Are You Truly Available? The Critical Difference Between Time and Energy

I’m going to ask you a simple question: Are you available right now? Of course, you’re listening to this, so your immediate answer is “yes.” But are you?

For years, I’ve talked about the constant negotiation between our time, energy, and resources. Today, I want to zero in on a nuance that seems small at first but has massive implications for our work, our relationships, and our own well-being. It’s the difference between being merely present and being truly available.

More Than a Calendar Invite: Availability at Work

Think about a typical corporate scenario. You ask Mike and Sarah from HR if they are available for a 3:30 meeting, and they agree. They show up. They are physically in the conference room or logged into the video call. They have made their time available. But is their energy available?

You know what I’m talking about. You see the vacant nods, the lack of retention. On a video call, you see the tell-tale white glow on their face from another screen or the reflection of scrolling text in their glasses. They are physically present, but their energy—their focus, their mental capacity—is somewhere else entirely. Maybe Sarah has a problem at home, and her mind is there. In that case, no matter what her calendar says, she’s not really available for your meeting. The time is there, but the energy isn’t.

This becomes even more obvious when you’re a speaker or a teacher. You can have a room full of people who showed up for your 10 a.m. workshop. Their time is committed. But you see them fidgeting, looking at their phones, their minds clearly elsewhere. Their energy is being siphoned off, and as a result, they aren’t available to receive what you’re trying to give them.

Divided Attention: The Availability Gap in Our Personal Lives

This concept doesn’t just live at the office. It follows us home. You and your spouse might set aside two hours to sit in the same room and “spend time together.” You are technically available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or have your laptop open, and every question they ask is met with a distracted, “Huh? What?” then you aren’t available for them. You’re available for your screen. Your energy is flowing toward your device, not your partner.

This is why an activity like playing a video game together can feel so connecting. You are both intensely available for the game, which means your energy is focused on the same goal. You are, in fact, available for each other.

The Most Important Question: Are You Available for Yourself?

This brings us to the most crucial relationship of all: the one you have with yourself. How often are you truly available for you?

This isn’t some esoteric concept. It’s profoundly practical. You might think, “I have free will. I’m always available for myself because I choose what to do.” But that’s not how life really works. How often have you committed to a task at work, but your brain is already on vacation? Or you come home from the office, but you haven’t mentally clocked out?

That drive home used to be a forced decompression period. For many who work from home, that buffer is gone. It takes a microsecond to walk from the “office” to the kitchen, but your mind is still at work. You are home, but you are not yet available for your family or for yourself.

Life is full of things we don’t plan for—a spill, an emergency call, an accident. That lack of availability is often the root cause of problems. A driver fiddling with their phone isn’t available to pay attention to the road, and the result can be a crash. At home, not listening to your spouse may not cause a physical accident, but it creates a relational one over time.

How to Create True Availability

So, how do we fix this? It starts with awareness and is followed by self-control.

Being available for yourself means taking a breath and asking: What do I want to do right now? What do I need to do? What would make me happy?

In my new book, BeCAUSE!, I talk about the “monsters” (things we do to avoid pain) and “unicorns” (things we do to seek pleasure) that constantly pull our energy in different directions. When we live in a purely reactive state—bouncing between avoiding the boss’s anger and chasing the thrill of completing a project—we leave no space for ourselves. We become robots, always on, with no room to look up and ask, “Wait, what’s going on in my life? What do I really want?”

To become truly available, you must first create that space. You have to be willing to put your head up and check in with yourself. You must become available for you first. Only then can you genuinely offer your energy and availability to everything and everyone else in your life.

Thank you for being available for this message—not just with your time, but with your energy. The people who get the most out of this are the ones who truly engage. If you make yourself available for ideas like this, I’m sure you also make yourself available for yourself. And I hope you continue to do so.

Transcript

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Hey, are you available for this podcast? Well, of course you are. You’re listening to it, right? Or are you?

Let’s talk about this whole concept. I’ve talked about time, energy, and resources so much. You can pretty much recite that. What I’m about to talk about is one of those things that when we look at it in its native situation, it may seem that I’m just being overly nuanced, but when we transfer it to a different situation, it becomes blatantly obvious. And I love that.

If you work in corporate America and you have to pull someone from another team or department or what have you and you’re like, “Hey, are you available at 3:30 for just a half hour meeting?” and they say, “Sure.” And so then they show up in the conference room or even, god forbid, on some sort of video call, they’re available, right? Well, their time is available, but is there energy?

And this is the nuanced part because you may say, “Well, yeah, I I met with Mike and Sarah from HR and they were available from 3:30 to 4 and we talked about whatever it is we talked about.” But if you find that there wasn’t a lot of retention or there was just a lot of nodding, or if it’s a video call, as you may be very well unfortunately aware of, if their face lights up with, suddenly lights up with white or changes or you can see things in their glasses, then you know they might not really be available. And you know what I’m talking about. Their energy is going somewhere else or it’s focused somewhere else. Or they may actually be in a meeting with you, but because Sarah has an issue going on at home, her mind may be elsewhere. And if her mind is elsewhere, her energy is elsewhere.

Let’s make it even less nuanced. If you’re teaching a class of 10 individuals, say a seminar or you’re giving a a talk or or what have you, say it’s a 1-hour, a 1-hour situation, whether it’s a workshop or a class or something, everyone who shows up at 10:00 a.m. for the 10 to 11 class is available, right? They they’re spending their time with you. Do you see how I paused there when the nor next word was going to show up? If people are fidgeting or looking at something else or they have their phones out, well, they may actually not be all that available for you. And it can be very frustrating as a speaker or a teacher that your students aren’t actually available for you. They’re physically there. They’re spending their time with you, but their energy is somewhere else or their energy is being siphoned off by something else, or they can’t seem to focus their energy on you. Obviously, if this same issue is affecting the actual teacher, then it can be very clear to the students that this person, they’re just not all that interesting to listen to. They’re just, “I I don’t get what she’s saying.” You would say, “I I I I’m trying, but you know, she’s not all that available because she’s focused on something else.”

This concept doesn’t just apply to your work life. And as you know with time, energy and resources and most of, most if not all of the concepts we talk about, it applies to you as the whole. And part of the whole is your non-work life. So if you’re available for your spouse, you know, you’re sitting in the same room for 2 hours, that’s being available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or the time that you want to sp...

The Availability Gap: Why Your Energy Matters More Than Your Time