energy

Just like many other young women, I live a very busy life. I juggle multiple jobs, hobbies and relationships at once, and I do that purposely – not because I have to. I have many passions and love being social, but also want time on my own. In this way, I’m actually trying to live multiple lives. Luckily, I’m the type of person who believes you actually CAN have it all, IF you apply the following life-hacks.

What my life looks like (skip if not interested)

To give you an idea: I have a full-time job, in which I manage more projects than is possible in 40 hours, and in which I am also part of two committees that don’t overlap with my own work. I volunteer for an online philosophy magazine and run this blog & the Coco Instagram. I have more than a few friends that I see regularly, visit my parents often and I am planning a wedding with the love of my life who also gets a lot of my free-time (of course). On top of that, I meditate, read, journal, walk, stretch and listen to a podcast every day. In between the gaps, I do laundry, groceries, take care of our hamster (:)) and do other things in the house.

Yes, sometimes I do feel overwhelmed. But most of the time I am very happy and fulfilled. Here’s why and how this works for me.

Please note: I’m NOT saying you should be able to do as many things as I do. Mental and physical health is very important and also very personal! Please be aware of how much YOU can do while applying these tips.

Prioritise

The first thing is something I talk about a lot: setting priorities. This requires some reflection on what you really want and find important. You have to get clear on what you want in life, what and who you want to spend your valuable time on, and here we see another essential part: you have start seeing your time as valuable.

Once you see your time as something you can only spend once, and as something you want to spend on what you find useful, important and fulfilling, you can get clear on your priorities. Decide which parts of your life are essential for you, and which parts are only nice-to-haves. Do the same thing with the people in your life: who really adds to your happiness, and who are you holding on to for the wrong reasons?

If something or someone is not a priority, this doesn’t mean you have to delete them from your life completely (although, I do recommend this for the parts that really don’t add anything to your happiness). You can simply be more conscious on how much time you spend on them. It really all comes down to aligning the way you spend your time with your true values.

Delegate

I already wrote a full blog on how to delegate. Delegation comes in really handy for the parts of your life that you have just decided (in the previous paragraph) are not important to you, but also not easy to remove. Think of tasks you don’t like doing, even though you see how the result of doing them adds value to your life. These parts, you can delegate.

For example, I personally delegate cleaning and cooking for the most part. I do find a clean house and eating healthy food important, but I don’t like spending my own time on these things. I don’t enjoy cleaning and cooking, so I delegate it. Of course, I realise that you need the financial means to be able to delegate these, or have a really sweet partner you can ask to do it. 😉

If you don’t have these options, try spending as little time as possible on these things. You can learn optimising the way in which you do these ‘important, yet not worth your time’-things in the next paragraph.

Optimisation

The first way to optimise tasks you don’t like doing, is by creating order (in doing that specific task). This literally means you have a method of doing it, which you use every single time. Creating order saves you time because you know what to do in advance, and you know the method by which you are going to do it. So you don’t have to think of the ‘how’ every single time. Learn more on creating order in this blog.

Another way to optimise is doing things in bulk. Do you have many shops to visit, people to see, e-mails to answer or lunches to prepare? Set one timeframe to do all the things in the same category at once. Since it takes some time to travel, set appointments, get into your focus or prepare the task, it saves time doing many of the same things at one specific moment.

The last way to optimise is to simply learn from others. For example, there are many video’s on Youtube on how to do simple daily tasks more efficiently. Watching these once will save you time in the future. 🙂

Stay healthy

Managing many passions and people at once does not only take a lot of time, but also a lot of energy. I find that when I stay in good shape and eat healthy, I can do a lot more in a day and with more energy and focus.

Of course, I don’t have to tell you how to work out regularly and eat healthy. So instead, I will tell you the less obvious ways in which I stay healthy (on top of moving my body and eating healthy food):

I use Athletic Greens every morning to make sure I have all the vitamins I need. It also makes me feel like my brain is on fire all day, so that’s a big plus!
I have a very regular sleep-pattern to make sure I sleep enough hours. I go to bed around 10, and wake up around 6 or 7. In the weekend, the difference is usually only an hour later (because I fall asleep if I stay up longer anyway, and I want to bounce back easily on Monday).
I try to notice when my stress levels are high (adrenaline rush, heartbeat, negative emotions), and try to snap out of it. Meditating regularly and having my priorities straight, helps to do the breathwork or put things into perspective in these moments (see the next paragraph).
I limit my alcohol intake to 1 evening a week, and not a wild one ;). I limit my caffeine intake to max. 2 cups of coffee a day. And to compensate these habits, I drink at least 3 liters of herbal tea or water a day.
I eat intuitively. When I’m not hungry in the morning, I don’t eat breakfast. When I’m full, I stop eating. When I crave pizza, I eat pizza. This gives my body some rest on the right moments, and keeps my mind & body from putting energy into unnecessary cravings (or bloating).

Selfcare & meditation

I already mentioned that I meditate, read, walk, stretch and listen to a podcast everyday. While this sometimes feels like a burden, most of the time it helps me stay on track and juggle many things at once. Taking good care of your mind as well as your body enables you to do all the things you want, and to do them better and more focused.

I also take baths regularly, watch a lot of mindless shows while painting my nails (it’s called selfcare baby ;)) and take breaks from work/family/friends when, or actually right before, I really need to. Meditation is a way to slip out of reality when you don’t have a lot of time. There are even 5 minute meditations that can make you feel rejuvenated in between work or in a (parked!) car. Take that time when you feel like it.

If you do more, you can do more

As you may have noticed by now, I often like to end these lists with a hack you don’t actually have to do anything for. It’s more of an insight that you can use to your advantage. This time, I’m talking about the fact that when you do more, you actually get more done.

When you have full agenda, you somehow manage to do many things in a really short amount of time – simply because you don’t have more time. Think about writing a document: if you have all day, it will probably take you all day. You procrastinate, are very critical, think it over many times. But if you only have half an hour, you simply have no time to be lazy, critical or thoughtful. It just has to be done, so somehow you manage to do it in half an hour.

If you live life like this (almost) every day, you will see that you get more done, simply because you’re agenda is fuller. Tasks that you thought were a lot of work before, are now tasks you can squeeze in between the others. I’m not saying having a full agenda is always a good idea, but it is worth noticing (and praising!) how much you can actually do in a day.

Let me know if these hacks help you ‘have it all’, and what you do to manage many things at once!

xx Coco

In previous blogs, I have written about the ways in which our brain automatically saves energy for survival reasons. I’ve also given you some tips on how to save your time and space for the more important things in life. Now, let’s look at ways to deliberately save brain energy, so we can use this energy for what really makes us happy and fulfilled.

As humans, we actually still use a lot of energy on trivial choices, worry, judgement and time-management. Even though our practical lives become easier and more time and energy saving every day (think of the appliances in our home, AI or algorithms), our brains are still not always spending our energy on the most important things. Luckily, there are some interventions we can do you change this, so we have more energy left to do things in which we find happiness- like the realisation of our dreams.

Eliminate trivial choices

The first and most obvious tip is to waste less energy on making choices that don’t really matter. During the day, we have to make many decisions, and this starts from the moment we wake up: What am I going to do first? What am I going to wear? What do I want for breakfast? And this continues all throughout the day: What am I going to do when I arrive at work? Who am I going to ask for lunch? What do I eat for dinner? When am I going to do my laundry and my groceries?

Of course, having options during the day feels great and makes us feel more free. But making all these decisions every single day takes our brain a lot of energy, while they don’t necessarily make our day much better. At the end of the day, did making wearing a blue sweater instead of a red one make that much of a difference? Did having chicken for lunch instead of fish make you really happy?

When you look at the bigger picture, these choices are actually not worth turning on your brain for and just lead to decision fatigue. This is why really successful people usually eliminate this type of ‘small decisions’ during their day. Have you ever wondered why Steve Jobs always wore the same black turtle neck?

One way to incorporate this trick into your life (without getting really bored) is to decide at least on a category of food for every part of your day, or to limit the choices. For example, I always either have oatmeal or a green smoothie for breakfast. A way to make your outfit choices easier is to make a capsule wardrobe: this way, it doesn’t matter what you pick from your closet – it all matches. Planning ahead and applying the same structure in every day also helps. Then you don’t have to decide on your next to-do’s, as they are already planned out.

Keep an open mind

As human beings, we also spend a lot of unnecessary energy on judging, trying to comprehend, and making sense of people and events. Even though this is in our nature (and was once essential for survival), in modern day life where we don’t have many threats, judgement and understanding is very often unnecessary. We don’t have to understand everyone and everything – as long as we somewhat understand what matters to us. We don’t have to know everything or have an opinion on things that do not affect our daily lives.

I know, it is not in our nature to leave spaces blank and to say ‘I don’t know and I don’t have to’. However, getting used to this state of mind – state of life I would even say – does come with a lot of peace, and a lot of important brain energy left to do other things.

So stay open, don’t judge, and keep your attention on what’s really worth your focus. Everything else will do just fine – even without your brain wrapped around it.

Use your excitement and inspiration

The next tip is to listen to your feelings of excitement and inspiration in every moment. If you have a task that you really don’t feel like doing, don’t stress on it and spend hours and hours struggling to get it done. Decide that this is not the moment in a very early stage, and feel that this really is the moment later that day, the next day, or the next week.

This way, you will waste a lot less energy on the same tasks, and you will also find it way easier to do and more exciting. If the burden of starting at all is what’s keeping you from doing the task and what’s taking up all your energy, read this blog to make that easier.

Of course, not every thing on your list will some day excite you if you just wait for inspiration. Some things just need to be done. In that case, use the moment right before the deadline (where you can do it on the adrenaline provided by time-pressure) or wait for a moment where you don’t like doing it, but don’t hate doing it either; a moment of indifference.

When you use the right moments to do the right things, and make these decisions fast – based on initial excitement/inspiration and intuition – you will learn that certain tasks or problems take up less energy than before. Because you are basically taking your brain’s easiest way out. You will also see that feeling whether or not this is the right moment to use your energy, will become a easier after doing it more often.

After eliminating some trivial choices, accepting that I don’t have to know or understand everything, and picking the right moments, I have found that I have more inspiration and good ideas than before. At work and in my private life, I just feel more calm yet energised during the day, and I’m more aware of where I want my focus to be.

Let me know if you try these tips, and if you feel the same way!