Energy for Task Completion – Breakdown Method

Maintaining required energy level throughout is the most important factor in accomplishing a task at hand. Whether it is a work that needs physical energy or a task that involves mental aptitude, energy is what keeps one going. In works that need physical energy, it is body strength from which energy is derived while it is passion, the energy that fuels your determination, in tasks involving mental aptitude.

If you ask me whether maintaining required energy level is tougher during physical works or during tasks that involve mental aptitude, my answer will be that both are tough tasks, but the tougher one is that task which demands both physical and mental energy. In such a task, mental energy feeds physical strength and vice versa. And this symbiotic relationship between physical and mental energy can work either way — it can feed each other both negatively and positively. For example, physical tiredness can bring down mental energy or mental fatigue tiring down physical strength; similarly: mental energy powering up physical strength or physical vitality shoring up mental tenacity.

How do we maintain required energy level? One way is to breakdown the task into different components and keep the last component as the target to accomplish. And before you begin the task, visualize that you are enthusiastically and successfully completing the last component. Such an approach will train and season your mind to pass through the preceding components effortlessly as well as make you wait energetically for the last component to come up in order to conquer and overcome it. This Breakdown Method is an effective way to maintain required energy level. A few examples to illustrate the method:

Suppose that you are a participant in a Zumba Dance program that has, say, 23 exercise components covering an hour’s regime, then keep the 23rd component as the target which you can visualize in the beginning as being done energetically and successfully. A heart surgeon doing heart-transplant surgery needs both mental and physical energy to complete this prolonged task, and if he/she can visualize at the beginning the last step of successfully stitching up the cut-open body parts, his/her mental and physical energy will give the required impetus needed to carry through the surgery.

Business Development involving hunting for and getting an importer-distributor in a faraway country is the most difficult part of international sales. Difficulty of the task — of prospecting, zeroing in on, convincing the customer to invest in a brand and getting an order — is even more amplified if you need to complete this task within a week — 5×8=40 hours. Lot of mental and physical energy is needed to endure through the ups and downs of this 40-hour saga. I had gone through this ordeal many a time. When I embark on a trip to a virgin market/country, I visualize wrapping up the last working day with an order, and this keeps my physical and mental beings in a state of energetic progression.

Let it be any task, one needs to maintain the required energy level throughout to complete the task successfully. And one effective way to do this is to develop a Breakdown Method for the task at hand.