5 Smarter Ways To Create More Energy Each Day

24 Hours.

That’s the same time that each of us gets each day. Yet some people seem to be able to achieve so much compared to others who can let days pass with little progress at all.

There’s often little we can do with certain elements in our day, and we all can get busy and distracted at times, and certainly tired. However, we all can find ways to create more energy each day. We may have to get a little creative, but it’s entirely possible if you adopt these 5 smart ways to create more energy each day.

1) Cut Down On Seeking Energy-Cutting Tactics

Now you are probably expecting another typical article on specific ways to save energy or boost energy each day, such as boost vitamin D intake, eat your greens, and ensure you exercise. Well, we are assuming this common knowledge is knowledge you already possess (and if not there’s a wealth of articles and sites out there dedicated to general health routines).

You may have realized by now that Richly Wills doesn’t focus on the obvious, we try to push our collective knowledge further by going deeper, or in this case, smarter.

So, one of the smartest things you can do is to simply stop using so much energy worrying about how to save energy.

We live in a world of moderate to pretty extreme comfort levels today. We are already preserving a lot more energy than when we had to actually learn how to read maps, sweat through hot, stinking, industry-harming jobs, and fight with car steering wheels just to keep them straight.

Today, we have become a globe of consumers and often the energy we consume is the fault of our own buying habits. We end up thinking we need more to fit into this fast-changing world when the opposite is often always the truth.

Learning to cut down on what we think we need is a very good place to start.

Just thinking about all the things we think we need to do, or are pushed by an attention economy towards doing, just saps our energy before our day has even got started.

The irony is, even when we are looking for ways to create more energy each day, we often just want an easy answer that requires little effort to digest, but even this energy is then just wasted as we don’t actually implement it.

If we spent more time focusing on being less busy, rather than on how to cut corners or over-automate our busy lives in order to find more energy, we might find we have more energy to use in those more important areas.

Today, we spend an awful lot of energy trying to be everything to everybody, as we subconsciously seek to inflate our ego to be heard and validated. If we stop feeding our ego we’d find that we don’t need to seek energy-saving tactics half as much.

2) Avoid Needless Energy Consumption Early On

When you wake up, what is the first thing you do?

Be honest. How long does it take until you look at your phone?

If you are like most people today then not long. There are many of us who will intend to check our phones just for a quick second but then end up becoming phone ‘sweepers and swipers’ very quickly.

A sweeper is someone who can’t resist tidying up their phone constantly, ensuring all notifications are either read or cleared, any alert or badge is checked, and so forth. A swiper is someone who just has to check that next feed and swipes along (subconsciously fishing for likes) but once sucked in finds it hard to leave.

That quick check first thing in the morning is one of the worst things you can do for your energy levels as you enter ‘instant-draining’ mode. It’s not just your phone battery that drains quickly, you do too if not careful.

There’s the saying ‘eat the frog’ first thing in the morning, and it’s a good rule to live by. This means doing the hardest task on your mind as soon as you can.

This might make people feel as though they won’t have any energy left later on but the contrary is actually true. Firstly, you are using your nightly energy stores to good use, in something that is more meaningful to you. Secondly, the effect of completing a goal early on gives you a sense of relief (rather than anxiety in not doing the task and putting it off) and you actually build energy from doing it.

This is like running a sprint. You would think anaerobic exercise would drain you of energy, but it actually increases your body’s capacity for holding and utilizing energy.

If you start your day with meaningless tasks, just because they are easy, then you will only be wasting energy you can use in other places that need it.

3) Have Fewer Things Open

Do you really need 7 gadgets, 68 tabs open at a time, and 5 social media accounts? Do you really need to address your 213 emails? Maybe it’s time to declutter our digital life, and consider a digital detox?

The digital world was meant to make our lives easier. Instead, we find we can’t just forget something. There’s a trail left everywhere. Companies use tracking software and bots to read into user habits to try and win your sale over the competition.

That one time you accidentally clicked on a link for some pair of shoes now leads towards a flurry of activity towards your direction to subliminally be pushed towards buying something else you don’t really even want.

Multiply this with every click you’ve ever done and you can see how the attention economy not just gets your attention, but distracts you from where you’d actually want your attention to be (leading you to energy-cutting tactics again, which then just fills up the plate with more tempting grub).

One way to combat wasting so much energy is to shut down the overwhelming stimulus.

Our brains simply were not developed for the information overload we have today (one of the 15 biggest modern challenges of our time). It’s no wonder we are always tired. We may blame it on long hours at work, and that plays a part, but quitting your job (at least immediately) might not be an option (plus you are always better off trying to create a job – here’s why).

We might even suggest it’s because we always have stuff to do at work, with endless task lists, and we would be right there too (and need to also apply step 1 to cut this), but the biggest culprit is how we just aren’t conditioned for such busy, always-on lifestyles.

Therefore, we need to shut down the stimulus as much as we can. Remove the source that can lead to being overwhelmed. At work, this might feel impossible but remember our brains can only process one task at a time anyway, so having 5 laptop screens or 68 tabs open at once gives little extra benefit to you at all, and just takes away your focus from having just one or two things open.

Hiding tabs and files is your friend here. You can always reopen them when you need them (you often don’t).

Simply ask yourself. ‘Does this really need to be done?’. If not, bin it, delete it for good. Don’t recycle for later.

This can apply to your personal life too. You don’t need to sign up for everything to keep engaged in what is current. It’s actually more productive to take a step back and do nothing for a little while (which allows whitespacing to occur), than it is to think you need to fit everything into your free daily hours.

Spontaneous experiences are far more rewarding in life anyway than planned experiences.

4) Stop Being A Sheep

This may sound harsh but a lot of our energy is wasted on focusing on things that really don’t even matter to us if we were truly honest with ourselves.

This whole modern obsession with celebrity culture and influencers (something that with inevitably change in the future – the popularity era vs the competence era), can create this kind of dogma or vicarious living mentality whereby people expend a lot of energy trying to keep up with what someone else is doing, in order to stay relevant amongst their peers.

While it’s completely understandable (and necessary) for people to want to fit into social groups, especially younger people, there’s not enough focus given towards what people actively want to create in themselves, and instead, so much time and energy is therefore wasted on pop culture ideals.

To stop a sheep mentality is a bit of a catch-22 as it takes energy to go against the grain and think more for yourself at first, but it’s meaningful energy consumption rather than needless energy consumption. The result (as seen in step 2) is increased energy, not wasted, expelled energy.

5) If Tired. Sleep

While of course, this doesn’t apply at any time. You can’t really do this in the middle of a meeting (even if sometimes tempting), and you certainly should never do this voluntarily when driving. You should absolutely get more sleep.

Whilst this might fit into the obvious category such as exercising more, eating well, and meditating, this one makes the smart list because it’s simply THE best way to boost your energy.

The science as to why we need sleep is only recently unearthing, but there’s no denying the many health benefits sleeping affords us, and the many health deficits a lack of it can take away from us.

It comes as a surprise just how many people skip or shorten their sleep. It’s largely because of years of bad motivational advice on the best ways to get ahead in life.

Skimping on sleep might sound like you are giving yourself extra hours to be more productive, and there’s a fair share of successful people who barely get 6 hours of sleep a night, but their version of success isn’t really healthy, and there’s really no point having a palace to live in with a prestigious title if you are going to die young of heart failure anyway.

RECOMMENDED: Follow Matthew Walker’s excellent ‘Why We Sleep’ Audiobook from Audible for great insight into sleep and dreams.

The quality of your life is what matters, and when we are on a search for more energy in life, what we are really saying is ‘how can I improve the quality of my life’. After all, a lot of our energy use is spent on things that simply cover up our insecurities and displeasure at our own life.

The number of hours spent scrolling phones or watching the Gogglebox may seek to tell a story of free will to search and watch in comfort to our heart’s content, but the reality is that we have often succumbed to wasting energy on easy activities as they appear to not consume energy, but they do.

We would be better served simply sleeping instead of watching that next episode. The health benefits leading into the next day would be a lot more potentially rewarding towards using that extra energy wisely (providing we utilize these 5 smart energy creating ideas).

Simple Ways To Create More Energy Each Day

If you are also looking for more general ways to save and create more energy each day then here’s some ideas:

• Eat a balanced diet.
• Get regular exercise.
• Drink more water.
• Cut down on caffeine.
• Get good sleep.
• Ditch the alcohol.
• Address allergies.
• Reduce stress.

You can find more on trusted health sites like Healthline and for instant energy boosts try WebMD.

This article is part of a mini-series that includes 5 Smarter Ways To Create More Time Each Day, 5 Smarter Ways To Create More Space Each Day, 5 Smarter Ways To Create More Happiness Each Day, and 5 Smarter Ways To Create More Money Each Day.