Reframing your energy portfolio
How to go from totally spent to thoroughly invested without breaking the emotional bank
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 282
You’re tired.
Not the “I walked 15 miles today and I’m worn out” sort of tired.
No. The deeper kind.
The kind that seeps into your bones by mid-morning on a random Tuesday, no matter how relaxing your weekend was.
The sort of tired that makes your coffee taste like an endless, thankless obligation.
The sort of tired that has you staring at a blinking cursor as if it’s an accusation.
You’ve been told you’re running on empty. You’ve been told to find more fuel.
I’m calling a halt to that nonsense. You are not running low on fuel. You’re a bad investor.
Each day, we all have a finite, daily deposit of mental, emotional, and creative energy. This is our neurological capital. And for the last who-knows-how-long, you’ve been making terrible, emotional, panic-driven investments with it. We all have.
We’ve been dumping our capital into accounts that yield nothing but depletion, resentment, and that gnawing sense of “spent.”
The language of “burnout” and “running on fumes” is disempowering. It frames our energy as a dwindling resource, it frames each of us as victims of our own output.
Let’s change this outlook. Let’s reframe it entirely.
Henceforth, you are the founder and CEO of You Inc. Your sole job over the next 90 days is to invest your energy capital for the highest possible return—not just financially, but in terms of satisfaction, confidence, impact, and peace of mind.
Right now, if your portfolio is anything like mine, it’s a mess. Let’s audit it.
The drain accounts (where uour energy vanishes)
The Ruminative Hedge Fund: Do you find yourself endlessly turning over past conversations and events, perhaps from years ago? Do you spend endless nights replaying your personal or career mistakes and worrying about future scenarios you cannot control. This is your single biggest energy leak. It’s high-risk with a guaranteed negative return. Worry is the least productive activity any of us can engage in, therefore making it the least valuable in terms of net or cumulative gains.
The “People-Pleasing” Mutual Fund: Saying yes to things you’d much rather say “No, thank you” to drains your reserves for the marginal social return of being seen as “nice” or “accommodating.” The dividends from this are resentment, the feeling of being endlessly put upon, and lost time you’ll never get back.
The Administrative Junk Bonds: These are low-stakes, high-friction tasks that clutter your day with endless trivia and mind numbing minutia. The 37-step process for expense reports, the 15-email thread to decide on a meeting time. And so on. These things only pay out in petty frustration. Either omit them from your day or limit the amount of time and effort you allow for them.
The “Always On” Tech ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund): This is your compulsive checking of email, the endless doom scrolling through news headlines and social media feeds, the never ending context-switching demanded by notifications, interruptions, and time vampires that suck the life out of each hour of your day. This sort of investment fragments your attention capital, ensuring no single investment matures let alone pays you a dividend.
You wouldn’t tolerate a financial advisor who bled your accounts dry like this, would you. So why do you tolerate it from yourself and from other people?
The high-yield accounts (where to redirect your capital)
The shift from “spent” to “invested” requires a deliberate, focused, and intentional daily transfer of personal energy from the accounts draining your day to the high-interest, enriching ones. This does NOT happen on its own: it’s a conscious reallocation of assets.
The Deep Focus Index Fund: This is your blue-chip stock. It’s 90 minutes of uninterrupted work on the ONE project that moves you forward towards a bigger payout. No notifications, no multi-tasking, no email or social media. No phone calls, no ad hoc or drop by meetings, no interruptions. Once mastered—and believe me here, if you’re not used to this sort of intense focus it can be tough getting used to—once mastered the return on this sort of dedicated focus is tangible progress and the profound satisfaction of mastery. Action: Schedule it as if it’s a non-negotiable board meeting with your most important client: your future self.
The Strategic Connection Dividend: Instead of scattering “check-in” energy willy-nilly, invest it deeply in one conversation with one or two people per week. Take part to learn. Instead of interrupting, listen intently. If you think of something to add, write it down until there’s a lull in the conversation, then add it to the discussion. Ask in-depth questions. Set the other person up to contribute more than you. Offer a specific piece of advice, help, or opinion with no strings attached. Make everything you add to the conversation about the outcome and the about the other person rather than about you. The return you’ll generate from this is a deeper sense of trust and loyalty and a strengthened network of people who won’t hesitate to come to you for advice or to ask questions.
The Creative R&D Account: This is time you spend playing in your field, time with no related deadline or deliverable. Tasks here include reading articles and books outside your niche. Sketching a wild idea. Learning how to use a new tool or application for fun. Stepping outside for a walk around the block. Visiting a museum. Taking a walk in the park. Although these activities may seem unrelated to whatever you’re doing, your best ideas and solutions are more likely to pop into your head when you’re the least focused and when you’re unplugged or removed from your regular, day-to-day activities. Here, you’re investing in your super subconscious processing capabilities which is the pool of venture capital of your mind—it’s an investment that funds your future ability to innovate.
The Restoration Treasury Bond: This is your non-negotiable capital preservation. It’s a walk to the coffee shop without your cell phone. It’s ten minutes of true silence. It’s a hard stop at 5 p.m. It’s not checking your work email after 4 p.m. on a Friday. It’s not a break and it’s certainly not an abdication of responsibility. It’s the compound interest on your peace of mind and on your sanity. It ensures your mental and emotional capital doesn’t depreciate.
The reframe in practice
Tomorrow morning, instead of sitting down at your desk or arriving at work asking yourself, “What do I need to do today?” ask, “By the end of today, which activities will have provided the highest return on my levels of energy and peace of mind?”
See the difference?
The first option is a mindless task list of musts and shoulds.
The second option is a powerful, positive investment strategy in you.
That difficult email you’re avoiding? It’s a draining account item. Instead of putting it off until later, write it before your day gets going (the “deep focus” investment) and get it out of the way. Taking this approach compounds your peace of mind for the rest of the day.
That vague, 3 p.m. “catch-up” meeting? It’s likely going to be a people-pleasing drain that kills the end of your day. Instead, either counter it with a focused 15-minute agenda that you stick to no matter what, or condense it into a brief, clearly written, 5 bullet point email update.
That 30 minutes of cell phone doom-scrolling before bed? It’s a catastrophic loss. Instead, transfer that capital to your Restoration account. Read a few pages of a novel you’ve been putting off reading. Focus on your breathing with ten minutes of guided meditation. Read a handful of inspiring quotations of a piece of spiritual scripture. The return from these sorts of activities is better, more relaxing sleep and a clearer mind at opening of your neurological market tomorrow.
That tiredness I mentioned earlier? The strategies outlined here can help you counter it. There’s no reason for you to feel like a depleted resource. There’s every reason to become a shrewd, capable manager of your personal emotional capital, someone who won’t and cannot be interrupted, misdirected, or distracted by the noisy market factors of other people’s endless urgencies, trivia, and minutia.
Instead of trying to find more fuel, start creating a better return on your investments.
Audit your portfolio.
Transfer the funds.
If you can apply these ideas for one week you’ll see your sense of “spent” transform into the quiet, powerful confidence of being fully, intelligently invested in the most important trade on the market: you.
As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
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Next time on Shaking the Tree: The art of strategic forgetting
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.
Brilliant reframe on the burnout narrative. Had a similiar realization last year when I mapped where my time actually went and realized I was 'investing' 60% of my energy into the People-Pleasing and Ruminative accounts. The shift from 'I dont have energy' to 'where am I poorly allocating energy' completly changes what solutions look like, dunno why more productivity advice doesnt start here.
This is particularly apt and well written. Love your analogies, really helpful.