Manage Your Energy, Reclaim Your Time

When we manage our time and energy solely through the capitalist value of “productivity over people”, we often are unable to tend to our whole selves and practice the self-care habits that may sustain us for the long haul. We're inviting you into a deeper conversation and practice to reclaim time and manage energy.

Join us for our next Manage Your Energy, Reclaim Your Time: A Path to Personal Sustainability training. 

We need to talk about how tired folks are.

After the last two years, it seems like everyone is feeling the strain of burnout in a deep and long-lasting way. For many Black leaders and leaders of color, the demands to support their communities through turbulent times, keep organizations running, and tend to life amidst multiple crises has taken an especially heavy toll.

Our conversation about time and energy has fundamentally shifted, and we need spaces that recognize that. Self-care conversations have moved to the center of our collective attention, people are rethinking (and questioning) their relationship to work, and lots of folks are asking fundamental questions about sustaining  themselves in social justice work.

We're opening up space for some honest reflection by highlighting a conversation between CompassPoint team members spring opara and Simone Thelemaque. We invite you to go deeper in this conversation with us in our upcoming training: Manage Your Energy, Reclaim Your Time: a Path to Personal Sustainability.

We'd love to hear from you in the comments. How would you and your team answer these questions, and which practices have you tried individually and at your organization to reclaim time and manage your energy?

In these videos: on the left, Project Director spring opara; on the right, Project Director Simone Thelemaque. 

Music: "Without You" by R Frequency (Free Music Archive)

How has your relationship to time changed over the course of the pandemic?

Where did your sense of "good" and "bad" time management come from?

What are some ideas for more liberatory practices around time and energy management at the organizational level?

Resources

(This is a sampling of ideas and tools that have shaped our approach to this training—which continues to evolve!—and which we hope will be helpful to you in shifting mindsets and adopting new practices). 

Frameworks
The Energy Project

Videos
The Racial Politics of Time - TED Talk by Dr. Brittney Cooper
Practice: Somatic Centering with Sumitra Rajkumar - Generative Somatics
The Role of Rhythm in Strategy - from Norma Wong for Move to End Violence

Articles
You Do Not Exist To Be Used: Why Your Life Purpose is Bigger Than Capitalist Productivity by Gillian Giles (originally published on The Body Is Not an Apology website)
How to Prevent Burnout Among Black Movement Leaders by Dany Sigwalt
Healing-Centered Leadership: A Path to Transformation by Shawn A. Ginwright

Self-Care Resources
Ancestral Apothecary (Herbal Care)
The Nap Ministry

Join us for our next Manage Your Energy, Reclaim Your Time: A Path to Personal Sustainability training.