Reflective Activity

Energy Management

Self-Management

15 min exercise

Activity:
Motivators and Distractors

Most people manage schedules and habits, but rarely stop to notice what gives or drains their energy. If this is something you’d like to manage more deliberately, this brief reflective activity helps surface what reliably supports your focus and what tends to compete with it.

Motivators and Distractors

A short reflective tool for managing energy.

Purpose of this Activity

Most people spend a lot of time trying to manage their schedules, habits, or productivity systems, and far less time paying attention to what actually pulls their energy forward or quietly drains it.

This reflects an idea the great Peter Block describes in his amazing book, “Flawless Consulting”: we tend to focus on the content of day‑to‑day work rather than the process of how work actually gets done. While his example is about working with internal or external clients, the same idea applies here.

Just imagine that in this reflection that schedules, habits, and systems are our hardware; whereas the motivators and distractors are our software — or the patterns that shape how your energy shows up in practice. This short exercise is designed to surface both.

By naming a small set of motivators and distractors, you gain clearer line of sight into:

what reliably fuels your focus and follow‑through, and
what competes for your attention or erodes momentum, often without you noticing.

This is about progress, not perfection

The goal of this reflection isn’t to eliminate distractions entirely or engineer perfect days. It’s to work with reality, using what motivates you to better manage your energy, choices, and effort over time. In many cases, simply raising awareness is enough to create meaningful and lasting progress.

Follow the instruction below and capture your responses in whatever format works best for you.

* * *

Step 1: Name your MOTIVATORS

List 3–5 things that genuinely motivate you.

These are not aspirational values or what should motivate you. They are the things that, in practice, tend to increase your engagement, clarity, or willingness to act.

To prompt your thinking, consider:

• What activities or outcomes are easy for me to get into?
• What tends to leave me feeling energized rather than depleted?

Write down your motivators now.

Step 2: Name your DISTRACTORS

Now list 3–5 things that consistently distract you or dilute your energy.

These shouldn't be considered failures, but rather patterns for you. Some may be external (noise, interruptions, media overuse). Others may be internal (overthinking, perfectionism, comparison).

To prompt your thinking, you might ask:

• Where do I spend time and energy that I often regret later?
• What regularly pulls me away from what I intended to focus on?

Now take note of your distractors.

Step 3: Reflect

Use the questions below to make sense of what you’ve listed. You don’t need to answer all of them at once - they’re meant to help you find a starting point.

Are there any patterns or themes across my motivators and distractors?
Which distractors have been present for a long time, and which feel more recent?
Which motivators are easiest to access during stressful periods? How could I make more room for these?

Use these questions to look for patterns, distinguish what’s situational from what’s longer-standing, and identify which motivators are most accessible when things feel demanding, and where you might deliberately make more room for them.