Quick question: When was the last time you ended a workday feeling genuinely energized rather than just done?

I’m not talking about the kind of done where you collapse on the couch and scroll your phone for an hour just to decompress. I mean the kind of done where you still have something left- for your family, your evening, and yourself.

If that sounds like a distant memory, you’re not alone BUT we need to change that. Most high-performing leaders are optimizing for efficiency: more output, less time, tighter systems. Efficiency matters, but efficiency without energy is just a faster path to burnout.

This month, I’m talking about the other half of the productivity equation: the human half. Because you can have the best calendar system, the most automated workflows, a flawless weekly plan, and still run out of gas by Wednesday if you’re not protecting your energy at the source.

July is the perfect time to revisit this and put new strategies in place. The heat of summer, the shift in routines, the vacations and coverage gaps, planning out the last half of the year- all of it puts extra demand on your physical and mental reserves. Let’s talk about how to meet that demand successfully and energetically.

Energy Is Your Most Valuable Professional Resource

I talk a lot about time management in the leadership space. We need to remember that time is a fixed resource- everyone gets 24 hours. 

Energy is not fixed; it fluctuates. It can be depleted, protected, and restored. Unlike time, it is directly within our control.

Think about it this way: two leaders can have an identical schedule. One shows up rested, fueled, and focused. The other shows up depleted, running on caffeine and with the attention span of a gnat. Their outputs will not look the same. Their decision-making will not look the same. Their teams will not feel the same working under each of those leaders.

Sustainable productivity is about having the capacity to do your best work consistently, over time, without running yourself into the ground.

That must start long before you open your laptop.

The Summer Energy Drain Is Real- Here’s What’s Happening

Summer months create a unique set of conditions that quietly chip away at your energy reserves, especially for leaders in therapy practices and professional services:

• Heat and humidity increase physiological stress on the body, even when you’re not physically active.
• Irregular schedules- vacations, coverage rotations, school-aged children at home- all disrupt the routines that anchor your energy.
• Dehydration is significantly more likely in hot months and is one of the most underestimated causes of cognitive fog, fatigue, and irritability.
• Disrupted sleep is common in summer due to longer daylight hours, heat, and schedule shifts. (And if you’re a swim team family, those 4am Saturday wake-ups can drain your energy fast!)
• The mental load of managing your own time off, covering for others, and maintaining operational continuity simultaneously is genuinely exhausting.

The good news: all of these are manageable, but they require intentional strategy.

Body Fuel: The Practical Guide to Summer Energy Maintenance

Before we talk about AI and automation, let’s start with the foundation. No system- digital or otherwise- can compensate for a body that is running on empty. Here is what sustainable summer energy actually looks like in practice.

Hydration: The First Domino

Dehydration impairs cognitive function before you even feel thirsty. By the time you notice you are thirsty, you are already mildly dehydrated and your focus, mood, and decision-making are already affected.

Practical tips:

• Aim for half your body weight in ounces of water daily as a baseline (more in heat or with activity).
• Start your morning with 16 oz of water before coffee. Your body is dehydrated after sleep, and caffeine dehydrates further.
• Keep a large water bottle visible on your desk. Out of sight truly is out of mind.
• Add electrolytes- sodium, potassium, magnesium- especially on hot days or after exercise. Coconut water, electrolyte packets, or even a pinch of sea salt in your water can make a significant difference. (My favorite electrolyte packets: FlavCity)
• If you find yourself hitting a 2pm energy wall regularly, drink 16 oz of water before reaching for another coffee. The crash is often dehydration, not a caffeine deficit.

Protein: The Stabilizer Your Brain Needs

Protein is not just for athletes. It is the macronutrient most responsible for stable energy, sustained focus, and mood regulation- all things we as leaders need for a productive day.

When you skip protein or load up on carbohydrates alone, your blood sugar spikes and crashes. That crash is the mid-morning fog, the afternoon slump, or the irritability that sneaks into your 3pm meeting.

Practical tips:

• A breakfast high in protein: eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, a protein smoothie- whatever fits your morning. 
• Pair every snack with protein: Fruit + nut butter, veggies + hummus, cheese + crackers. The pairing slows glucose absorption and keeps energy stable.
• Don’t skip lunch. Leaders who power through lunch without eating pay for it with decision fatigue by mid-afternoon.
• In summer heat, cold protein options are your friend: overnight oats with protein powder, cold chicken or tuna salads, Greek yogurt parfaits.

Here’s an example of my typical day:

• 6am coffee with collagen and protein powder
• Mid-morning snack of cottage cheese + blueberries
• Tuna salad for lunch (my favorite: 1 cup of cottage cheese mixed with 3 scrambled eggs and cheese sprinkled on top– this is packed with protein!)
• Mid-afternoon snack of hard boiled eggs
• Salmon, chicken, ham, or red meat with vegetables for dinner. 

Sleep: The Non-Negotiable That Leaders Keep Negotiating Away

There is no supplement, no productivity system, and no amount of caffeine that replicates what quality sleep does for your brain. Sleep is when your brain consolidates learning, processes emotion, repairs tissue, and resets for the next day. 

Cutting our sleep short is a performance liability.

Practical tips:

• Protect 7–9 hours as a non-negotiable- not a goal. Build your evening schedule backward from your sleep time.
• Summer light disrupts melatonin production. Use blackout curtains or a sleep mask. Keep your room cool. Research shows the body sleeps best between 65–68°F.
• Set a consistent wind-down routine starting 30–60 minutes before bed. This includes shutting down all screens and dimming lights. Your nervous system needs to preparation time.
• Alcohol significantly disrupts sleep, and the older we get the more of an impact it has. My evening glass of wine may feel relaxing, but it always reduces the quality of my deep sleep and elevates my heartrate. My favorite replacement: drinkmoment.com 

Movement and Micro-Breaks: Resetting the System

Extended periods of sedentary focus drain energy just as much as physical exertion. Your body is designed to move, and ignoring that in the name of productivity backfires.

• A 10-minute walk after lunch improves focus and reduces post-meal glucose spikes.
• Build 5-minute movement breaks into long meeting blocks. Stand, stretch, step outside. I try to end my meetings 5-10 minutes early for this purpose, so meetings are typically 25 or 55 minutes.
• Morning movement- even 10-15 minutes- primes your brain for the day in a way that no amount of coffee can replicate. 

How AI Frees Up Your Energy by Handling What Drains It

Now that we have covered the physical foundation, let us talk about the operational side of energy protection. Sustainable productivity is not just about what you eat and how you sleep- it’s also about where you spend your mental energy during the workday.

One of the biggest hidden energy drains in leadership is the accumulation of small, repetitive cognitive tasks that individually seem minor but collectively consume hours of focused attention every week:

• Sorting email
• Writing the same response for the fifth time
• Manually scheduling and rescheduling appointments
• Tracking who got what communication

These are not leadership tasks. They are administrative tasks masquerading as your job.  AI can take most of them off your plate.

Email Filtering: Stop Paying Cognitive Taxes

If your inbox is a fire hose of mixed-priority messages, then you’re spending mental energy triaging instead of responding. Every time you open an email, read it, decide it is not urgent, and close it- only to open it again later- you are paying a cognitive tax.

Email filtering rules change that equation entirely.

Simple filters to implement today:

• Create a folder for newsletters and subscriptions that auto-sorts on arrival. You choose when to read them and they no longer interrupt your primary inbox.
• Set rules to flag emails from key organizations or team members so they surface immediately. I also keep an “Urgent” folder so as I quickly scan emails I can move them into this folder for anything that needs to be addressed on the same day.
• Auto-archive routine billing confirmations, shipping notifications, and calendar invites into dedicated folders.
• Automate daily email digests, snooze emails, set up a “Do Not Disturb” feature and more with AI integrations. My favorite one is Sanebox.
• Create a “Pending” folder for emails that require action but are not urgent, and route anything you CC’d yourself on directly there.

The result: your inbox becomes a curated, high-priority feed rather than a stream of everything competing for equal attention.

Template Responses: Write It Once, Use It Forever

How many times have you written a version of the same email? 

• the appointment reminder
• the follow-up after a consultation
• the response to a new client inquiry
• the “thanks for your referral” note
• the “here’s more information about our company” message to a potential new hire

Every time you write one of those from scratch, you are spending creative energy on something that does not require creativity. Templates fix this for good.

Where to start:

• List the five emails you write most often. These are your first five templates.
• Use AI to draft the templates in your voice, then personalize and save them.
• Store them in your email platform’s “canned responses” or template feature, or in a shared doc your team can access.
• Build in customization brackets such as [Client Name], [Date], [Specific Detail] so templates feel personal without requiring a full rewrite.

Scheduling Automations: Protect Your Calendar Without Guarding It Personally

Scheduling is one of the most energy-expensive administrative tasks in a service-based business. There are so many appointments to maintain and track, they constantly interrupt focused work, and they often require multiple back-and-forth exchanges before a time/date is confirmed.

Scheduling automations remove you from that loop entirely.

What to automate:

• Use a scheduling tool such as Calendly that lets clients/patients book directly into available windows based on rules you set.
• If you’re in the healthcare industry, most EHR systems have a feature for automated scheduling- look into this and set it up to fit your organization.
• Set automated appointment reminders that go out 48 hours and 24 hours before a session, reducing no-shows without any manual follow-up.
• Create intake form automations that are triggered at regular intervals.
• Build cancellation and rescheduling workflows that handle themselves, including confirmation to the client and an update to your calendar.

The goal is efficiency and reclaiming the mental space that comes from not having to track and manage every scheduling interaction personally.

Putting It Together: The Sustainable Productivity Blueprint

Sustainable productivity is an intentional design. It is what happens when you stop treating your energy as a renewable resource that regenerates on its own, and start treating it as something worth protecting, maintaining, and investing in deliberately.

It looks like this:

1. Your body is fueled. You are hydrating consistently, eating protein at regular intervals, and protecting your sleep like the professional asset it is.
2. Your environment supports focus. Your inbox is filtered. Your calendar is managed by systems- not by you personally. Your most common communications are templated and ready.
3. Your energy goes where it matters. Because the draining, repetitive tasks are handled, you have genuine cognitive bandwidth for the leadership work that only you can do.

Remember: you must be intentional. Even implementing one thing from each of the three pillars- nutrition, sleep, and automation- will create a measurable shift in how you show up.

Start with one. Pick the one that feels most overdue. Then build from there.

Your team, your clients, and your future self will feel the difference, especially now so you can enjoy that summer vacation!

If you want to take a deeper dive into practical AI tools and sustainable leadership strategies, sign up for my weekly emails and special webinar offers exclusively for subscribers and followers: https://erinclemens.com/email-sign-up/ 

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