyday are formed without much thought. They just grow and if we don’t keep them in check they can fill our time (and use up our energy). Every now and again it is a very good idea to take stock of the things we do and see if it is worth cutting something out of our day to free up time and energy for something more important.

Try keeping an energy diary

For a day (or even a week) why not keep an energy diary and write down everything you “spend’ your energy on? Think of it a bit like keeping track of your money. If you want to budget better the first thing you need to know is how you spend your money. If you keep a diary of all the money you spend you may well find that those daily cups of coffee you buy, or the newspaper you pick up every day are costing you more than you think. Two pounds a day on a coffee for instance, every day for five days a week means you’re spending £10 a week, or £520 a year. Now, maybe that perfectly fine, but just knowing the figures means you have a choice.

It good to know our options when it comes to “spending” our energy too. With your money you could choose to keep spending that £520 a year on coffee or you might choose to spend it on a weekend away, an iPad (that might be my choice!), lots of books (or even just to save it towards something else). If you keep an energy diary you’ll probably find that you’re currently spending your energy in ways you weren’t aware of. That’s energy that might be put to better use. Even 20 minutes a day reclaimed from your daily habits can really build up if you choose to use it on something more important.

So what could you say “no” to doing today to save yourself just a little bit of energy to put towards something more important? Maybe you could use it to:

• write 200 words towards a novel (200 words a day is 1000 words in a five day week and 52,000 words in a year)
• or make a small drawing (one a day just four days a week could be over two hundred in a year)
• or do some gentle exercise (just twenty minutes of exercise a day could make a huge difference to your health and wellbeing and might even increase your availably energy!)

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