In this 12‑minute monologue, certified high‑performance coach Sean Buttner (pronounced "Buttner") explains why managing personal energy is the single most important factor for high‑performing introverts. He argues that environmental distractions—open‑office layouts, constant interruptions, and pandemic‑era home‑office intrusions—drain energy and break flow, which is essential for creative, analytical, and relational work. To counteract these drains, Buttner proposes a system of multiple daily "pit stops" that combine brief physical movements (20 arm crosses, 20 high‑knee marches), a two‑minute eye‑rest, ten deep breaths, and a two‑minute standing break each hour. He ties these micro‑breaks to a broader "block time" schedule (e.g., 50‑minute work blocks followed by an energy break) to maintain focus, creativity, and wellbeing. The video is the third installment in a "high‑performance introverted" series and ends with a teaser for the next episode on courage. Throughout, Buttner emphasizes operationalizing these practices—making them calendar‑driven habits—to gain control over one’s energy, thereby increasing impact, happiness, and professional relationships.
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How you manage your energy is everything you know. How you manage your energy determines your level of success. Because if you can keep in a good, calm statement, you can react to things that are thrown at you during the day, you can come up with creative solutions to the things you're working on, and you can really build the relationships you need to thrive in your organization. Start your week. Great. Start your week with a coach. I'm your host, certified high performance coach Sean Butner, and we're going to talk about something that'll help you advance in your life this week. So let's go. What do you think is one of the highest drains on a high performing introvert's energy? Well, it's the environment, especially if you work at a place with an open office layout or maybe an open home office layout. So why is that? Because there are people like the loud conference caller, there's people like the constant interrupter or the random walker upper that messes with your focus. And when you're throwing off your focus, a lot of people feel frustrated. It takes a lot of energy to get back into where you were, especially if you're in a creative job like coding. If you're doing business, if you're a doctor, if you're a lawyer, if you're a therapist, you know, when you're in flow, that's when you're doing your best work and interruptions pull you out of flow. So if you relate, maybe you sometimes feel like you're trapped in a personal hell where you don't have any control over your tasks over your day or over your work because of all these environmental distractions. And this can be exacerbated by how a pandemic has changed how we work. Well, we might be able to escape some of the office specific types of distractions or that I had mentioned before. You know, you might have new distractions to worry about, like family members, kids, pets, that pressure to be available 247 for your job and the like. So how do you manage all of those different new distractions or the old ones in the office? Wherever you end up working, it's coming up with strategies to protect your energy and focus. So basically, how can we accomplish that? Well, the big idea I have for you in this new world where we can work from anywhere is to take multiple pit stops throughout the day. And these pit stops can help us calm down from frustration. They can help us feel really centered so we can creatively problem solve and work. It can help us really get present so we build the relationships and build the influence and leadership we need in our organizations, in our jobs, or for our work. So these pit stops really are something that should be operationalized in your life. So if we were to open up your calendar today or took a look at how you performed in the last week or month each day, would there be three times where you did something to help you manage your energy? Because if we can control our energy and we can realize that we have more control over our energy, that's when we're more impactful, that's when we grow more. That's when we feel more connected and more happy with our work. So I want to share five different pit stops that I absolutely love that have helped me throughout the years in my truck in corporate America, right? Having, you know, myself, been in a, you know, cube, cubicle forest, or having an office, you know, it's night on day when you can close the door and just sit in focus for a couple hours. So the first thing that I'll share with you guys on managing your energy during one of the pit stops during your day is to do 20 arm crosses, right? Especially if you sit at a desk for a while, you can get really feeling your shoulders. And so just doing like 20 of these guys deep breathing as you're doing it can really help you loosen up, can really help you build the energy you need and that. So I'll do that probably once every day. I also like to do like, you know, knee highs where you just kind of like march in place. Do 20 on each side. That's really good for the second type of pit stop. The third one, I think is underutilized that people don't think about is to rest your eyes. So doing a two minute iris, where you just close your eyes and with the light from the computer and you know, everywhere, you can fatigue your eyes. So sometimes when you feel tired or sometimes when you need to center, just closing your eyes for a quick two minutes can really do the trick. Number four. So first one is 20 arm crosses. Second one is high knees. Third is that two minute iris. Fourth, ten deep breaths. And you can incorporate this into one of the other exercises I shared. But just, You know, deep like that, being really loud, not being afraid to like, you know, spit up, maybe, you know, in a private spot. But, you know, just getting some oxygen blood can really, really help. And then, you know, using what? Yeah, if you have an apple watch, you know what this is. But to stand at least two minutes each hour for 12 hours a day, right? And I say thank you, apple, because I'LL get tapped. If I've been sitting for a while, the watch can figure it out and say, hey, you should stand for a little bit. And just standing up, standing up tall, you know, kind of correcting your body language posture can really change your energy. Especially at one if you get interrupted and you have to recover from the frustration or be like, where am I? Again, just kind of find that center for yourself. But you also find out that if you incorporate this with something that I talk about a lot as a high performance coach, using block time that as you know, every 50 minutes, doing a little energy break like this can help you stay positive, it can help you stay happy, it can help you stay motivated throughout the day. So that's the extra thing. But if we feel energized with this simple rule that three pit stops a day keeps the bad energy away. If we could just do this three times a day, it will change everything for you. If you can amp it up more or use it, have them in your back pocket to really help shift energy. When you find that interruption, if you have to work in that open work plan or that home office with no boundaries, then again, you know, three hits stops a day keeps the bad energy away, guys. So please hope you like this. The next week's video we'll be talking about courage in the high performance introverted series. So this is the third video in it. If you haven't seen the other ones, check out the blog before this and yeah, see you guys next week. Take care, Sam.
