How does your energy work over time?

Do you wake up every day, every week, of every year with the same amount of it?

Or does it ebb and flow?

With times when you feel you could take on anything, times when you need to curl up and hibernate, and times when you just want to get outside and play?

Like the seasons of the year, most of us vary. We don’t all have access to the same amount of energy all the time.

And yet we can expect that we ‘should’, and feel surprised that we’re not operating at our ‘usual’ capacity.

This is me right now. Really ready for a hammock!

I’m heading off for a 3 week break and I am SO looking forward to it. To the rest. To the change of scene and pace.

So much so that I’m wondering about how to set up my next ‘school year’ differently - so I don’t get to July so ready to stop.

It’s easy to see how I got here when I look back.

While I’ve got really good at managing my day and my week - the rhythm and the patterns, the balance of work, rest, play, connection - I lost sight of the bigger picture. The annual one.

In the past the school holidays have provided natural break points. Like rest weeks in a training plan they have been times of forced slowing down, different activities, changes of scene.

Now the combination of our children being older, and various mock exams, has meant we’ve stayed home and I’ve worked through most of them - because I could, and because I really like what I do!

My learning? For this coming year I need to plan in my own rest weeks, my own half terms. Some spaces in the year where I have a different focus - even if (especially if?) it doesn’t feel like I need it.

So much of what we are taught about success is consistency.

But what if to be consistent you need to design in some breaks?

How does your energy work over time?

And what would it look like to design your next ‘school year’ with breaks and rest weeks?

Wishing you all a wonderful week,