Sustainability is about energy
Completing weekly actions requires energy. When setting your actions each week you need to keep this in mind in order to prevent burnout and ensure that the process is sustainable on a daily and weekly basis. For your weekly actions to be sustainable you must use up no more energy than you are capable of replenishing on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. If completing your weekly actions is draining all of your energy then, over time, the process will start to falter and the forward movement that is the purpose of the whole process will come to a halt. Action setting is about building momentum, and to build momentum you have to have the energy to work on your actions each week.
Maintaining energy
There are three simple methods that can be used to control the amount of energy you use in your action setting that will help avoid burnout:
1. Limit the number of weekly actions.
2. Set a priority level for each action.
3. Limit the type of actions you set.
Limit the number of weekly actions
There is no magic number of actions to set each week. The number of actions that you set and complete each week while maintaining a sustainable energy level is entirely dependant on the individual. You will need to experiment with different numbers of actions for a few weeks in order to determine the right number for you. You will also want to revisit this number over time and make adjustments as needed.
Set a priority level for each action
Different actions you set will have different levels of importance to you. Some actions will be helping you move towards a major goal. Some actions will be time sensitive and need to be accomplished within a certain time frame. These would both be examples of high priority actions in your life.
Some actions will relate to reaching smaller, less important goals in your life. Other actions will not be attached to any specific larger goal but are an important task that you need to get done. These are examples of low priority actions.
By determining the priorities of your different actions you can organize them more efficiently and make sure that you are focusing your energy in the right direction: towards your larger goals, and, eventually, your overall vision.
Limit the type of actions you set
Not all actions in a given week should have a high level of importance and priority in your life. High priority actions are high-energy actions and, if you have too many of them, your energy will get drained rapidly and never have a chance to replenish. Try to mix up the actions that you set for yourself each week over a range of priorities. By mixing together high and low priority items you can control the amount of energy you put towards your actions each day.
Having a high energy day? Work towards some of your high priority actions. Having a low energy day? You can still experience the feeling of forward movement by accomplishing some of your low priority actions.
My sustainable action setting strategy
After experiencing some burnout in my own action setting process I have now incorporated these three ideas into my weekly action setting.
1. I set myself ten actions each week.
2. I give each action either a high or low priority rating.
3. Four of my actions are high priority actions that are moving my major goals forward. (these are in bold in my weekly list.)
4. Six of my actions are low priority actions, either moving a minor goal forward or completing a stand alone task.
5. Although I set myself ten actions I count a successful week as any week where I accomplish five of the actions: at least two high priority and three low priority actions.
6. Any actions that I do not complete in a given week are either dropped from my list until a later date, removed entirely, or moved onto my list for the following week.
Why do I set twice as many actions as I hope to accomplish each week? It is all part of making your action setting process adaptable and I will take a look at this idea next week.
What do you think your magic number of actions is for each week? How many high priority and low priority actions do you think will work for you?
[...] last weeks post on making action setting sustainable for more help if your weekly actions are running your [...]
I never thought about marking each action as a high energy or low energy action. That’s a really smart way to look at it, & a good way to mix the actions so you can create just the right mix. Great suggestion, Jeremie!
Thanks Michelle.
By assigning energy levels to my actions I got myself out of the trap of giving myself too many important, complex, high energy actions for the week. I was burning myself out by not keeping track of this.
Now that I place 4 high energy and 6 low energy (I haven’t used that terminology specifically but I like it, it really explains the idea I am trying to get across…thanks!) actions on my list, and set a goal to complete five of those ten, I find that I am never overextending myself and running out of energy.
If I have a super high energy week I may get all ten of my actions done. If I have a low energy week then I focus on getting some of the “low hanging fruit” actions completed. In the end I always have the energy to get at least five of my actions done.
Jeremie
[...] Even with missing four of my goals this week I don’t consider my week to be a failure because I try to make my goal setting both sustainable and adaptable. What do I mean by this? Check back for Wednesday’s post which will be on this very idea: How to make your goal setting sustainable. [...]
[...] this post, and this post discuss it is important to make your action setting process flexible and sustainable so your [...]