Across sectors, leaders are facing a new reality: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts have been questioned, politicized, and dismantled. From charged political discourse declaring DEI illegal to frozen and removed federal funding, work that once symbolized progress is now being branded the enemy of “American Exceptionalism.”
For many organizations, this moment feels disorienting, but clarity begins with truth. DEI isn’t failing; it’s being punished for revealing what power looks like when it’s shared. The backlash is not about the merit of equity work; it’s about discomfort with accountability.
As a leader, your role is to stay grounded in that truth. This is not the time to retreat or rebrand your values; it’s the time to reframe and reinforce them. The organizations that weather this moment will be the ones that understand DEI not as a program or a policy, but as an ethical design for how people, systems, and decisions coexist.
Here’s how to navigate the landscape and lead through it with integrity.
Understanding the Roots of DEI Pushback
The current backlash didn’t appear overnight. DEI programs were built to address systemic inequities and expand access to opportunity. Yet, as they’ve become more visible, some have reframed these efforts as divisive, suggesting that equity somehow means exclusion.
Much of this resistance stems from two intertwined realities:
Polarization: In a politically charged environment, equity language can be misrepresented as partisanship.
Performance fatigue: Some initiatives prioritized optics over outcomes, eroding trust among skeptics and participants alike.
Leaders must recognize both dynamics without abandoning the moral and strategic imperative of equity work. The goal isn’t to defend DEI from attack, but to reclaim it as design, not ideology.
🪶 When DEI becomes an act of repair rather than reaction, it regains its power to unite instead of divide.
Budget and Resource Constraints: Protecting the Core
When budgets tighten, DEI work is often the first to go; labeled “non-essential.” But the truth is, equity and belonging are infrastructure. They shape retention, morale, innovation, and risk management.
Instead of framing DEI as an expense, leaders should reframe it as a value multiplier:
Equity reduces turnover costs.
Inclusive leadership drives innovation and market relevance.
Belonging boosts performance and engagement.
If cuts are unavoidable, protect the core: invest in training for managers, sustain internal equity assessments, and preserve transparent data tracking. These are the foundation stones that keep equity embedded even during contraction.
💡 When equity is built into the system, not the surplus, it survives every season.
Internal Resistance: Engaging Without Alienating
Resistance within the workforce often comes from fear, fear of losing opportunity, identity, or familiarity. As a leader, your job is not to silence that fear, but to contextualize it.
Strategies for engagement:
Communicate the “why.” Frame DEI as a path to shared wellbeing, not zero-sum gain.
Share data and stories. Evidence helps, but human stories move hearts.
Make it clear that equity is not a favor to one group; it’s the mechanism through which everyone benefits from fairness and psychological safety.
Political and Cultural Influences: Staying Values-Anchored
The politicization of DEI has made some leaders cautious or silent. But silence communicates complicity. The key is not to avoid politics, but to speak from principle, not partisanship.
Anchor your messaging in organizational values and outcomes:
“We believe in fairness, dignity, and safety for all employees.”
“Our equity work supports innovation and client trust.”
“Inclusion helps us serve our community more effectively.”
This kind of language transcends political binaries and centers purpose. Courageous leadership means holding space for complexity while refusing to abandon integrity.
✨ Values should not bend to political weather. They should guide you through it.
Finding a Path Forward: Leading Through the Noise
To move from defense to design, focus your DEI strategy around clarity, adaptability, and transparency.
1. Emphasize measurable outcomes. Use data to tell the story, retention rates, promotion equity, and psychological safety scores. Make impact visible and specific.
2. Evolve programs, don’t freeze them. DEI should shift with your organization’s needs. Regularly audit what’s working, what’s performative, and where the real learning is happening.
3. Invest in continuous education and dialogue. Create forums for honest conversation, even discomfort. Discomfort isn’t failure; it’s feedback.
4. Model the work. Equity leadership starts at the top. Make accountability public and personal, not just structural.
5. Build allies, not echo chambers. Collaborate across departments. Integrate DEI into operations, strategy, and budget cycles, not just HR or communications.
In Closing: From Pushback to Progress
The backlash against DEI is not proof of its failure; it’s evidence of its impact. Systems resist when they’re being asked to change.
For leaders, the question is not whether to continue this work, but how to evolve it with courage, clarity, and care.
DEI or, more precisely, Access and Belonging, remains the blueprint for the kind of workplaces we all deserve: ones rooted in fairness, accountability, and humanity.
When done with integrity, it’s not about checking boxes or quieting critics. It’s about building cultures that can withstand any political season, because they’re built on values, not trends.
🧭 Liberation-centered leadership isn’t about avoiding conflict. It’s about staying aligned in the face of it.
Nonprofits have become society’s conscience — but at what cost? It’s time to name the systemic imbalance that asks mission-driven organizations to fix the very systems that create harm, and to imagine a path toward shared accountability and liberation.
Nonprofits have long been positioned as society’s moral compass, feeding the hungry, sheltering the unhoused, protecting children, and filling the gaps left by systems that were never designed to serve everyone. They are the social infrastructure of last resort, the safety net under a safety net.
But let’s be honest: the nonprofit sector was never meant to be a permanent substitute for justice. It has become the patch on a system that keeps tearing itself apart.
The Paradox of the Nonprofit Promise
Established institutions are meant to ensure the continuity of society, while profit-driven businesses are meant to facilitate exchange and growth. But when both fail to include the public equitably, nonprofits are called to step in, not as innovators, but as first responders to systemic neglect.
Over time, this has created a moral and financial paradox: the very organizations tasked with repairing inequity are required to operate within inequitable structures. They’re expected to report on “impact” using resources so constrained that their employees often qualify for the very programs they administer.
Meanwhile, funders — governmental and private alike — demand transformation on a shoestring, confusing endurance for effectiveness. We gather in conferences, form coalitions, and celebrate collaboration while quietly designing around the same root problem: a system that depends on inequity to justify its own existence.
The Vicious Loop of Nonprofit Constraint
The nonprofit sector’s greatest challenge isn’t innovation, funding, or even burnout; it’s complicity by design.
Organizations are tasked with solving the very crises that government and industry perpetuate, while being bound by the same scarcity and precarity that define the populations they serve. Every grant proposal becomes an act of survival. Every reporting cycle is a negotiation for legitimacy.
Nonprofits are told to prove their worth in a market that undervalues care to justify their existence, while the conditions that make them necessary are left untouched.
It’s time to flip the script: the burden of accountability does not belong solely to nonprofits; it belongs to the systems that create the harm.
A Better Deal: Shifting the Weight of Responsibility
It’s time to stop pretending that the problem is inefficiency among nonprofit leaders. The real inefficiency lies in a funding ecosystem that rewards output over outcome and compliance over courage.
Funders and policymakers must be held to the same ethical standards that nonprofits are measured by: transparency, responsibility, integrity, and fairness.
💬 If your funding model sustains harm while measuring “impact,” you are not funding change, you are funding management.
When a housing nonprofit is asked to “reduce homelessness” in a market with no affordable housing stock, that’s not partnership, that’s performance. When workforce programs are funded in economies with stagnant wages, the results are predetermined.
It is unethical to demand outcomes that are impossible under current market conditions, and even more unethical to blame organizations for failing to deliver them.
Accountability Ethics Evolved
True accountability must move beyond audits and logic models to confront power directly.
Accountability ethics means that nonprofits, funders, and government bodies share responsibility for the social outcomes they claim to pursue. Nonprofits can, and must, redefine accountability upward: demanding that funders demonstrate how their investments align with systemic repair, not just service delivery.
It’s time for funding to come with a mirror, not just a mandate.
Are funders willing to change the systems that create the need for their grants?
Are governments ready to legislate justice, not just delegate charity?
Are corporations willing to reduce harm, not just offset it?
Until the answer is yes, the nonprofit sector will remain trapped in a loop of triage and exhaustion.
Justice Evolved: Liberation in Practice
Liberated nonprofits understand their dual role: to serve and to subvert. They meet immediate needs while refusing to normalize the conditions that create those needs.
They see their proximity to pain as a form of power, a vantage point for truth-telling, advocacy, and redesign. They use partnerships not to appease funders, but to challenge them. They measure success not only in services delivered, but in systems shifted.
✨ Liberation in this context isn’t rebellion; it’s repair.
Justice-evolved organizations recognize that their work is not charity, it’s a counterbalance, a commitment to equity that should not be outsourced but shared.
When nonprofits act with liberation at the center, they transform from crisis managers to systems architects, designing futures where the need for a “safety net” is finally obsolete.
In Closing: The Call to Collective Accountability
The nonprofit sector’s evolution depends on our collective willingness to ask harder questions: Who benefits from the permanence of inequity? Who profits from the dependency we mistake for service? Who is accountable for the gap between what we fund and what we fix?
Liberating nonprofits isn’t about dismantling the sector; it’s about freeing it from the burden of being society’s conscience alone.
🪶 It’s time for a new deal: one where care is not charity, justice is not optional, and accountability is shared at every level of power.
As political rhetoric intensifies and DEI programs disappear, one truth remains clear: removing diversity and inclusion means removing access. When organizations dismantle DEI frameworks, they don’t just halt culture change; they roll back the very systems that make work safe, navigable, and humane. Accessibility, both physical and psychological, is one of the first casualties. Without structures that prioritize equity and inclusion, barriers reemerge: employees with disabilities lose accommodations, marginalized voices lose pathways to belonging, and entire workplaces lose the ability to function with care.
Accessibility isn’t a separate issue; it’s the operational heartbeat of DEI. When we erase DEI, we don’t create neutrality; we create exclusion. And exclusion doesn’t just harm individuals, it destabilizes teams, limits innovation, and erodes trust across entire systems of work.
That’s why accessibility must move from the margins of compliance to the center of organizational design. It’s not a “nice-to-have,” and it’s not just about ramps or captions; it’s about how power, safety, and participation are structured within every aspect of business operations.
Why Accessibility Is the Backbone of DEI
When we talk about diversity, we often imagine representation: race, gender, identity. But diversity without access is performance. Accessibility ensures that inclusion is functional, not symbolic.
True equity asks:
Who can participate fully?
Who can contribute without harm or exhaustion?
Whose comfort, language, and safety are prioritized in our policies and spaces?
If accessibility is missing, even the best-intentioned DEI efforts collapse under their own contradiction. Accessibility is what transforms inclusion from invitation into integration.
🪶 Accessibility is how equity shows up in motion — it’s the design of belonging.
The Ripple Effect: Why Designing for Access Protects People and Strengthens Systems
When DEI disappears, the loss is not abstract; it’s operational. Accessibility is what makes safety, belonging, and performance possible in the first place. Without it, people can’t participate fully, systems fracture, and organizations quietly lose the very talent and trust that sustain them.
Designing for accessibility isn’t just about compliance or fairness; it’s about protecting the human conditions that allow work to happen at all.
When we embed accessibility into every layer of design, we create structures that are not only inclusive but also resilient.
Here’s what accessibility-centered design makes possible:
Psychological and physical safety: Clear communication, sensory-sensitive spaces, and equitable policies reduce harm, burnout, and anxiety, making workplaces safer for everyone.
Operational sustainability: Designing with multiple ways of working and learning in mind helps organizations weather turnover, crisis, and change without losing coherence.
Innovation and adaptability: When systems are built for a wide range of users, creativity flourishes. Constraints become design opportunities.
Expanded reach and reputation: Accessibility builds credibility, signaling that inclusion isn’t a slogan, it’s a structure. Customers, partners, and funders recognize integrity when they see it.
When you design for those who are most often excluded, you safeguard the conditions for everyone else to thrive. Accessibility is not a niche concern; it’s a measure of whether your organization can function with care.
✨ Accessibility is the architecture of safety. Without it, equity collapses — and with it, the trust that makes organizations work.n thrive.
How to Design for Accessibility
Accessibility isn’t a checklist; it’s a mindset. Here are the essentials for embedding it into your organization’s DNA:
1. Use Inclusive Language
Words shape belonging. Avoid ableist or exclusionary phrases like “wheelchair-bound,” “crazy,” or “normal.” Instead, use person-first or identity-affirming language, such as “person who uses a wheelchair” or “neurodivergent team member.”
2. Design Information for Everyone
Add alt text to images and ensure color contrast for text readability.
Use captions, transcripts, and descriptive audio for videos and presentations.
Test your website with screen readers and keyboard-only navigation. Accessibility statements aren’t just for compliance; they’re public commitments to care.
3. Build Access Into Policy and Practice
Equity doesn’t thrive on good intentions; it thrives on policy.
Create clear accommodation procedures for staff and participants.
Budget for accessibility features in every event, program, or publication.
Train teams in disability etiquette and universal design principles.
4. Involve People with Lived Experience
Nothing about us without us. Invite feedback from staff, clients, and community members with disabilities. Pay them for their expertise. Accessibility isn’t about perfection; it’s about partnership.
From Compliance to Culture
Accessibility must evolve from a technical checkbox to a cultural value, something woven through how we plan, hire, communicate, and lead. Compliance ensures legality; culture ensures belonging.
When organizations treat accessibility as an obligation, they do the minimum to avoid risk. When they treat it as culture, they redesign the system itself:
Meetings include multiple ways to contribute.
Policies are written in plain, inclusive language.
Feedback channels are open and safe.
Technology and environments are built for flexibility and care.
This shift transforms the workplace from a site of endurance into a site of engagement. It’s not about lowering standards — it’s about raising awareness of what true excellence requires: access.
🪶 When accessibility becomes culture, equity becomes instinct, not initiative.
In Closing: Accessibility Is the Future of Work
Accessibility is the connective tissue that holds DEI together. It’s what ensures that diversity isn’t symbolic, that equity is actionable, and that inclusion is sustainable. Without it, safety erodes — and so does innovation, trust, and community.
As DEI programs are dismantled under political pressure, we must remember this: accessibility is the last line of defense between justice and regression. It determines whether people can show up safely, lead authentically, and remain in the workforce at all.
Building accessible systems isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s how we future-proof our organizations. Access-centered design creates environments that adapt, include, and endure. It is not charity. It is strategy.
If your organization is ready to redesign its systems for access and belonging, All Voices Coaching can help you move from intention to implementation. Because the future of work is not simply diverse — it’s accessible.
✨ Accessibility isn’t the afterthought of DEI; it’s the proof that we meant what we said.
Across industries, “DEI” — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — has become both a rallying cry and a target. As organizations navigate growing scrutiny and political pushback, many leaders are asking: What now?
The truth is that DEI was never just a corporate initiative; it’s a commitment to designing workplaces where people can thrive, contribute, and belong. It’s not a fad, and it’s not charity. It’s strategy, integrity, and innovation in action.
This article explores how to evolve DEI beyond compliance or culture statements into a living, resilient framework that strengthens both your people and your business.
What DEI Really Means (and Why the Language Matters)
“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” are often treated as checkboxes, but they are better understood as practices of organizational health.
Diversity asks: Who’s in the room and who isn’t?
Equity asks: Who has access to opportunity, influence, and safety?
Inclusion asks: Who’s shaping the culture and whose voice is missing?
In my practice of leadership, I use a fourth frame: Access and Belonging. Because when DEI is done well, the outcome isn’t optics, it’s access: expanded pathways to leadership, opportunity, and innovation for everyone connected to your organization.
✨ In other words: DEI is not a moral accessory. It’s a blueprint for shared growth and sustainable success.
The Business Case — and the Human Case
Data consistently shows that diverse, equitable workplaces outperform their peers. Teams with inclusive cultures see higher creativity, stronger retention, and better problem-solving. But the “business case” is only part of the picture.
The human case for DEI is just as vital:
Inclusive environments reduce harm and burnout.
Equity in leadership and pay builds trust and retention.
Representation in decision-making produces better outcomes for everyone.
When people feel seen, respected, and empowered, performance becomes a byproduct of belonging.
Navigating the Backlash: Reframing Resistance
The current wave of anti-DEI sentiment has created confusion and fear in many organizations. Some have scaled back initiatives, fearing controversy. But retreating from equity work doesn’t neutralize tension; it reinforces inequity.
To lead through this climate, shift from defensiveness to clarity:
Center your values. DEI is about fairness, dignity, and shared prosperity, not politics.
Reframe DEI as design. It’s about creating conditions for success, not enforcing quotas or ideology.
Communicate your “why.” Tie your equity work directly to mission, service, and organizational health.
🪶 DEI isn’t under attack — systems of accountability are. That means your commitment matters now more than ever.
Strategies for Reimagining DEI in Practice
Design Hiring as Access, Not Optics Build hiring and promotion systems that look for potential and lived experience, not just credentials. Review job descriptions for bias, diversify hiring panels, and measure equity in outcomes, not just outreach.
Rebuild Leadership Pipelines Representation at the top shapes decisions everywhere else. Develop leadership coaching, mentorship, and sponsorship programs for historically excluded staff, and make them part of your formal leadership development structure.
Shift from Training to Transformation Workshops alone don’t change culture. Pair learning with system redesign; rethink how feedback, performance evaluation, and compensation align with inclusion.
Integrate Equity Into Operations Equity should live in your budgets, policies, and planning cycles, not just in HR or communications. Every decision-making process should ask: Who benefits? Who bears the burden?
Make DEI Transparent and Measurable Track your efforts as you would any other strategic goal: retention, promotion, pay equity, and satisfaction by demographic. Share your progress and your challenges openly. Transparency builds credibility.
Engaging Your Team Without Burnout or Tokenism
Inclusion can’t be imposed; it’s built through dialogue and shared power. Create multiple pathways for participation: listening sessions, working groups, and co-design spaces where staff can shape initiatives.
Recognize and compensate the invisible labor of equity work. Avoid expecting employees from marginalized groups to “fix” culture alone. DEI belongs to everyone, and leadership must resource it accordingly.
💬 True inclusion is when people don’t have to leave parts of themselves at the door to be seen as professional.
Leveraging DEI for Sustainable Success
When you move beyond performative efforts, DEI becomes an engine for innovation.
It strengthens brand trust by aligning values with action.
It increases resilience by equipping teams to navigate complexity and change.
It enhances decision-making by including diverse lived experiences and expertise.
Highlight your equity commitments in your hiring, partnerships, and public storytelling. Let your values be visible as truth in practice.
Facing Challenges with Courage
Yes, DEI work is hard. It asks organizations to look inward, to change habits, and to share power. But the alternative, complacency, costs more in morale, turnover, and lost creativity than any investment in equity ever could.
Courageous leaders treat resistance as feedback, not failure. They stay the course because equity isn’t a side project; it’s the future of ethical business.
In Closing
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or Access and Belonging, aren’t political trends. They’re the practices that help businesses align integrity with impact. As the climate around DEI evolves, the question for leaders isn’t whether to continue, but how to continue with deeper conviction, clearer strategy, and stronger connection to community.
Your work in equity doesn’t end because the environment is hostile; it becomes more meaningful.
Listen, we need to have an honest conversation about productivity. As a consultant who’s spent the last decade helping high-achieving professionals get their lives together, I’ve noticed something: most of us are doing it all wrong. And I mean all wrong.
You’ve probably tried every productivity hack under the sun. The color-coded calendars, the time-blocking methods, and the fancy apps that promise to revolutionize your workflow. Maybe they worked for a week or two, but then life happened, and everything fell apart. I get it – I’ve been there too.
Here’s the truth that nobody’s talking about: productivity isn’t one-size-fits-all, and it’s definitely not about squeezing every minute out of your day until you’re running on fumes and cold brew coffee.
The Real Problem with Your Productivity System
Working with clients from Fortune 500 executives to fresh-out-of-divorce entrepreneurs, I’ve realized that most productivity systems fail for one simple reason: they don’t account for who you are as a person. Your energy cycles, your natural rhythms, your actual life circumstances – you know, the real stuff.
When Sarah, a tech executive and single mom, came to me stressed about falling behind at work, she had been trying to wake up at 5 AM because some productivity guru said it was the “secret to success.” But Sarah’s a night owl who does her best work after 8 PM when her kids are asleep. Fighting her natural rhythm was making her less productive, not more.
Building a System That Actually Works
Here’s what I tell my clients: Your productivity system should feel like your favorite pair of jeans – comfortable, reliable, and tailored specifically to you. Here’s how to create one:
1. Get Real About Your Energy
Track when you naturally feel most alert and focused. Don’t fight it – use it. Some of us are morning people, others come alive at midnight. Both are valid. Your peak hours are your money-making hours – protect them fiercely.
2. Define What Productivity Means to YOU
Being productive isn’t about checking off the most boxes – it’s about moving the needle on what matters. For some of my clients, that means closing big deals. For others, it’s having energy left to help their kids with homework. Get clear on your definition.
3. Build in Recovery Time
Y’all, burnout is real, and it’s expensive. I’ve seen too many brilliant people crash and burn because they treated themselves like machines. Your productivity system needs to include rest, just like your workout routine includes recovery days.
Making the Shift
Here’s the part that might be hard to hear: creating a sustainable productivity system takes time. It’s not about downloading another app or buying another planner. It’s about really understanding yourself and being honest about what works for you.
Start small. Pick one aspect of your current system that feels forced and adjust it to match your natural inclinations. For instance, if you hate traditional to-do lists, try voice notes or mind mapping. If morning meetings drain you, start blocking them for afternoons.
Remember, you’re not broken if the popular productivity methods don’t work for you. You’re just different, and different is where the magic happens.
The Bottom Line
As a lifestyle consultant, I’ve learned that the most productive people aren’t the ones following every trend – they’re the ones who’ve figured out their own rhythm and stuck to it. Your productivity system should empower you, not exhaust you.
So take a step back. Look at what’s really working (and what’s not) in your current approach. Be willing to experiment, adjust, and sometimes completely start over. Because at the end of the day, productivity isn’t about doing more – it’s about doing what matters, in a way that works for you.
And if anyone tries to tell you there’s only one way to be productive? Well, honey, they’re selling something you don’t need to buy.
Last month, we had a heart-to-heart about why your productivity system might be failing you. If you took my advice and started paying attention to your natural rhythms, you’ve probably noticed something: Time isn’t the only currency that matters. Energy—your physical, mental, and emotional fuel—is what truly drives your productivity.
Let me say this louder for those in the back: You can have all the time in the world and still accomplish nothing if your energy is depleted.
The Time Management Trap
For decades, we’ve been obsessed with managing time. We slice our days into 15-minute increments, schedule back-to-back meetings, and pride ourselves on being “busy.” But here’s what my highest-performing clients have discovered: time management without energy management is like having a sports car with no gas.
Marcus, a finance executive I worked with last year, was scheduling his most complex analytical work for late afternoons because that’s when his calendar was free. But after tracking his energy patterns for just two weeks, he realized his mental sharpness peaked before 11 AM. When he rearranged his schedule to protect those morning hours for deep work, his output doubled—not because he had more time but because he was using his high-energy periods wisely.
Mapping Your Energy Landscape
Let’s get practical. For the next week, I want you to rate your energy levels on a scale of 1-10 at different points throughout the day. Notice patterns:
When do you feel most alert and focused?
When do you experience the afternoon slump?
Which days of the week do you have more energy?
How do different types of work affect your energy?
This isn’t about judging yourself—it’s about gathering data. Your energy patterns are unique to you, influenced by everything from your sleep habits to your hormonal cycles.
Jasmine, a marketing director and mother of two, discovered that her energy fluctuated dramatically throughout her menstrual cycle. Instead of fighting it, she now plans her most creative work during her follicular phase when her energy is naturally higher and schedules more administrative tasks during her luteal phase when her energy tends to dip.
Types of Energy You Need to Manage
Energy isn’t one-dimensional. There are four types you need to monitor:
Physical energy: Your body’s capacity for activity
Mental energy: Your ability to focus and think clearly
Emotional energy: Your capacity to handle feelings and interpersonal situations
Spiritual energy: Your connection to meaning and purpose
Each requires different management techniques. For instance:
Physical energy responds well to movement breaks, proper nutrition, and adequate sleep
Mental energy benefits from focused work periods followed by genuine breaks
Emotional energy needs boundaries and time for processing
Spiritual energy is replenished through activities that connect you to your deeper purpose
Energy Drains and How to Plug Them
We all have energy vampires in our lives—the activities, environments, or people that leave us feeling depleted. Identifying yours is the first step to managing them.
Common energy drains include:
Decision fatigue: Making too many choices without systems
Toxic relationships: Interactions that leave you emotionally drained
Environment mismatches: Working in spaces that don’t support your focus
Value conflicts: Spending time on activities that don’t align with your core values
Tonya, a client who ran a consulting business, realized that her weekly networking events were draining her introverted battery. Instead of forcing herself to attend every event, she became more selective and developed a recovery routine for afterward. Her business relationships actually improved because she was more present and energized when she did attend.
Building Your Energy Management System
Now that you understand the importance of energy management, let’s build a system that works for you:
Protect your peak energy hours: Schedule your most important and challenging work during your high-energy periods
Create energy transition rituals: Develop routines that help you shift between different types of activities
Design your environment: Set up your workspace to support your energy rather than drain it
Build in recovery: Schedule regular breaks and longer recovery periods
Align with your values: Ensure your work and activities connect to what truly matters to you
Remember, this is personal. What works for your colleague or that productivity guru on Instagram might not work for you. Trust your data and your experience.
This Month’s Challenge
For the next 30 days, I want you to experiment with energy management. Start by tracking your energy patterns, then make one change to better align your important work with your natural peaks. Maybe it’s scheduling your creative work for early mornings, or perhaps it’s taking a real lunch break away from your desk.
Document how this change affects not just your productivity but also your overall satisfaction and well-being. Share your results with me on this post.
Because here’s the truth: Productivity isn’t just about getting more done. It’s about having the energy to do what matters most to you in a way that feels sustainable and fulfilling.
Next month, we’ll dive into digital decluttering and how to create a tech environment that supports your energy rather than draining it. Until then, pay attention to what fuels you and what depletes you. Your energy is your most precious resource—manage it accordingly.
