If you always feel like you don’t have time, maybe time was never the problem
When I was a medical student, I often fell into a state of exhaustion and could only wish: “If only there were more than 24 hours in a day.”
Because at that stage, I always felt that my time was seriously lacking:
- The stressful exams keep coming one after another with no end in sight.
- The amount of work required to learn is piled up like a mountain.
- The clinical internship schedule is packed at hospitals.
- Scientific research projects need to be completed.
- A variety of extracurricular activities to beautify your resume.
- Along with that is an invisible pressure urging yourself to continuously move forward, because you feel like if you slow down even a little bit, you will be left behind by others.
At that time, I naively thought that people were better than me simply because they had more energy, could do more things, and could handle pressure better than me.
Now, having become an official doctor, the actual work cycle is even more intense. There are days when I am surrounded by medical examinations, completing electronic medical records, responding to patient messages, dealing with paperwork from insurance companies, meetings, teaching, and not to mention the responsibility of taking care of my family and children.
And in that cycle, I realized a very naked truth: This life will never naturally become less busy.
If we just passively wait until “when we have more free time”, we will probably have to wait forever. The biggest shift that will completely change your life is not learning how to cram more time, but deeply understanding the principle: The core problem has never been time management. The issue is personal energy management.
1. Thinking shift: Stop managing time, manage energy
All of us, from a medical student to a leading expert, are given a fair share of a fixed amount of time, 24 hours a day. However, not everyone possesses the same level of energy, high concentration or sharp thinking ability during those 24 hours.
Reality has proven: there are days when I only need to focus on working for 2 hours but the results are extremely surprising. On the contrary, there are days when I sit idly in front of the computer screen for 6 hours straight and my mind is completely blank, unable to think of anything valuable.
That’s when I realized: Trying to cram dozens of extra tasks into a crowded schedule is essentially the same as trying to force a phone with only 5% battery left to have 12 more applications running in the background at the same time. The machine will shut down, and so will your body.
2. 5 Lessons to optimize work performance without burning out
Below are 5 thinking things about personal development that I always wish someone had told me 10 years ago:
Lesson 1: Being busy is not synonymous with work efficiency
Being busy doesn’t mean you’re progressing or moving up. Look at a hamster running tirelessly on a toy wheel all day, it is extremely busy and exhausting, but in the end it still stands still in the same original position.
There are many people who feel dizzy and tired every day, but when they look back at the past 6 months or 1 year, their lives are still at a standstill, without any major progress. The core reason is because they are being swept away by other people’s urgent matters, instead of proactively devoting resources to the things that are truly important to their lives.
Lesson 2: When there is a lack of clear goals, everything becomes urgent
When you don’t set yourself a specific value system and priority goals, your psychology will assume that everything is important:
- Is there a message notification bell? Open it immediately and reply immediately.
- Got a favor from a colleague? Accept the invitation to do it for you.
- Did a trivial incident arise? Rush to deal with it immediately.
Then at the end of the day, when your body is exhausted of energy, you are shocked to realize that you have not completed any items that are truly valuable for your long-term goals. If you do not clearly define the map of where you are going, you will easily be turned into a chess piece living on someone else’s schedule and serving other people’s goals.
Lesson 3: Wasting peak energy on low-value things
Taking the time when your mind is most alert and alert during the day to surf social networks, using your best energy to check text messages, or spending the golden hour focused on solving trivial tasks… is essentially no different from spending money to hire a Michelin-starred chef just to boil a package of instant noodles.
Those odd jobs are not completely unnecessary. However, they never deserve to consume your most precious energy resource. Know how to distribute your energy wisely.
Lesson 4: It’s not about trying to do more, it’s about choosing to do better
This is a thought-orienting lesson that the more I experience it, the more deeply I feel. Not every job that appears in the world is worth your time and effort.
According to the classic Pareto principle: 80% of outstanding results often come from only 20% of the most correct and core actions.
Therefore, the strategic question you need to ask yourself every day is not: “How can I fit more work into today?”. The right question is: “Which action will truly make a difference and bring the greatest boost to my goals?”
Lesson 5: Proactive energy conservation is a vital priority
Accepting chronic lack of sleep, eating erratically, forcing the nervous system to always be stretched like a string and refusing to take time to rest to recover… is absolutely not a sign of hard work or ambition.
That is essentially self-abuse and pushing yourself to the limit of exhaustion.
It’s like you want your car to run fast, reach maximum speed, but you stubbornly refuse to stop for gas. No matter how expensive that car is, it will soon turn into a motionless pile of scrap metal in the middle of the road.
3. What I want to send
In the past, I used to wish a day had more than 24 hours. Now absolutely not. Because I have understood the nature of the performance game:
Peak performance never comes from trying to force yourself to do more. It comes from the ability to proactively protect and devote all of your purest energy to the most important things.
What do you think is the difference between time management and energy management? Are you accidentally turning yourself into a busy hamster on the wheel of life? Please leave a comment below to share your perspective with me.
If you feel this article brings useful values to your own development path, please share it widely with your friends and colleagues!
Dr. Christina Nguyen
Phoenix Medical Academy
