The Need to Conserve Energy Saving Is Not Just Physical.

If you live a life that demands mental energy, you need to learn how to utilize it.

Have you ever looked at a pet dog and wondered, why are they just sleeping away most of their time? If you visit a zoo or even a national park where animals roam freely, most animals, especially predators, will be sleeping or just lying around chillin. Some might wonder (I certainly do) why they chose to do that over enjoying the freedom or just simply run around for fun.

The reason is quite straightforward. The wilderness is a game of survival. For a predator to survive, they need to hunt. It is not very easy to catch a deer that can run 80 km/h every day. It requires a quite significant amount of energy, and they do not come across every day. Therefore, for the simple reason of conserving their energy for survival, most predators prefer to sleep or rest the majority of their time instead of just wasting it away.

As humans, we managed to get out of that system a long time ago. For the larger majority of the population, hunting for food is not a necessity anymore. If you are reading this from your own device, I can most certainly say that you are not someone who worries about how to survive your next meal. Our lives have changed but we still sometimes prefer sleeping our day away. That is because the speed of natural evolution is still catching up to the speed of change in human lives. So next time when you feel guilty about sleeping too much, blame evolution.

Right now, we’d rather spend some time of the day wasting our excess physical energy away to stay healthy instead of the other way around. As the role of a human changed from being physically demanding to mental demand. The organs that demand energy also changed from limbs, heart, and lungs to the brain. According to Gallup’s research on burnout with the help of 7500 employees, over 23% have said they feel burnout more often than not. Another 44% have admitted that they feel burned out sometimes. In summary, almost about 7 people out of 10 feel burn out. Basically, you must be extremely lucky not to feel burned out at all.

While stress can be utilized in a good way to keep you motivated and focused on work, a feeling of burnout or going through an actual burnout has no positive impact whatsoever. It can lead you down a path of mental anomalies and even end up costing your life. Therefore, as people who use mental power to make a living, you must pay enough attention to conserve the energy you have and revive whatever you lost.

This might be the very first time where you look at this idea in this way. But similar to your muscles in your limbs to lift weights or move fast, similar to your lung’s ability to supply enough oxygen to keep it running, and similar to your heart’s limitations on pumping enough blood, your brain too has its own thresholds. Just like any other organ in the body, your brain too can get tired. However, if your arms can’t lift anymore it has a clear way of signaling that to you, but when your brain is tried, the signals you get about it can be a little confusing.

As people who find a living through the use of mental energy, you must pay enough attention to conserving what you have.

You might find yourself continuously getting distracted and very difficult to focus. You could experience mood swings that drop down your overall mood. Sometimes you may not get any of the above, the signals might come in a physical form, where you get constant headaches or intestinal issues that has no direct visible relation. As a result, you tend to treat those isolated issues instead of figuring out what causes them in the first place.

The intention of this story is merely to facilitate that change in mind to look at your brain as an organ that is prone to fatigue. I believe this short read enabled you to look at your energy forms from a fresh perspective. Finding means to keep it up and running at a decent rate is an in-depth discussion that needs the attention of a professional.

One such amazing individual who pioneered the art of mindful practice of mind is the founder of Productive Wisdom. No, he is not that typical wellness guru that comes to mind when talking about mindfulness. The lessons shared are also not what you will expect in general. I was fortunate enough to dig into his wisdom on improving my productivity. In the next segment of this article, I will be going through some of the answers he shared with me in terms of how to manage the limited energy we have in our brain and how to replenish it whenever needed.

The reaction to stress by different people is extremely subjective from person to person. However, being able to focus on yourself will enable you to understand what is best for you.