Managing Energy

(image by kinkate via pixabay.com)

We’ve talked about the need to show up on a regular basis and do the work. We’ve talked about emotions, muses, influences.

But how to get it all done?

The older I get, the more important I find it is to manage my energy, and match the best energy to each task.

When I was younger, and building my career, I had much more stamina, and I could push through, no matter what. As I’ve said in previous posts, I spent decades living in a state of perpetual exhaustion. TV and film production are unrelenting. An 8-hour day is an anomaly, not the norm. For TV, when I worked on hour-long drama, shooting a one-hour drama was scheduled over 8 days. You work until the work is done; there were meal penalties and overtime. There have been plenty  of times when I worked on a Friday shoot until 7 or 8 AM on Saturday morning, and had to be back on set at 5 AM on Monday. Supposedly one had Saturday and Sunday “off”, but that’s not the reality. In theatre, there are 8 shows/week. You have one day off (called the “dark” day). Before opening, tech rehearsals are 8 out of 10 hours or 10 out of 12 hours. Once the show is up and running, there’s daywork. There are understudy rehearsals. There are put-in rehearsals for the understudies and for new cast members. There are events.

I worked a musical on Broadway where we did a Sunday matinee; at 6:30, when we were done, we  got into cabs at the theatre to go to the airport, flew to LA; Monday morning (our dark day) we had a camera blocking rehearsal, then shot an appearance on Leno; once we finished filming, it was back in the cab, back to the airport, the red-eye back to NY. The actors went home; the crew went back to the theatre to drop off everything, had a few hours’ break, and were back for daywork and then the show, at the start of another 8-show week.

I miss the actual running of the show and the camaraderie backstage, and the creative process about putting on a show every night. I do not miss the schedule. When I first left Broadway and moved away from New York, I went out to dinner and a movie on a Friday night like a civilian for the first time in over 20 years. It was the strangest feeling!

Working remotely, as I do, makes it much easier to manage energy and match tasks to energy. I try to avoid, whenever possible, assignments that demand I be on tap between certain hours every day. I build the day around that day’s work needs, not around some corporation’s idea of when I should be “available.”

My creative energy is higher in the morning, so I try to write as much as possible in the morning: my longhand writing early-early; then whatever my “primary” project is in draft; then build the other writing around that.

If I have to be on a Zoom call, I try to schedule those late morning or early afternoon (which usually works better across multiple time zones anyway). I limit the number of Zoom slots per week;  if someone wants a meeting and the week’s slots are full, they are bumped to the following week. During the pandemic, I started adding the number of Zoom calls included in a project fee, and then the rate of any Zoom meetings beyond that, into the contract. Phone calls are ONLY done by appointment, and charged for in 15-minute increments like a lawyer. There’s no such thing as “just a quick call” in my experience, and phone calls throw off my entire day, no matter how brief. In my experience 99.9% of phone calls are unnecessary and can be handled better over email.

If I don’t have calls, I use late morning/early afternoon to run errands, which gives me a break, and allows me to transition from creative headspace to critical headspace.

Afternoon energy is better geared toward editing, script doctoring, coverage work, or reading for review.

If I’m behind on a project, I’ll change it up as needed, but knowing how my brain switches gears, it makes sense to match the task to the energy.

When I was writing while working full-time on Broadway, my brain would automatically disengage and go into “show head” at a certain point in the day. If I had to be at the theatre for day work or a matinee around 1 PM, my brain disengaged from the writing by 11 AM. If I had hour before half hour at 6:30 PM for an 8 PM show, my brain disengaged by 4 PM. If I tried to push through beyond it, I had to toss it all the next day, so I started listening to my brain and my energy.

When you’re working backstage on a show, especially when the stakes are as high as on Broadway, precision is key. It’s live, so something will go wrong every night. You have to be able to think on your feet, adapt, and make sure the audience never knows something was wrong. A sense of humor is as big an asset as quick thinking and quick reflexes. Working a Broadway show engages you fully on both mental and physical levels. Once the show starts, that train goes full speed ahead until final curtain. The shows are usually 2 ½ hours, and you’ve been there at least a half hour before, and often an hour before half hour. Intermission is a break for the audience, not the company. It’s full out from the moment you walk through the stage door until you leave after the show is done, and all your post-show tasks are complete.

In film/tv production, you work in spurts for the takes, and then there are breaks (for the actors) while the crew sets up the next shot and the other departments are working on what’s needed next. Each takes a different type of energy and focus. Craft services is one of the most important departments on a film/television production, because those crews are so much an army that moves on its stomach.

In both theatre and film, it’s not about your energy matched to the task, it’s about getting done what’s needed on that day’s schedule. If you can’t do that, you don’t last long in the industry. So that was decades of learning how to pull energy up from nothing (I used to joke about “make like a hockey player and dig deeper”). As I aged out, I felt myself struggling, especially with the physicality involved, and I was not living up to my own standards for the work. Which meant, eventually, I couldn’t live up to what needed to be done. That’s why I chose to leave when I did, while I still loved it. I didn’t want to be old, bitter, and unable to do the work.

Now that I have more control over my own schedule, I can match the energy to the task better.

When I match the energy to the task, the quality of work is better.

And having more control over my daily schedule now, if I’m dragging on some days (as we all do), I can switch up what I work on. When I match the right task to the energy, it fuels me rather than depleting me.

When I worked in traditional office situations, all it EVER did was deplete me. Even temp office jobs I enjoyed, such as working at the Guggenheim, depleted me.

Working backstage and on set was exhausting and exhilarating, but eventually, one’s body and mind absolutely need to rest. 18-hour days for days and weeks on end, 8 show weeks, all of that takes a toll, both physically and mentally, even when you love it.

I’m trying to listen more to my body and my brain, and give it what it needs. I want to be able to focus on the work during work sessions, and rest when I need to rest, so I can replenish. It’s a process of trial and error, and making adjustments as needed, while staying on deadline. When I need to switch something up, I do, and I’m grateful to have the flexibility and control of my day so that I can.

How do you match the energy to the task? How much of your workday is about steady focus, and how much is about stamina to just get through it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.