Notice Your Energy, Shape Your Day: A Teaser to Vibe Blocking™ Phase One

Ever feel like some days you have the bandwidth for anything—and other days even the smallest task feels impossible?

That’s a clear demonstration of how our energy impacts even our best intentions.

Most of us are taught to plan our days based on the hours in them. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “We all have the same 24 hours.” There’s a heavy emphasis on optimization and productivity—what needs to get done, how long it should take, and where we can squeeze in a few more things.

But time-based planning completely ignores your energy, which is a fluctuating resource. On top of that, we often orient ourselves around values we’ve absorbed that don’t actually apply to our lives. Somewhere along the way, business language eeked its way into our personal language.

While I’m not a parent, I can’t imagine thinking of children as potential ROIs feels good on a purpose-focused level. It’s a small but telling example of how the language—and strategies—we use can influence how we assess our personal lives and our own worth.

Feeling the external pressure to perform well in every aspect of my life—and trying to wrangle my creative muses into showing up on demand, despite the unpredictability of simply existing—makes me want to toss daily agendas based on time alone right out the window. 

Enter Vibe Blocking™.

In this short blog series, I want to share a quick overview of each phase of my method, starting with Phase One: Awareness. Not the kind that looks at your calendar and counts appointments and tasks—but the energetic kind.

Vibe Blocking™ Phase One: Energy Awareness

Energy awareness changes everything.

Some moments you’re in what’s often called anabolic energy—creative, expansive, focused, and motivated. Other moments you’re in catabolic energy—slower, depleted, inward, or simply not built for heavy output. Neither is “good” or “bad,” but each one supports very different kinds of work.

Often, we feel at the mercy of our energy without knowing why. Catabolic energy, especially, can be reactionary, while anabolic energy tends to be more responsive.

It might be obvious when we’re sitting at our desks and a passive-aggressive email slips in that we’re about to shift into a catabolic state—getting defensive or irritated. Before I invite my clients to shift their energy, I first invite them to observe it. We’re interacting with and encountering so many experiences each day that a crunchy email from earlier can affect our energy well into the afternoon. Whether we think it will, or not.

I don’t know about you, but layering on more activities that keep me in catabolic energy isn’t going to help me show up in the world the way I want to. Not until I understand why something has me feeling that way in the first place.

Phase One of Vibe Blocking™ is really just about the noticing. Not judging—especially if you decided to fight fire with fire in your response email—but identifying the encounters in your day that co-mingle and influence each other. Even if you had a great commute into work, jamming to your favorite playlist, and the email exchange was short-lived, it makes sense that you’d feel a little out of focus during the department meeting later that day.

I coach my clients to think about their tasks as sandwiched in and around each other, not existing in isolation. The appointment you had this morning impacts your gym time at lunch. Sometimes we do things that balance us back out. Sometimes catabolic energy piles on. In those moments, it’s harder to stay on track with goals—but more than that, it becomes difficult to feel at choice in who we want to be as people.

Phase One is designed to help clients give themselves grace by bringing objective observation to the quality of their day—not just the hours spent staying on track or on time.

A Reflection to Carry With You

This week, notice the language you use when you think about your time, your productivity, and yourself. Where does it sound borrowed? Where does it feel misaligned?

Pay attention to when you feel energized and when you feel depleted. Which moments seem to support you? Which ones quietly drain you? And how might the strategies you’ve been using be shaping not just how you manage your time—but how you assess your worth?

You don’t need to change anything yet. Awareness comes first for a reason.

This post is just the tip of the Vibe Blocking™ iceberg that starts with Phase One: Awareness. If you’d like to continue this conversation and receive future reflections, insights, and practical ways to plan in alignment with your energy, you’re invited to subscribe to my free newsletter Bring the Week.

It’s a quieter space to notice patterns, question assumptions, and explore what alignment can actually look like in real life.