Finite resources
Just as there are conservation laws for so many natural properties -- momentum, electric charge, mass -- so too is there a law of conservation of energy.
Well, yes, I know that conservation of energy is a natural law as well. I'm talking about human energy. An abstract thing. A potential energy, to change the environment around you. The raw material of stage presence. The wellspring for vibes. Willpower. Moxie. Wakefulness.
At the end of the day, there's only so much stuff in me. Doing things expends that stuff, to varying degrees depending on the activity. And the stuff replenishes over time, again to varying degrees depending on the form and environment of rest.
Time and time again, I'm reminded that this stuff, this energy, is finite.
If I stay at work an extra hour, I find myself arriving to work an hour late the next day. If I get to work two hours early, I'm mentally tapped out two hours early. So I'm never actually increasing my hours of productive work per week -- I'm just pulling forward time from my future self, and I'll have to pay it back in some way until my balance evens out.
And yet this system doesn't seem entirely linear. It seems like sometimes I can spend three hours mildly exerting myself, or three hours moderately "exerting" myself, and fully "make up" the difference in three hours of "rest" (I use these gratuitous scare quotes because there is such a wide range of activities that can qualify as each of these things), regardless of the magnitude of initial expenditure.
More recently I have felt I've in fact unlocked a greater amount of energy per week, and can do more stuff. But I don't know that this violates the conservation of energy. It may be that I've increased the maximum capacity of energy I can store up through rest -- perhaps regular exercise improves this. Or perhaps I've found ways to decrease the energy drain throughout the day -- perhaps spending more time on naturally energizing activities, and avoiding soul-sucking ones, improves this.
Today we know that the conservation of mass and the conservation of energy in fact comprise a single law, the law of conservation of mass-energy. This is because mass can be turned into energy, and vice versa.
In the same way, it may be that the conservation of human energy, despite seeming so time-tested in my experience, is in fact an ecosystem of transfigurable elements. And perhaps these elements can be tapped into to our advantage, the same way we harnessed the power of the atom.
This is starting to sound like woo-woo new-age hooplah, but that's because I'm fishing for a compelling ending paragraph. I'm speaking in very practical terms here -- I really do mean energy largely in terms of "I have the energy to do this thing", vs. "I am sleepy", vs. "I am exhausted."
The non-woo, less fanciful version of this ending thought is that even though energy seems conserved in most cases, it also seems like there are ways to effectively gain more energy:
- Spending more time on things that energize you, such as things that align with your core values
- Minimizing energy drain, such as by avoiding diminishing returns, e.g. maybe the first last two hours of the workday take up as much energy as the first six, but with half the returns
- Increasing the total capacity you have for energy, maybe via exercise
- Other stuff?
Some day I'll tighten up this metaphor!
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