#31: Energy Givers vs. Energy Takers 🔋🪫

not enough time is not an excuse

Now that I operate on my own schedule, I’ve started to pay closer attention to how I feel day after day, week after week. Without a set workweek (or weekend) to follow, every day is a blank canvas and has an equal potential to be stoke-inducing or lethargically bland. I’m grateful that (at least right now) even on my bad days, the dominant emotion is apathy rather than depression or anger. But it’s actually the “meh” days that spook me a bit because they represent time without meaningfulness. I haven’t cracked the code yet, but I’ve realized that my best days are when one thing flows to the next and I feel like I did everything and my bad days are when I feel like I did nothing (key word = feel).

On those days that felt off, I didn’t literally do nothing - I just didn’t do all the things I wanted to. I wondered what was getting in the way and inevitably stumbled upon the productivity gurus touting “5 Key Steps to Increase Your Productivity by 200%”. This kind of click-bait exists because there’s demand for it. We think we need to extract as much value out of every second via 2x speed podcasts, cold showers, and setting our alarm for 5am. We seek out this type of advice because we assume there’s not enough time when the real constraint is energy.

I used to measure the quality of my days based on how much free time I had. Back when I had a full-time job, if I had a relatively chill work day, then I would have a few hours to maybe get a workout in, grab dinner with friends, and maybe some downtime for Youtube or Netflix. The bad days were when I had to work more and as a result, had less time in my control. Based on the free time barometer, weekends were obviously the best days.

Now that I’m not constrained to a traditional workweek, my relationship with time has changed. I still work though. My definition of work went from working on projects that I didn’t choose with people I didn’t choose to work with to things that I actually care about. There have been great days where I worked the entire day and even skipped meals. But there have also been days where I didn’t have to do anything and those days kinda sucked. The quality of my days used to be tightly correlated with how much I had to work, but now I actually enjoy most days that I work. With full control over my time, I’ve realized that time is no longer the right metric - energy is.

Energy in 2x2

Energy is hard to discuss because it’s so abstract, contextual, and personalized. What gives you energy may not give me energy and vice versa, but what is universal is that we would all like to have an abundance of energy everyday. At first glance, energy might be perceived as the physical readiness to go out for a run or crank out a heavy workload, but from my experience, it’s not always true. There’s a difference between energy and effort. Skiing in untouched powder on a crisp bluebird day demands a high level of physical effort from me, but often leaves me with more energy than before which makes me feel pumped up to tackle the world, dream bigger, and keep skiing of course. Inversely, there are plenty of things that don’t require much effort, but drain energy, such as laying on the couch on TikTok or waiting in lines.

Energy Givers result in blissful moments that bring us joy and keep us present. Things that give life more vitality. Energy Takers are the exact opposite. They drain us of our life source and pull us out of the present. What gives us energy isn’t directly proportional to time and effort spent. We feel the most energized when we’re nourishing the soul by authentically pursuing our true desires.

It’s not just activities, but also people

Energy Givers and Takers also come in human form. Energy is contagious and people feed off each other’s energy, whether it’s positively or negatively charged. That’s why the only time you’ll find me screaming lyrics and jumping up and down frantically is when everyone around me is doing the exact same at a concert.

Some people take energy through apathy, pessimism, and inattention. Others give energy through passion, enthusiasm, and presence. Finding these Energy Takers is a worthy challenge unique to the individual. It’s all subjective though. Is a friend who wants to go out the bars an Energy Giver or Energy Taker? It depends. Do I like drinking and want to socialize? Or am I trying to avoid alcohol and catch up on sleep? Everyone’s energy gains and drains in different ways just like how rest is different for everyone. As someone who’s a bit more introverted, I tend to rest by spending time alone and avoiding social media. Then again, my extroverted friend Joe seeks out time with friends to recharge:

I often am drained after a week of nonstop consulting work and thus decide to lay low on weekends to catch up on sleep and cook meals at home. My intention is recharging, but the entire ritual is caused by a job that wears me out. Resultingly, as an extrovert, when I miss out on weekend social time, I feel even more drained than I would before.

Through living in new places, making new friends, and quitting my job, I know that I’m currently in a period of rapid change. One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with is recognizing that I may be growing in a different direction than some of my friends. Not growing better or faster. In a different direction. As a result, as what we value starts to diverge, an Energy Giver may now be an Energy Taker. The feeling may be mutual since sustainable relationships rely on bidirectional energy giving.

How to get more energy

It starts with examining what gives energy versus takes it away. Since we’ve established that energy is the primary constraint rather than time, auditing our activities through the lens of energy matches the objective of maximizing energy with the proper unit of measurement. How you go about figuring this out is entirely up to you. It could be as tactical as color-coding past calendar events with green for energy giving and red for energy taking or as intuitive as going off purely by vibes.

For both activities and people, it’s easier and more intuitive to find those Energy Givers because positive, feel-good vibes tend to lie at the surface. On the other hand, I’ve found Energy Takers harder to detect because they’re often subtly buried behind our consciousness. It’s as if I’m walking around with an IV drip laced with a mild sedative but the bag is behind my head so it’s not in my field of vision.

Locating the Energy Takers requires careful precision and intentional reflection. With a magnifying glass held over my sleep schedule, I realized doomscrolling TikTok (followed by the inferior Instagram Reels after deleting TikTok) was a clear Energy Taker. With people, I realized that catching up with some was draining my energy because after going through the usual pleasantries and “So, what’s new?” type of questions, I had run out of things to talk about. Not because I didn’t have things on my mind or because they didn’t have stories to tell. We didn’t have the shared values to serve as the conduit for our energy.

Do more of what gives, do less of what drains

A lot of self help advice is easy on paper and hard in real life. This is one of those. Spending more time with Energy Givers is relatively straightforward. Whether it’s a newfound hobby or specific person, knowing that time with them generates energy is sufficient in justification to keep doubling down. An increase in Energy Givers requires a proportional decrease in Energy Takers. This is where it gets tricky because an Energy Taker (like a job) may be tightly bound to our sense of identity and leaving can often feel outside of our control. Even after the diagnosis of energy draining, finding the remedy requires time and planning. At some point, my last job shifted from Energy Giver to Energy Taker, but it still took me ten months of decision paralysis to actually quit.

With Energy Takers in people form, it’s difficult to knowingly and consciously decide to put less effort into a relationship. I’ve had to consciously stop pouring energy into some of my friendships that used to be vibrant, but are no longer so. Reaching this level of clarity feels harsh. But if I go beyond these initial feelings and am honest with myself, it becomes clear what’s necessary. Removing energy draining people is two types of respect; self-respect because it protects you, but also respect for them because showing up stiff with indifference is wasting their time too.

The Final Frontier

Hedonic adaptation is the tendency for our happiness to gradually stabilize despite major positive or negative events. Both the lottery winner and the car crash amputee converge towards the same level of happiness. I got used to sharing a tiny dorm room with two other freshmen just as easily as the 5-star hotels during work trips later on. Something similar happens with energy. Eventually, we reluctantly accept the major Energy Takers in our life which correspond to a ceiling in how much energy we have each day. We adapt to the negative forces in our life and forget that almost everything is malleable. Just like how Energy Givers can become Energy Takers as we change, the reverse transformation is possible too. Sometimes we’re able to change the framing or thing itself from Energy Taker to Energy Giver. It could be changing teams at work or changing the subject in conversation with someone. But if you can’t change what drains, then you might need to figure out how to leave it.

I’m still figuring out how to walk away from Energy Takers. After all, it took me ten months to quit my job. It’s also tough knowing that some of my current friends and I will diverge as we grow in separate ways. The term “old friends” implies that the relationship blossomed temporarily and is no longer as vibrant. Depending on how you see it, that could be quite sad or beautiful. It’s sad that we can’t keep our existing friendships and just add new friends into the mix like rolling a snowball down a hill or collecting all the Pokemon. At the same time, there’s a time and place for everything and the warmth of nostalgia is only present in the absence of something else. With energy, the goal is to cultivate what gives, eliminate what takes, and hopefully be in a position to give a bit to others.

Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. - Jerzy Gregorek