Use all your best energy on yourself and give the leftovers to your employer

So you've just finished work. On the commute home, you want to do something for yourself, your future—be it writing, art, a side-hustle, or the gym, whatever it may be. However, when you get home, you're overwhelmed with how tired you are. Your employer and customers have just drained you of all your energy and soul. Additionally, you have to cook dinner, clean the house, and do the laundry. There just isn't enough time and energy to get out of this hole you're in. So how does one do the extraordinary and conjure up the muse to help you execute when inspiration strikes? But your batteries are flat, and the only energy you can muster is for recovery. What is someone to do?

This might sound crazy and challenging at the start, but please hear me out. What are you going to do if you are in this situation like I was? The problem we can both agree on is time and energy. You need time to lift yourself up and out of your situation, and you also need the energy to do it. My method was to use up all my good energy on myself for what I wanted to accomplish and give the leftovers to my employer. So how does one do this?

Balancing act, how shifting your timetable can transform your life

You might have an idea in your head about how you can do this already. You cannot get more time out of the day without affecting your health and well-being, but you can shift your time and energy in favor of yourself and your needs and goals. For myself, I started going to bed early and getting up early. I started my day four hours earlier than it needed to be. With that time, I spent it on myself, using up those four hours on whatever was going to get me into a better place every single morning. Once those four hours were up, I would head off to work, and whatever energy I had left, the employer got. Let's just say, I had very little energy left to do 100% of what was required of me. But like most employers, as long as you're there and doing it, quality doesn't really matter.

Before the workday ended, you would already be tired and yearning for rest, but you don't care because you paid yourself first. You paid yourself first with time—time you can never get back. Doing this, you will still be flat at the end of the day and more tired than before, and you will go to sleep earlier. But at least you did what you wanted to do today already. Sure, it's not a great fix, more of a shuffle of the timetable, but it worked for me. I got time to write, think, read, and work out before work. This also forced me to get as much energy as I could out of myself before the workday started. So you also started eating better, not an amazing hack, but it gives your brain more power to do what you wanted. And like I said before, the employer gets the leftovers.

Investing in yourself, pay yourself first in time and energy

The saying "pay yourself first" means to save for your future. They also say time is your most valuable asset—you can never get it back once it is spent. So use your best time on yourself. Use your best and freshest energy on yourself. Give the scraps and leftovers, or whatever is there, to your employer. Why should they get the best part of you? They surely aren't paying you enough for that. We are just scraping by. So use all that good stuff on yourself. Figure out what works for you—maybe it's not in the morning, perhaps it's at lunchtime or in the evening if you are a night owl. Shift your timetable of getting up and going to bed in your favor. Use all the best energy on yourself and give the leftovers to your employer.