Leading with Energy at Work: The Daily Habits That Help you Thrive
- Tamar Balkin
- 7 hours ago
- 7 min read
“ Runnin' on empty (Runnin' on)
Runnin' blind (Runnin' on)
Runnin' into the sun (Runnin' on)
But I'm runnin' behind”
Running on Empty by Jackson Browne (Click here for the song)
“I’m spinning too many plates, I'm drinking too much coffee, and I have no sense of accomplishment; I’m irritable… How do I improve my energy and productivity at work?”
Coaching client
Researchers have found that in times of job insecurity and financial pressure, employees may become excessively and compulsively involved in their work. This intense expenditure of energy can lead to the neglect of personal health, relationships, and social life, and is associated with mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression, as well as physical symptoms such as fatigue.
“Excessive work involvement (i.e., work addiction) accelerates the consumption of emotional and cognitive resources, thereby weakening individuals’ ability to cope effectively with interpersonal tensions”
Sheng J, Zheng G, Wang H and Xu Z (2025)
Regular readers know that deep physical and emotional fatigue increases the likelihood of errors and poor performance while depleting the emotional and cognitive resources needed for psychological regulation and emotional intelligence. This can make it more difficult to manage workplace stress and interpersonal conflict. Mismanagement of energy at work has a detrimental impact on the employee, their team and the organisation as a whole.
Researchers have found that typically people manage their energy at work during the workday in two broad ways: taking breaks or managing the actual work.
Recent research aimed to investigate the differing contributions and effectiveness of these strategies.
Taking breaks for energy:
Researchers have found that taking a short break and doing something non-work-related can help employees to reset and recover from stress. Regular readers know that brief meaningful breaks of at least ten minutes can be vital for recovery from highly demanding work. They found that breaks replenish energy and attentional capacity and support better productivity. Micro-breaks increase individuals’ vigour and decrease their fatigue levels, enhancing employee levels of accomplishment. A meta-analysis found that the longer the break, the greater the subsequent boost in performance.
Psychological micro-breaks. Psychological detachment occurs when employees are off the job and stop thinking about work‑related tasks and issues. Research has shown that short cognitive micro‑breaks can create brief mental pauses and offer personally meaningful moments. These chosen activities can provide a sense of satisfaction, protect cognitive bandwidth, and prevent work from overloading mental resources. The correct type of break enables emotional regulation, reducing the impact of negative or stressful work situations. The recovery literature consistently highlights psychological detachment as a critical experience for decreasing negative emotions at work.
Physical microbreaks involve some form of physical activity such as walking or stretching, or simply stepping outside for fresh air. Physical breaks are especially energising and support physiological stress regulation. Regular readers know that these breaks regulate stress and can restore feelings of calm. Sadly, modern work is becoming more and more sedentary; researchers have found that the greater the cognitive demands on knowledge workers, the less they move.
Social microbreaks such as having a conversation with a colleague, a short talk with someone nearby, or a casual chat with someone at work are also beneficial. However, researchers have found that their benefits depend on who you interact with, the nature of the interaction, the topic covered, and whether the interaction feels natural rather than forced.
“The neurons that spark creative ideas, the circuits that support memory and focus, and the neurotransmitters that regulate mood all improve function when the body moves and rests when needed.”
Pronk
Work-focused strategies for energy
The other way people manage energy is by focusing on work itself.
Prosocial strategies involve offering help to someone at work, doing something that will make a colleague happy, or making time to show gratitude to a colleague, customer, or stakeholder.
Meaning-focused strategies include employees reflecting on the meaning of their work, thinking about how they make a difference, and focusing on what gives them joy at work. Regular readers know that pursuing meaningful experiences is a fundamental human objective and supports wellbeing and flourishing. Meaning arises through domain-specific activities, but people also seek consistency between their thoughts, beliefs, values, and behaviours.
Organising strategies involve employees checking and updating their schedule, making a to-do list, or setting a new goal.
The downside of some work-focused strategies
Researchers have found that intense planning can place excessive demands on mental workload because it requires more cognitive resources than tasks relying mainly on working memory. Similarly, rapid attention switching and multitasking increase stress, blood pressure, errors, and slow performance. In addition, researchers have found that each shift in activity carries a switch cost, requiring the mind to reorient and expend additional time and effort.
These findings highlight the importance of the timing of cognitive breaks. Breaks are most effective when taken at a natural stopping point, allowing the mind to disengage without having to reconstruct unfinished work. In contrast, interrupting a task mid-flow requires additional cognitive resources and can increase stress.
Taken together, well-timed cognitive breaks can help reduce cognitive load, restore resources, and sustain energy and performance across the workday.
What do people actually do?
In a recent study, researchers were curious to see how people actually behave; they found that energy management isn’t a single tactic but an episodic and dynamic process. In fact, most people don’t realise how many small decisions shape their energy across the workday. Their energy shifts moment by moment, influenced by tiny actions that accumulate into patterns.
Researchers found that not only do people draw on a blend of psychological, physical and social micro-breaks, along with work-focused strategies, but these strategies differ in how often they’re used and how they are combined.
Typical strategies include:
Passive strategising: This refers to the fact that many people are not actually actively managing their energy through either work-focused strategies or micro-breaks. Interestingly, most moments across the workday fall into this category.
Social microbreaks: As described above, can boost energy, although their benefits depend on the context.
Meaningful organising. Whilst meaning-focused strategies can support interest and mastery, researchers found that they do not appear to create energetic or motivational gains on their own. When combined with microbreaks, meaningful organising can support motivation and mastery.
Active strategising is one of the smallest, but arguably most interesting, profiles. This approach combines micro-breaks with work-focused strategies. Workers who used this approach had higher energy, stronger motivation and a greater sense of mastery.
Movement, or Physical micro-breaks, was found to support physiological stress regulation and to boost energy and vitality.
The role of self-awareness
People vary widely in how much energy and attentional capacity they have available across the day. This makes self-awareness essential. Researchers have found that people who are attuned to their own levels of energy and attention are able to take breaks at the right time rather than following a rigid schedule. Many people learn to notice the early signs of fatigue and use that moment as a cue to pause and replenish.
Some practical tips
Researchers found that when facing a demanding task, it can also help to schedule a break before starting and another one afterwards to rebuild the resources that were used. One of the most draining patterns is scheduling back-to-back virtual meetings without any transition. This leaves no space to reset attention or recover energy. Transitions between demanding tasks are important because they allow the mind to settle and prepare for the next activity. Without these transitions, exhaustion builds quickly. (Click here for my blog on The Third Space and relaxation hacks).
The researchers concluded that people do not need to choose between working and taking a break. The most effective approach appears to be integrating the two. Work-focused strategies are more likely to support motivation and mastery when they occur alongside microbreaks within the same hour.
Final Thoughts:
“When…employees experienced more cognitive detachment after work, they reported less concentration problems. Second, when employees experienced more emotional detachment after work, they reported less feelings of emotional exhaustion, less depressive feelings, and less sleep problems. Finally, when employees experienced more physical detachment after work, they reported less concentration problems, less feelings of emotional exhaustion, less sleep problems and less physical health problems.”
DE Jonge
Regular readers know that true energy management requires a combination of methods before, during and after work. Recovery can be understood as a dynamic process of unwinding and restoration, where an employee’s functioning and stressful experiences return to their pre‑stress levels. The aim of managing energy is not only to recover from strain but to feel genuinely energised and inspired.
Readers challenge:
Please click here to email me an example of an energy management technique that you find useful.
A note of thanks:
I am indebted to Kayla Walters, whose search tool made it possible to locate recent research (click here for the tool). I am also grateful to Stacey L Parker, Natalie Dawson, Nicolas Dozo and Hannes Zacher for conducting and publishing a comprehensive study that provides a new evidence-based practical perspective on managing energy at work.
References
Albulescu, P., Macsinga, I., Rusu, A., Sulea, C., Bodnaru, A. and Tulbure, B.T. (2022) ‘Give me a break!’ A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance’, PLoS ONE, 17(8), e0272460. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272460.
American Psychological Association (n.d.) ‘Attention spans’, Speaking of Psychology. Available at: https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans (Accessed: 25 August 2026).
Cowan, N. (2001) ‘The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), pp. 87–114. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X01003922.
De Jonge, J. (2019) ‘What makes a good work break? Off-job and on-job recovery as predictors of employee health’, Industrial Health. doi: 10.2486/indhealth.2019-0097.
Kim, S., Park, Y. and Niu, Q. (2017) ‘Micro-break activities at work to recover from daily work demands’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(1), pp. 28–44. doi: 10.1002/job.2109.
Parker, S.L., Dawson, N., Dozo, N. and Zacher, H. (2026) ‘Momentary energy management profiles: Associations with energy, heart rate variability, and motivational states’, Journal of Business and Psychology. doi: 10.1007/s10869-026-10143-x.
Pronk, N.P. (2025) ‘The sedentary-cognitive paradox at work: Movement as a strategic business imperative for brain fitness’, JAR Life, 15, 100054. doi: 10.1016/j.jarlif.2025.100054.
Radüntz, T. (2020) ‘The effect of planning, strategy learning, and working memory capacity on mental workload’, Scientific Reports, 10(1), 7096. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-63897-6.
Sheng, J., Zheng, G., Wang, H. and Xu, Z. (2025) ‘Exploring the associations between work addiction, emotional intelligence, psychological detachment, and interpersonal conflicts in young employees’, Frontiers in Public Health, 13, 1631122. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1631122.
van Zyl, L.E., Custers, N.C.M., Dik, B.J., van der Vaart, L. and Klibert, J. (2023) ‘The holistic life-crafting model: A systematic literature review of meaning-making behaviors’, Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1271188. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1271188.
Comments