Personal Energy Portfolio Audit
Cut draining commitments and reinvest time in activities that generate energy.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 97%
The Personal Energy Portfolio Audit treats a schedule as a portfolio of activities with different energy returns. Chronicle a representative week, then mark each item as giving energy, draining it, or neutral. Measure the current mix instead of relying on a general feeling of busyness. For each draining activity, decide whether to remove it, delegate it, automate it, redesign it, or consciously retain it because it remains essential. Morin's directional target is to bring draining work below 10 percent and refill the schedule with activities that generate energy. Repeat the audit as responsibilities change. The mechanism turns self-awareness into calendar decisions and aims to create a more sustainable life whose positive energy also improves interactions with other people.
Origin
Asked for her secret to profiting in life, Morin described chronicling daily activities, reducing energy-draining work, and filling life with energy-giving work.
Core principles
- 01Energy is a useful signal for how work and life are structured.
- 02Habit can conceal how much of a schedule is persistently draining.
- 03Draining work should be delegated, redesigned, reduced, or consciously accepted.
- 04More energy-giving activity improves both personal experience and contribution to others.
How to run it
- 1
Chronicle the week
Record the actual activities in a representative work and home week. Include small recurring tasks that disappear inside broad calendar blocks.
Pro tip Capture activities soon after they happen so memory does not favor only dramatic moments.
Watch out Auditing an ideal week will hide the habits causing depletion.
- 2
Label the energy effect
Mark each activity as energy-giving, draining, or neutral based on its recurring effect. Judge the activity after completion, not only before it starts.
Pro tip Separate discomfort that produces satisfying growth from depletion that never recovers its cost.
Watch out Do not label every difficult task as draining merely because it requires effort.
- 3
Measure the portfolio
Calculate the proportion of time and attention in each category. Identify the few draining activities consuming the largest share.
Pro tip Rank by total weekly energy cost, not annoyance per occurrence.
Watch out Counting tasks without considering duration can overstate trivial irritations.
- 4
Reduce the drains
For each major drain, choose removal, delegation, automation, redesign, or deliberate retention. Move avoidable draining work toward a small minority of the schedule.
Pro tip Start with one recurring drain whose removal creates immediate capacity.
Watch out Delegating without clear ownership can convert one drain into repeated supervision.
- 5
Reinvest the capacity
Place energy-giving activities into the time that has been freed. Protect them on the calendar instead of allowing miscellaneous work to refill the space.
Pro tip Choose activities that remain energizing after the novelty passes.
Watch out Empty capacity tends to attract new obligations unless it is assigned deliberately.
- 6
Rebalance regularly
Repeat the audit after role, family, or workload changes. Adjust the portfolio when formerly energizing activities become habitual drains or vice versa.
Pro tip Run a light monthly review and a deeper audit each quarter.
Watch out An energy profile is contextual, not a permanent personality verdict.
In the wild
A founder logs one week and finds that repetitive scheduling, routine reporting, and scattered support messages consume most of the draining hours. She automates scheduling, delegates report preparation, and batches support into one window, then protects the recovered time for customer interviews and product design.
→ The week contains less avoidable depletion and more work that renews the founder's attention.
Morin contrasts frequent travel to speak with chief marketing officers with spending more time directly understanding users. The move toward direct-to-consumer revenue allowed her to devote more attention to the part of the business she cared about most.
→ A business-model shift also improved alignment between the founder's time and energy.
Common mistakes
Auditing from memory
General impressions miss small recurring activities whose cumulative energy cost is substantial.
Removing every hard task
Some demanding work is necessary or ultimately energizing, so effort alone is not a reason to eliminate it.
Leaving reclaimed time empty
Without deliberate reinvestment, low-value obligations quickly refill newly available capacity.
Is it for you?
Best for
People with meaningful control over at least part of their work or home responsibilities who feel persistently depleted.
Not ideal for
Short emergencies where essential draining work cannot yet be reduced or delegated.
From the transcript
“become incredibly aware of what fills me with energy rather than takes it from me”
“if you chronicle all of the things that you're doing i bet you more than 50 of them are energy draining not energy giving”
“delegate the energy draining stuff or you know make that sub 10 and fill your days and fill your life with the things that are…”
From the episode
Brit Morin on Personal Branding, Entrepreneurship, and Unconventional Creativity