Stage 1: Self-Discovery | Energy Audit

By now you probably already know there are things in your life that light you up and things that drain you.

An energy audit is exactly what it sounds like: a clear-eyed inventory of where your energy goes. Not where you think it goes or should go, but where it does go, and how each thing leaves you feeling afterward.

Most people skip this step. They optimise for productivity (how much can I get done?) or for achievement (what will look impressive?) without asking the fundamental question of whether this way of living sustains you.

Your personality and values told you who you are and what you care about. Your strengths showed you what you do best. The energy audit will shows you how to protect all of that in practice. Knowing yourself is useful, but the real change comes when you structure your life with this self-knowledge in mind.

Remember: you can have the best systems in the world and still burn out if you fill your days with things that drain you faster than you recover.

The science behind an energy audit

The limited resource model

The idea that willpower and self-control draw from a limited pool of energy comes from Roy Baumeister's ego depletion research, published in a landmark 1998 study. Baumeister found that people who exerted self-control on one task performed worse on subsequent tasks requiring self-control, as if they had used up some internal resource.

The model has been debated. A large replication study in 2016 (Hagger et al.) found weaker effects than the original, but the core insight has held up in practice even if the precise mechanism is still being sorted out. The truth is that sustained effort depletes something. whether it's glucose, attention, motivation, or some combination. In other words, we run out of capacity before we run out of hours.

Conservation of Resources theory

Stevan Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources (COR) theory offers a more comprehensive framework. COR argues that stress occurs when resources are threatened, lost, or when investment of resources fails to produce expected returns. Resources include tangible things (money, shelter), conditions (social support, stable employment), personal characteristics (self-efficacy, optimism), and energy (physical stamina, emotional reserves).

The theory's key insight is that resource loss is disproportionately more impactful than resource gain. Losing something costs you more psychologically than gaining the same thing gives you. This is why one draining relationship or one energy-sucking commitment can undo the benefit of several positive ones. It also explains why people in resource-depleted states (burnout, chronic stress, poverty) are more vulnerable to further losses. Hobfoll called this a "loss spiral."

For the energy audit, this means that identifying and stopping energy losses matters more than adding energy gains. Plugging the leaks comes before filling the bucket.

Ultradian rhythms and natural energy cycles

Your body does not produce energy in a flat line across the day. Research on ultradian rhythms, primarily by Peretz Lavie and later applied to performance by Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr, shows that humans cycle through periods of high and low alertness roughly every 90 to 120 minutes.

These cycles explain why some hours feel effortless and others feel like dragging a heavy bag uphill, even when the task is the same. Working with your natural rhythms instead of against them is one of the simplest ways to get more from the energy you already have. The Energy Audit will help you map your optimal performance so you can schedule demanding work in your peak windows.

Introversion, extraversion, and stimulation

Your Big Five extraversion score (from the Personality section) directly predicts how social interaction affects your energy. Hans Eysenck's arousal theory, developed in the 1960s and supported by subsequent neuroimaging research, proposes that introverts have a higher baseline of cortical arousal than extraverts. This means introverts reach overstimulation faster in social, noisy, or high-input environments. They need solitude to return to baseline, whereas extraverts, with lower baseline arousal, seek stimulation to feel alert and engaged.

This is not a just a preference, but our physiology, which means our ideal work environment, social schedule, and recovery needs are partly wired into our nervous system.

Emotional labour

Arlie Hochschild coined the term "emotional labour" in 1983 to describe the work of managing your own emotions to meet the requirements of a job or social role. Customer service workers who must smile when they are angry. Leaders who must project calm when they are anxious. Partners who suppress their needs to keep the peace.

Emotional labour is real energy expenditure. It does not show up on a to-do list, but it depletes the same resources as physical and cognitive work. Any honest energy audit has to account for it, because some of the most exhausting parts of your day might not look like work at all.

Your energy audit exercise

Access your Notion workbook here.

This is a practical, evidence-based audit. Be specific when doing the exercises, because vague answers will give you vague insight.

Part 1: The 7-day energy log

For 7 days, track your energy at 3 key points: morning (within an hour of waking), midday (around your lunch break), and evening (before bed). Rate your energy from 1 to 10 and note what you did in the previous few hours.

Part 2: Energy sources and drains

After the 7-day log, sort your activities, relationships, and environments into three categories. Be honest, even when the answers are uncomfortable.

What gives you energy: Activities, people, places, and situations that leave you feeling more alive, more engaged, more myself afterward.

What drains you: Activities, people, places, and situations that leave you feeling depleted, flat, or resentful. Include things you are "supposed" to enjoy but do not.

What you can tolerate: Things that are neutral or slightly draining but necessary. The cost is manageable if you do not overdo it.

Part 3: Peak performance mapping

Using your 7-day log and your own sense of your body, map your energy rhythm across a typical day. When are you the sharpest? When does your attention wander? When do you need to move, eat, or rest?

Part 4: The energy budget

If you treat your energy like a budget (because it is one), how would you redistribute your spending? Look at your drains. Which ones can you reduce, delegate, batch, or eliminate? Look at your sources. Which ones can you increase or protect?

• Energy drain you will reduce or remove. How?

• Energy sources you will protect or increase. How?

Part 5: Reflect

• What surprised you about where your energy actually goes versus where you thought it went?

• Which energy drains have you been tolerating because you thought you "should" be able to handle them?

• How does your energy map connect to your personality results? (For example: if you are introverted, are your drains mostly social? If you are high in neuroticism, are your drains mostly stress-related?)

• If you changed nothing else but removed your biggest energy drain and doubled your biggest energy source, what would your week feel like?

Part 6: AI companion (optional)

When to use it: After you have tracked your energy levels for a week using your energy log and did the initial reflections, but before you seriously attempt to redesign your schedule or habits.

What it does: Acts as a data analyst for your personal well-being. It moves beyond "gut feelings" to identify the hidden variables like social context, task type, and timing that dictate your peak performance and burnout triggers. It turns your raw data into a set of operational rules for managing your day.

Copy and paste the prompt below into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant alongside your 7-day energy log and initial reflections:

You are a high-performance analyst helping me decode my personal energy patterns. I am going to share my energy log data with you (including activities, time of day, and how I felt) alongside my initial reflections. Your job is to:
(1) Audit my "Energy Leaks." Identify the top 3 activities that consistently drain my battery. Look for the "Social Context"—am I drained by the task itself, or the specific people and environment involved?
(2) Identify my "Power Hours." Based on the data, what specific combination of time of day and task type leads to my highest energy scores? Be precise (e.g., "Deep work before 11:00 AM in isolation").
(3) Spot the "Hidden Variables." Look for patterns I might have missed. For example, does a high-energy activity at 2:00 PM always lead to a massive crash at 4:00 PM? Are there "neutral" tasks that secretly prep me for high performance later?
(4) Challenge my assumptions. If I say I’m a "night owl" but my data shows high morning productivity, point out that discrepancy. Help me separate my self-narrative from my actual data.
(5) At the end, help me write my "Personal Energy Rulebook." This should be a list of 5–7 "If/Then" statements based on our findings (e.g., "If I have a high-stakes meeting, then I must schedule 15 minutes of solo recovery time immediately after").
Analyse the data first, then ask me 2–3 clarifying questions to test your theories before finalising the rules. Be analytical, objective, and blunt about where I’m mismanaging my time.

Part 7: Write your energy snapshot

In a short paragraph, describe your relationship with energy as you now understand it. What fuels you, what depletes you, and what you need to protect.

This is the fourth page of your self-portrait.