Looking At Your Energy Levels As Spoons
A new perspective on time and energy management
An article I stumbled upon a few years ago talked about a woman with an autoimmune disease that on some days would leave her bedridden and unable to do much.
She presented the idea of counting your energy levels as how many spoons you have in a day when she was explaining the effects of her illness to someone who couldn’t understand how it worked.
She explained that some days she would be lucky and would have 10 spoons to work with, meaning she could work, do the grocery shopping, study, socialize, cook, clean, etc.
On other days she would only have 2–3, which meant she could choose to only do a few select things, and that she would have to prioritize certain things more than others.
I’ve been remembering this story a lot in the past few weeks due to November being the hardest month for me emotionally and physically. Normally I have about 15–20 spoons on any given day. In November it drops to 10–12 on a good day, 2–3 on a bad one, and 5–7 on all the days in between.
What this means is I have to prioritize and delegate a lot more. It also means I have to practice much more self-acceptance than I’m used to.
When you learn to tie your worth to how much work you produce and how productive you are in your Life, dropping down from your usual levels to what you would call “sub-par” can be a heavy hit on your self-esteem.
This means I have to learn to actually accept myself fully, and not only when I’m in a good mood, have good energy levels, and am producing work.
On one side, I’m allowed (by my own body) to do a lot less than I’m used to. This means less progress, and having to delegate my energy to very specific things. It means that some days I can’t work out because although it’s beneficial, it will for a fact take energy out of me. It means some days the opposite, working less and allowing myself to work out and read more and socialise because those things fulfil me.
On the bright side, it’s making me much more appreciative of the time I get to spend working on the things I love and building a career from doing what I love. It’s teaching me to appreciate the people in my Life that much more because I rarely have the energy to socialise and be emotionally invested.
Viewing my energy levels as spoons is helping me stay sane and more or less happy during the world situation and what my body is going through now. Spending those precious spoons on rumination and worry isn’t exactly productive.
When I run out of spoons, it’s kind of like running out of bread at 11 pm. There’s nothing you can do aside from wait until the morning to get more. It forces you to ground yourself and realize that there are only so many spoons in a day.
It allows you to emotionally detach from the idea that others have more energy and get to progress faster. It helps you look at your energy levels in an objective way and focus on what can be done with the resources I have.
Is it occasionally frustrating that I have fewer spoons than others? Yes. As we’ve agreed, complaining won’t add more spoons to my arsenal.
Plus, I get to learn to delegate things better and strategise on how to better use the resources I have. I love strategy games, so now I get to live one out in real Life.
Some days you end up taking spoons from the future, which in theory is all fine and good, as long you make sure to allow yourself to have days when you replenish those spoons or allow yourself not to use any.
Allowing yourself to accept that the number of spoons you have in a day, whatever your situation, is limited — is allowing yourself to accept that you’re human and that even the most productive and efficient human has their limits.
You just read another post from In Fitness And In Health: a health and fitness community dedicated to sharing knowledge, lessons, and suggestions to living happier, healthier lives.
If you’d like to join our newsletter and receive more stories like this one, tap here.
