Forget time, try these 3 tips for working on energy management

This article about energy management for freelancers is written by Suzanne Bowness, a longtime freelance writer/editor whose book The Feisty Freelancer: A Friendly Guide to Visioning, Planning, and Growing Your Writing Business was published in January 2025 by Dundurn Press. Find out more about the book at www.feistyfreelancer.com

A couple of weeks into the new year's resolution season and you've no doubt read more than a few articles about goal setting, habit forming and time management. Don't get me wrong, I'm a resolution fan. That's why I wanted to add a new prescription to the mix: energy management.

How to navigate energy management as a freelancer

For me, managing my energy means paying attention to when my energy levels are strongest, and planning my most focused work for those windows. In doing so, I harness the quality of my time as well as the quantity. After all, if you could get twice as much work done at your peak energy level as you do in your low energy, isn't that like making time?

Here are a couple of ways to find your flow and go with it:

Use your high energy windows for focused work

Maybe you’re already familiar with the hours when you tend to be most productive. Maybe you've been fighting them. As a certified night person, I know that early morning is not my best time despite how virtuous some people make it sound. Late morning is when I hit my stride, and same with mid afternoon. So that's when I schedule my deep work, from writing an article to editing a report to planning client outreach.

In those important hours between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. (hello from my desk at 3:45 p.m. writing this post!), I'm the strongest version of myself, more impervious to email or social media distraction. So I protect these windows. I even augment them by shutting down distractions entirely, often keeping just writing program open, my notifications on silent.

If you want to confirm what time windows work for you, spend a few days tracking what hours bring the most energy. After you've identified your focus time, think about how you can start planning your work around them.

A caveat here: while I'm a night person, I also know I have to live in the world alongside my clients, and most of them are at their desks from 9 to 5. So while I might jive with a workday from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., I balance what’s realistic for doing a great business. At the same time, I never plan meetings for 9 a.m. unless a client specifically requests it (grrr).

Use your downtime too

Just as you can treat your high energy windows as sacred, you can also make the most of your low energy. Fill them with those boring but necessary tasks that keep your work and life running. To prepare myself for these fallow periods, I keep a list of low-energy tasks that need doing so that I can take them up in these periods. As a freelancer, some regular ones include invoicing, bookkeeping, and planning client outreach. Others that pop up might include research a new tech tool, background reading for an upcoming story assignment, worrying about AI, or learning the new particulars of a style guide update.

Make the most of your breaks

Ironically, another way to build energy is taking time off. I find this works at the macro level as well as in the daily context. While vacations take me away from my work, they also fill me up with fresh energy in the long term. If I’m ever feeling grumpy about overwork, I try to plan a long weekend to give myself the space I need to refill my energy.

Even though I’m self-employed and could work non-stop, I try to build in regular breaks and fill them with something other than work, whether it’s 20 minutes of TV or a walk outside. That bit of space and distraction really helps refresh my mind before returning to my desk, and put it into that higher energy zone I need to do more work.

Speaking of which, it’s time….