At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor

by Carey Nieuwhof

Why Most of Us Secretly Resent the Life and Career We’ve So Carefully Built What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope. —George Eliot

As I studied top performers, I realized they moved way past time management and were highly focused on managing not just their time but their energy. Usually they had one thing in common: they did what they were best at when they were at their best. In other words, they worked in their area of principal gifting and passion when their energy was at its highest during the day. And as a result, they got their top priorities accomplished day in and day out. I

After I started doing what I was best at when I was at my best, I saw our congregation grow to three times the size it was before I burned out worked through the funk in my marriage to find a place where my wife and I felt genuinely in love again published five books in eleven years launched a leadership podcast and started a blog that now reaches millions of leaders a year traveled about a hundred days a year, speaking around the world and investing in leaders started a company that produces resources that help people thrive in life and leadership discovered three hobbies I love began exercising lost twenty pounds started getting a full night’s sleep pretty much every night enjoyed more time off than I ever had in my adult life spent more time with my family than ever while being more effective at

Too many people build lives they want to escape from. If your busy season has no ending, it’s not a season—it’s your life. Workaholism is the most rewarded addiction in our society.

Everybody gets three primary assets every day: time, energy, and priorities. When you don’t have an intentional strategy, then time, energy, and priorities work against you, not for you. You can protect your time, prioritize your family, and still crush it at work. Constant stress denies many people permission to dream or to accomplish what they’re called to do.

I regularly evaluate whether I’m thriving in five key areas of my life: spiritual, relational, emotional, financial, and physical. Whenever I do that, what results is margin and greater health in all five aspects of life.

The Stress Spiral happens when you let yourself live with unfocused time, unleveraged energy, and hijacked priorities. It leaves you feeling overwhelmed, overcommitted, and overworked. Unfocused time happens when you do your most important things randomly, squeezing them into leftover slots or sometimes not tackling them at all. The reason other people don’t value your time is because you don’t. Unleveraged energy springs from failing to cooperate with your personal energy levels as they rise and fall over the course of the day. Hijacked priorities happen when you allow other people to determine what you get done. The Thrive Cycle focuses your time, leverages your energy, and realizes your priorities so you can be at your best. It ensures you live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. Focusing your time helps you get more accomplished in less time. Rather than competing with your energy levels, cooperate with them. When you leverage your energy, you’ll realize you’re capable of producing not just more work but much better work than you thought possible. Calendaring your energy zones, priorities, and key relationships will move everything you’ve learned from intention to reality.

You are at your most kind when you have the most margin. Living in the Thrive Cycle will free up between three hours a week and three hours a day of newly productive time. That could amount to more than a thousand additional productive hours each year.

Most people who accomplish significant things aren’t balanced people; they’re passionate people. Balanced people do “off” well, but being “off” isn’t of much use if you have things you want to do that require you to be “on.”

The key to living passionately is to focus your time on what is truly most important to you and to choose to do those things wholeheartedly, with enthusiasm. Stress makes you skim. Weariness wears you out,

Embracing passion also means you’ll have to limit the things you decide to do. Thriving calls for a wholehearted embrace not of more but of less, done well. Of a few highly focused priorities you are passionate about. As Greg McKeown said, “I can do anything but not everything.”1

Most people who accomplish significant things aren’t balanced people; they’re passionate people. Balanced people don’t change the world. Passionate people do.

Most people have three to five deeply productive hours in a day.

The more naturally gifted you are at something, the easier it is to spend less time on it, not more. Why? Because you can do a good job without even trying.

The tyranny of the everyday usually gets in the way of developing your gift into a high-level skill set.

Instead, imagine using your most productive hours to develop your gift, not just use it. To really study and improve it until you become the best you can be at what you do. A highly developed skill set is what distinguishes the pros from everyone else. And because you’re doing something that as a rule you love to do, those hours become synergistic. You end up more energized, not less. Your energy and passion get renewed daily.

do the opposite of what most of us naturally do. Instead of pushing your most important work and the work you’re best at into your Yellow and Red Zones—the desert of your workweek—do what you’re best at when you’re at your best. That’s your Green Zone. When you leverage it, my guess is it will become the most treasured hours of your day, whether you’re at work or at home.

Impact refers to those things that, when done, make the biggest difference, sometimes in the moment but often in the long term. The more naturally gifted you are at something, the easier it is to spend less time on it, not more. You cheat your gift when you use it but never take the time to develop it. Use your most productive hours to develop your gift, not just use it.

Being around is no guarantee that anything relationally significant will happen, but not being around is an absolute guarantee that nothing relationally significant will happen.

I delayed some of my hopes and dreams for work because my deepest hopes and dreams were at home with my family. I didn’t really start speaking on the road until I was forty. I didn’t publish my first book until I was forty-four and my kids were in high school. I launched my podcast when I was forty-nine, and I didn’t start traveling as widely as I do now until we became empty nesters and could do it together without leaving any kids behind.

What happened on that day is my priorities got hijacked. Just like yours do. And because we live in the real world, even when you embrace and master the Thrive Cycle, the human race, human nature, and gravity itself will conspire against you every day to thieve your productivity.

If you look at it honestly, the “oh my goodness, what happened to my day?” phenomenon you and I experience is not really a mystery. You simply spent your day reacting to everything that came your way. That’s exactly how your priorities get hijacked. That’s how you work all day and accomplish nothing—or at least nothing you planned to do.

Your priorities get hijacked in three significant ways: by tasks you didn’t prioritize strategically, by your own tendency to get distracted (I am so guilty of this), and of course, by people. We’ll devote a chapter to each of these challenges.

If you really had to audit your days, how much of what you spend your time on is neither urgent nor important? Cue the awkward silence. Yup. Way. Too. Much. All this stuff that wasn’t on your list got done. The real value—your best work, your greatest contribution—got squashed, ignored, deferred, or squeezed in. Almost all the things left undone are important but not urgent.

When everything either seems important or presents itself as important, how do you know what really matters most? As you may know, years ago, Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes.

Expand the time you spend on high-yield activities. The goal, then, becomes to spend 80 percent of your time on the 20 percent of activities and tasks that produce 80 percent of your results. As the founder of a leadership company, I’ve realized that our team and the leaders we serve have the most success when I focus on five things: casting crystal-clear vision creating and delivering great content crafting a healthy organizational culture keeping our top staff and clients aligned and relationally connected ensuring we have the financial resources we need for our mission

my question to you is, What are the 20 percent of things you do that produce 80 percent of the results? This is a critical question to answer because it will help you further refine how you should spend your Green Zone time. When you spend 80 (or 100) percent of your Green Zone on the things that produce 80 percent of your results, your ability to accomplish significant things soars in your life and in your leadership.

Without a strategy for saying no, you default to yes, and your life vaporizes with other people’s priorities being realized rather than yours.

You don’t have to be elitist either. I believe one mark of great leadership is to help people who probably can’t help you back. So take the time to do that for no other reason than it’s the right thing to do. Do an event that doesn’t fit your normal profile, and decide to do it for free. Or you may leave a spot open strategically to meet with entry-level employees or clients. Most of the great CEOs and other leaders I know do just that.

How to Stop Interrupting Yourself The greatest weariness comes from work not done. —Eric Hoffer

opposite of distraction isn’t focus. The opposite of distraction is traction, which comes from a Latin word meaning “to draw or pull,” like a tractor, horse, or truck pulls things forward.2 To put it simply, the reason you don’t have traction on the goals and priorities you’ve set for yourself is that you often get distracted.

the ability to do deep work in our distracted culture is both increasingly rare and increasingly valuable. The opposite of deep work, Newport said, is shallow work. Shallow work is “noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted.”5 Your Yellow and Red Zones are great places for that. And there is, inevitably, shallow work in all our lives. But your Green Zone? That’s something worth protecting and optimizing.

The quality of your work is determined by the quality of your thinking. And high-quality thinking is incompatible with constant output.

Neuroscience increasingly shows that physical activity (walking, running, cycling) allows the subconscious mind to generate better ideas. This is why, stereotypically, you have some of your best ideas in the shower. It’s when your mind isn’t intentionally engaged that your subconscious spits out the solution to the problem you were trying to solve two days before.

The people who want your time are rarely the people who should have your time. And the people who should get most of your premium time rarely ask you for it. Keep that dynamic going, and the people who most drain you will be the people you spend most of your time with. And the people who most energize you? Yep, you’ll spend the least amount of time with them.

the Pareto principle looks like this: spend most of your time with the people who produce most of your results and the least amount of time with the people who don’t. In leadership, that typically means you should spend most of your time meeting with your top performers. In your personal life, spend 80 percent of your time with the people you care most about (family, close friends, mentors), leaving 20 percent for others. There are some real benefits to spending 80 percent of your time on your inner circle. To begin with, your top and closest people will be thrilled you did. Second, you’ll be energized when you spend time with them, as will they. Ditto with true friendship. It’s mutual. And as you spend more time together, you’ll develop deeper connections, overcome hurdles, and enjoy the life you’ve been given together.

The online content I produce gets accessed over 1.5 million times a month, so I get a lot of messages. I have a team that processes much of it, but I’m still engaged. I’ll spend ten to thirty minutes a day responding personally. My team does the rest, and then I’m free to be with my three to five and twelve to fifteen and occasionally with my 150. And, for the most part, I keep my sanity. If you’re going to reduce your stress and increase your joy, focusing on those smaller circles is key. So, let’s get really specific. Who are your best friends, your three to five? Who are your twelve to fifteen?

Blank space on your calendar is a trap. It looks like freedom, but it’s really jail disguised as liberty. The moment you think the white space on your calendar gives you freedom, disappointment is right around the corner. For all the reasons we’ve covered so far, there are a thousand things that will command your attention on any day that looks free and clear on your calendar. The most important things will get hijacked by urgent things you never planned on doing. You’ll be disappointed,

Moving to a fixed calendar—which we’ll call the Thrive Calendar—ties together everything we’ve learned so far and makes it work in your everyday life. Developing your own Thrive Calendar will protect your Green Zone, leverage your Yellow and Red Zones, and ensure that the things and people that matter to you are the things you spend your time on.

Blank calendars create all kinds of issues. On the one hand, they engender a deep and pervasive false hope. You think about how busy you are right now, but you look ahead to six months from now or even two weeks from now, see all the blank space, and think that relief is coming.

do your least energizing work when you’re least energetic

There are four key decisions for you to make when you design your Thrive Calendar: Decide what you will and won’t do within each zone. Decide whom you will and won’t meet with. Decide when you’ll do specific tasks within each zone. Decide where you’ll do your work, especially your Green Zone work.

The Thrive Cycle should leave you feeling totally different from how you would feel during that workout. Your life and leadership should feel easier, not harder. Sure, you’re making some tough calls (like saying no), but when the Thrive Cycle is working, you should see these markers: You’re accomplishing your priorities. You’re tackling your most important priorities because you scheduled them in advance, and you’re doing them when you’re at your best. You’re getting better at what you do. Because you’re developing your gift, not just using it, you’re seeing increasing returns on your investment of time in both your key tasks and your key relationships. Give yourself a few months for this one, but once you start getting some development reps in, you’ll feel a little like Hemingway: the more you do it, the easier it gets. You love meeting with people again. We’ve talked a lot about the challenges of meeting with people, but here’s what’s fun when the strategy is working: you’ll love meeting with people again. Because you’ve prioritized whom you need to meet with, meetings are mostly energizing. Everyone’s in the right place, and you’ve allotted each person the right time. You have time for yourself and your family. You’re no longer giving the things that matter most your leftover time and energy. Your family is getting some Green Zone time on your days off, and you’re going home on weekdays with energy left in the tank rather than feeling completely drained. You’re happier....

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. —Military Axiom

Because you’re not nearly as stressed, you’ll wonder whether you’re not living up to your potential. What if you’re slacking? Failing? Maybe you’re even lazy? You’ve lived stressed so long you don’t remember what unstressed feels like.

sheepishly feel like you need stress. You, uh, like stress. It’s validating. Am I right? Stress is a good bad word. Our culture hates stress yet thrives on it. As a result, the pullback toward stress is almost gravitational. Stress is a badge of honor in the hamster-wheel life everybody’s living.

If you anticipate the systemic change you’ll need to make, you’ll be far better off than if you just let the change happen and respond after or if you don’t respond at all and wonder where your peace of mind went. I know this may sound elemental, but so few people make anticipatory changes. Waiting until it happens often means forfeiting your peace and your productivity.

You can’t hire or hope your way out of overwhelm. Instead, you need to lead yourself out of it. Your agility is the cap on your ability. If you anticipate, instigate. Doing something before change happens is the best way to be ready when change happens.

The dopamine hits that progress generates are motivating, but character formation and growth are more deeply motivating. Doing what you’re best at when you’re at your best is to some extent about what you accomplish, but to a much deeper extent, it’s about creating the space you need to focus on who you’re becoming. Who you’re becoming is so much more important than what you’re doing.