I find that some of my most effective work days are also the ones I end with the most energy. Which conflicts with the idea of ‘spending’ energy. I find going for a walk, writing, and exploring (in a very expansive sense) restorative. When time feels scarce I often neglect these, considering my focus to be better spent on what is right in front of me. But these activities reinforce confidence in execution. They establish a certain cadence. On reflection, they have a tendency to restore more energy than they require.

The trap of ‘determining your own schedule’ is that you have an additional degree of freedom in every decision. Time feels fluid rather than fixed, and activation energy relies entirely on you. I’m thinking about this since hesitancy here has an outsized impact on the work, and this is least apparent when active intervention is most useful. Think: projects requiring attention, decisions needing input, messages piling up. My natural response is to embrace these head-on. And this is fine when it works!

However, some of these benefit from passive problem-solving. Or a more batched approach. The distinction is rarely obvious, and immediate engagement can actually impede effectiveness. This can be how a snowball turns into an avalanche, because a transition to ‘addressing everything as it hits my desk’ opens the door for ’everything’ to compound rapidly and outpace even the most diligent effort. A scoreboard is immensely helpful for making progress visible, but it eats away at confidence if it only ever demonstrates how behind you are.

It comes down to asking key questions: ‘what game are you playing?’ and, at a higher level, ‘what game do you want to play?’ It’s these responses that offer an opportunity to balance the work and truly create value, instead of getting stuck. Clarity here enables a game plan and scoreboard to emerge that inspire action and provide the leverage to decline the avalanche in the first place.