It was some way into my working life before I realised the importance of managing our energy – and in particular, the draining impact of regular context switching. Moving from a phone call, to a meeting, to someone wanting a word in the corridor on the way to the meeting…and so on. Especially hard if you are a bit of a pleaser!

Below, I explore the work of writers on this subject, and of the best advice to ensure that we put a principal focus on managing our energy – and in structuring our day to allow this. It’s important for us all, but especially for managers and leaders of others, where you need – and want – to be at your best for those you lead, as well as addressing your full workload.

Email. Phone call. Meeting. Corridor conversation. Back to the email. Another call. A colleague needs five minutes. Then, finally, back to the paper you were trying to write.

Sounds familiar?

For many of us, especially business owners, this is not an unusual day. It is the day.

And because each individual interruption can seem perfectly reasonable, it is easy to underestimate the cumulative cost.

The problem is not simply that these activities take time.

They require us to repeatedly change mental gears.

And that can be surprisingly expensive.

The energy cost of changing context

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz made an important distinction in The Power of Full Engagement: high performance is not simply about managing time. It is about managing energy.

Their argument is that our capacity to perform depends on how effectively we expend and renew energy—physically, emotionally, mentally and in terms of our sense of purpose. They advocate rhythms of focused expenditure followed by recovery, rather than trying to sustain maximum intensity indefinitely.

That idea has a powerful implication for leadership.

Perhaps the question is not:

“How do I fit everything into my day?”

But:

“How do I use my available energy for the things that matter most?”

Because the business leadership role can be remarkably fragmented.

You might spend 20 minutes reading a strategic paper, then take a call about an operational issue.

You move from that call into a leadership meeting.

On the way back to your desk, someone stops you in the corridor with a problem that needs your attention.

Then you see three emails that require a response.

Then you return to the strategic paper. Except you don’t really return to it.

Part of your mind is still on the conversation in the corridor.

Part is thinking about the email you haven’t answered.

And part is anticipating the meeting you’ve got in 15 minutes.

You are physically present. But your attention is being pulled in several directions.

The science of “attention residue”

Research by Sophie Leroy has given us a useful way of understanding this phenomenon.

In her research on task switching, Leroy found that when people move from one task to another, some of their attention can remain attached to the previous task—particularly when the first task is unfinished. She describes this as “attention residue.” That residual attention can impair performance on the task that follows.

This matters enormously for leaders because leadership work is rarely a series of cleanly completed tasks.

It is full of unfinished business.

A person you’re concerned about.

A strategic question you haven’t yet answered.

So when you move from one thing to another, you don’t necessarily leave the previous thing behind.

You carry some of it with you.

Gloria Mark’s research on attention and interruption similarly highlights the cognitive cost of repeatedly switching attention. Each switch requires us to reorient ourselves to the new activity, creating additional effort and slowing performance.

This is why a day packed with activity can leave you feeling strangely depleted—even when you haven’t done anything particularly strenuous.

You have been spending energy on the transitions as well as the tasks.

The leadership trap: confusing responsiveness with effectiveness

There is another danger here.

Business leaders often become successful because they are responsive.

People know they can get hold of you.

You answer the email. You take the call.

And, of course, some of that is absolutely part of good leadership.

But if every request is allowed to dictate what happens next, your day can gradually become a sequence of other people’s priorities.

You become busy responding rather than deliberately leading.

And there is a subtle consequence for your people, and your customers.

If your best thinking happens only in the gaps between interruptions, your organisation may get the available version of you rather than the best version of you.

That matters.

Your stakeholders need your attention.

But they also need your judgement, your perspective, your creativity, your patience and your ability to think beyond the immediate problem.

So what can leaders do differently?

The answer isn’t to become inaccessible.

Nor is it to eliminate meetings, emails or conversations.

It is to compartmentalise different types of work.

Instead of allowing every activity to compete for attention throughout the day, create periods in which particular kinds of work have your full attention.

For example:

Deep work

Protect 60–90 minutes for the things that require your highest level of thinking.

Writing. Strategy. Planning. Problem-solving.

Preparing for an important decision.

Thinking about the future of the organisation.

During this time, email is closed. Your phone is quiet. Meetings are not scheduled.

The objective isn’t simply to “get some work done”.

It is to create enough uninterrupted time for your brain to get properly into the subject.

Cal Newport has popularised this idea through his work on “deep work”: cognitively demanding activity benefits from sustained, distraction-free concentration rather than continual switching between shallow tasks and deeper ones.

Communication blocks

Then create defined periods for email, returning calls, messages and administrative decisions.

Instead of allowing email to become the soundtrack running underneath the whole day, give it a place.

Perhaps 30 minutes late morning.

Another block mid-afternoon.

The exact timing will vary depending on your role. The principle is what matters:

Don’t let communication consume every available gap in your attention.

People time

And then deliberately create space for people.

One-to-ones.

Coaching.

Informal conversations.

Walking the floor.

Checking in with your team.

These interactions are not interruptions to “real work”.

They are real work.

But they deserve your presence rather than being squeezed between emails and meetings.

Think in terms of energy, not just hours

This is where Loehr and Schwartz’s work becomes particularly relevant.

If you think only in terms of time, a 60-minute block is simply a 60-minute block.

But from an energy perspective, they are not equal.

An hour spent writing a difficult strategy paper may require intense mental focus.

An hour of routine emails may require a different kind of energy.

An hour coaching a member of your team requires emotional presence and attention.

An hour in a routine meeting may consume relatively little—or, depending on the meeting, a great deal.

The opportunity is to start asking:

What kind of energy does this activity require?

And:

When am I most capable of providing it?

That can lead to a very different diary.

If your best mental energy is in the morning, perhaps that is not the time to clear your inbox.

Perhaps it is the time to tackle the work that most requires your thinking.

If you tend to have more social energy in the afternoon, perhaps that is when you deliberately create more space for conversations and meetings.

If you know that a difficult meeting leaves you mentally drained, don’t automatically follow it with the most demanding piece of strategic work in your week.

In other words:

Schedule according to the energy the work requires—not simply the amount of time it occupies.

Build transitions into the day

There is one more piece that is easily missed.

If context switching has a cost, then moving from one type of work to another needs a transition.

Don’t expect yourself to walk straight out of a challenging conversation and immediately produce your best strategic thinking.

Give yourself five or ten minutes. Walk. Breathe. Make a few notes.

Close one mental loop before opening another.

Loehr and Schwartz describe high performance in terms of cycles of expenditure and renewal. Recovery isn’t simply something that happens after the work is finished; it is part of sustaining performance.

For leaders, that might mean something as simple as leaving a little space between commitments.

Not every minute of the diary needs to be occupied.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can put into your calendar is nothing.

The real measure of a well-managed diary

Perhaps the goal isn’t to have a perfectly optimised calendar.

It is to finish the day knowing that your energy went towards the things that genuinely mattered.

And that you didn’t spend the entire day simply reacting to whatever arrived next.

Because leadership is not just about managing time.

It is about managing the quality of your attention, your energy and your presence.

So here’s the question worth asking:

Are you currently managing your time in a way that manages your energy—or are you simply at the mercy of your daily schedule?

Perhaps your calendar is telling you something important.

The question is whether you’re listening.