A short first-person spoken piece advising acceptance of fluctuating daily energy and adapting productivity accordingly. The speaker recommends organizing a to-do list into sections by task type (meetings, field visits, small/simple tasks) and assigning tasks based on current energy; when plans change or energy is low, reassign easier or different tasks to remain productive.
I'm a big believer in everyone is doing their best every day, but every day your best looks different. And I think that's something that took me a long time to accept. So sometimes I have so much energy, everything is going well. I'm super motivated. I can bang out a thousand things in a day. And sometimes I'm not. Or I've had a really hard morning and now I'm tired, or I haven't slept enough and I can't do this big difficult afternoon. So what I do is I keep my to do list in sections. I know which things require other people, like a meeting, which things need, like a trip, like a field visit or something. Which thinks I'm just being lazy. Like I have to read an email or I have to check something first I have to a calculation. And so I assign the task I'm doing according to my energy. Sometimes I can stick to my schedule and do every single thing that I said I was going to do. But a lot of the time, either like a cancellation, like now I have one hour, what am I going to do with that hour? Or I'm tired and I can't do this right now, Or I had planned to do this and I can't. I just assigned something else so I'm still.
