In his book “Art of War,” Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and writer, included an interesting quote, which is an excellent metaphor for the beginning of 2020. He wrote, “No plan can survive contact with the enemy.” Boxing champion Mike Tyson put it differently in his glory days. When asked by a journalist about what plan he goes to the ring with, he replied, “Everyone has a plan until they get in the snout.”

The year 2020 gave us a punch that we will remember for a long time. It showed us where we could put in our plans and long-term strategies. Proved that planning is not worth much more than… tossing a coin.

You can, of course, be offended by the world and the laws that govern it. But you can also stop, and ask: if the success of my plan depends so much on tossing a coin, then… what strategy to take to achieve as much as possible in this competition? The answer is: if you want to throw away as many heads as possible, you have to toss a coin as often as possible. And this leads us to an issue that I want to talk to you about: ENERGY.

Energy for action is your most valuable resource. It pushes you to complete the project. Every day you make a series of decisions about what you want to use this energy for. What do you need to know about this energy? Two things. It is a limited and renewable resource. What does it mean?

First of all, it means that your energy depletes. Ask the people who go to work every morning full of power if they shuffle their feet to bed in the evening. If the above sentence describes you, I have bad news – you do it wrong. Energy for action is a renewable resource, but you don’t just need it at work. And if work is only a source of energy depletion, which you then charge during sleep or other tasks outside work, your life is like a constant sine wave. It is not healthy. Not only that, but it also translates into the fact that the job – even the one you love – begins to be associated only with the drainage of energy.

The situation gets even more complicated when you start working from home. Something that was previously a smooth sine wave (eight hours of sleep – energy up, eight hours at work – energy down, eight hours after work – energy also slightly down, because you have family and responsibilities), now it becomes a series of chaotic ups and downs.

I remember meeting at one of the companies for which I provided services for over three years. At the end of cooperation, a large group of people thanked me primarily for the energy I put into the partnership.

In the next article, I will talk about my method of dealing with energy drainage.

Michał Nikołajuk