Conserving Energy

I wonder how many hits I'll get here from people looking for information on reducing carbon emissions.

I'm thinking of personal energy, of course, given my usual focus on writing.
And mostly what I was thinking about was much along the lines of what I wrote just a couple of days ago about focusing energy.

Conservation of energy is closely related to the appropriate use of energy: the better we focus our efforts, the less energy is wasted on fruitless tasks.

The great thing about the energy we have for our personal endeavors is that there is no strict law of conservation: by investing energy in our lives, we increase the amount of energy we can get back. In a practical sense, a regular exercise program, which obviously requires a significant expense of energy, still usually leaves us with more energy than we would have if we didn't exercise--at least over the long run. But the investment of energy can take other forms as well: working on productive endeavors, whatever they are, will leave us feeling the emotional lift of time well-spent. If we spend our time and value it, whether working or playing, we can get this lift. But if we perceive ourselves as wasting our time, then we pay an emotional cost instead.

Thus we want to conserve our energy by expending it in the most productive, useful and challenging fashions that we can devise--but always the idea that we are investing our energy in that which will make us more complete.