Last night I looked down at my phone and surprisingly it still had almost half its battery life. This is abnormal for me often having to charge my phone before the end of the day. This is a combination of two factors, one my phone is old, so the battery life is not what it used to be and two, most days I spend a lot of time on the phone. As my screen stared back at me it got me thinking about my battery life. Everyday has the same number of hours in it, yet my battery life tends to run out at different times. Some days I’m out of juice early and fall asleep on the couch and other days my supply of energy seems limitless.

My phone’s battery life is impacted by a lot of factors. When was it last charged, how long was it charged, how old is the battery, what apps are running, what’s the screen brightness set to, what’s the temperature outside, how much did I talk on it, and probably a bunch of factors that I don’t even know or think about. If all these factors can impact a phone what are the factors that impact our bodies? How much sleep did we get and how many hours have we been awake? These are all obvious impacts on our battery life but what if we go deeper and really analyze how our choices throughout the day impact our battery life?

If I take stock of what I did during the day I can really see how my energy level is impacted. Exercise, did I do it and was it so straining it made me exhausted or was it just enough to get the blood flowing? Fuel, what food did I put in my body? Was this healthy food that was energy boosting or was it junk that makes my body work harder and drains me? Stress, was I stressed out dealing with things that drain my energy or was I doing fun things that make me want to keep going? Fresh air, did I get myself outside or was I inside staring at screens all day? Recharge, did I give myself a time to relax and recharge during the day or was I going not stop until the inevitable power down?

There are a plethora of factors impacting our battery life every day. Most days we just enter the day without thinking about those factors. We do the things that need to get done, go through our daily habits, probably some good and some bad, and at some point end up drooling on a pillow in the living room because our battery ran out before we planned. It is inevitable that some days will end this way but if we are intentional about how we how choose to drain and recharge our battery I think we can go longer and stave off going into power save mode every night before hitting the hay.