Over the last few articles*, I’ve been expanding on a theme: working out where you want to be, understanding what you can and can’t control, and then focusing your effort on what actually moves things forward.
Now I want to take that a step further and look at something closely related: finding the opportunities that genuinely give you energy.
Reflections on drains and energisers
At the end of my last article, I suggested a simple exercise:
List the things that energise you and the things that drain you.
Did you do it? What did you notice?
I ran this exercise in a workshop last week with six people, and it was interesting to see how differently everyone approached it.
Some people focused very much on their current situation. In a few cases, there were specific people listed as draining them and others who energised them. Others thought more broadly about their work, their personal life, or even the state of the world at the moment.
But one thing was consistent: for most people, the drains list was significantly longer than the energisers list.
I suggested looking at those drains and separating the things you have control over from the things you don’t. Then thinking about what you might do to get through them quickly, reduce them, or remove them altogether.
You know what energises you. What next?
To make this a bit more concrete, here are some of the things that appeared on my own energisers list:
- Running
- Working somewhere other than my usual office
- Talking to a journalist about graduate recruitment
- Writing content for courses, my newsletter and blog posts
- LinkedIn sessions with clients
- Chatting to students about early careers
The first two are quite straightforward. Running gives me endorphins, and working somewhere different gives me a bit of a mental reset. I often use that change of location to tackle some of the tasks that drain me, it makes them a bit more bearable.
The next two made me realise something important: I want to spend more time writing.
I’ve written three books aimed at students at different stages. The feedback has been great, but selling them is time-consuming and often leads me to procrastinate, which takes me away from the work I most enjoy.
Creating passive income is definitely not as straightforward as ‘the experts’ will have you believe.
Fortunately, the things I do for my paid work also bring me energy. I enjoy seeing senior clients realise how they can use LinkedIn in a way that works for them. And chatting to students about early careers and helping them see what options might be open to them is often really rewarding.
Looking at the list helped me realise:
The things that give you energy can be clues about where you should focus more of your time.
So back to you.
What energises you? And how could you do a bit more of it?
A quick two-minute exercise
You could go back to the list you compiled last time on what energises you, or try this:
Write down three things that gave you energy this week.
They might be conversations, tasks, projects, or even where you were working.
Then ask yourself:
How could I do one of those things slightly more often?
Small changes in where you spend your time can make a surprisingly big difference to how your work feels.
If you’re comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear one thing that energises you at work. Just hit reply and let me know.
(Slightly) complex LinkedIn searches
One of the things I enjoy most in my work is when a client suddenly realises how useful LinkedIn can be. I show them how to use it to find relevant content, people and organisations.
Once you’ve worked out what energises you, the next step is finding more opportunities to do it, whether that’s a new role, different clients, or volunteering.
LinkedIn can be surprisingly powerful for this when you know how to search properly.
If you’d like some personalised tips on how to use LinkedIn to find the kinds of opportunities that interest you, drop me a message and I’ll happily share a few ideas.
Thanks for reading, and good luck finding the opportunities that give you energy.
See you next time.
Sarah
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*If you’ve just subscribed, you won’t have seen the previous editions of the newsletter. I’ve added links here in case you want to read them as they do all kind of build on each other:
