Abubilla Music

Tip of the Week: A little word on ‘discretionary energy’

Written by Jimmy

I bore myself silly and sometimes and those around me, with little comments about discretionary energy.  To save me and you a lot of time, in the future, I’ll just refer you to this blog. 

Okay, my little ramble about discretionary energy has 5 points:

1. Discretionary energy is all the energy you have left after feeding and clothing and sheltering and keeping safe yourself and those who you feel responsible for.   Saints have no discretionary energy because that basic mission never stops — they feel responsible for everyone and use all their energy to improve the basic needs of the world until they are met.  That’s why they are Saints.   The rest of us sinners, usually stop at family, add a friend in need and occassionally buy the Issue.  That’s why we’re sinners and have oodles of discretionary energy.
2. The first and most important question is what are you doing with your discretionary energy.  Most of us stupidly pour it all into our jobs and end up hating our jobs.  That’s not your job’s fault — it’s yours.  The best way to test this is to answer the following question:  How much of who I am is defined by my job?  And then follow it up with the question:  ‘But my job takes X% of my discretionary energy!’  When you’re young and excited about your first job and when you’re old and have gotten all twisted about the power of your job, the answers are often:  100% of who I am is defined by my job and it uses all my energy.  And you think you’re happy. You’re actually just young and way too in love with your job — and BORING at parties.  Or you’re old and have lost all your love for life.  For normal people it is usually — ‘who I am is defined less than 50% by my job, but my job takes over 95% of my discretionary energy.’  That’s the modern spiritual dilemma, confused by phrases of sustainability or junk about work-life balance.
3. So (and here the kids roll their eyes and discretely turn up i Pods) is the spiritual dilemma of our day — trying to make sure you channel much of your discretionary energy from your job to your passions and make yourself and those around you a little better.   It’s a life long mission.  If you’re a Saint, you do this by simply expanding the universe of those you feel responsible to food and shelter.  If you’re a sinner, you try to add community to the long list of things that better define you.
4. It helps define the true roles of leaders and also helps you think about the people around you who really ‘wow’ you.  First, true leaders are those who figure out how to capture folks’ discretionary energies and put them to good use (bad leaders put the energy to bad uses, but sadly still capture discretionary energy).   Use this lens to watch the leaders around you and see how they channel discretionary energy.  Second, people who really wow you during your lives are more often than not people that ‘bring energy into the room.’    Rather than draw down your energy (because they need you to convince them they’re okay, or their work and play have meaning) they are instead energising you.  You leave with more discretionary energy after the interaction.  You love these folks but often don’t know why.  I hazard to guess it’s the energy thing.  They give it and don’t take it.
5. The only thing this has to do with music is that Abubilla Music is trying to collect all the discretionary energy of our artists, partners and fans (at least that energy that calls itself the ‘music bit’) and channel it to this little community.    When you listen to music and read thru website we’d love you to TAKE energy from it and when you leave a little comment, or add a blog, or join us in voices, or jam jar competitions (or even open our little newsletters) you’re channelling a bit of your discretionary energy back into the community.  And soon, when we start the Africa project… this will all become a very good thing.

That’s it.