The Energy Audit (Zone of Genius)
Color every hour of two weeks green or red, then eliminate the reds until your calendar is 80% green
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
To move into your zone of genius, don't chase what you love — eliminate what drains you, and you're naturally drawn to what you love. Audit two representative weeks of your calendar hour by hour, marking each hour green (more energy) or red (neutral/less). Then triage every red: cancel it, delegate it, or make it 'exquisite.' Repeat until ~80% of your calendar is green.
Origin
Mochary credits the four-zones model (Incompetence, Competence, Excellence, Genius) to Diana Chapman of the Conscious Leadership Group.
Core principles
- 01What you love is often where space and time disappear — and you undervalue it because it's easy
- 02The zone of Excellence (good at, don't love, well-paid) is the danger zone that saps your life force
- 03You reach the zone of Genius by eliminating what it isn't, not by adding what it is
- 04Every draining task someone else somewhere loves to do
- 05At ~80% green, magic occurs and you start creating massive value
How to run it
- 1
Reconstruct two representative weeks
Take two representative weeks of calendar; fill in not just meetings but your best guess at what you did in the gaps between them.
- 2
Color each hour green or red
For every hour (roughly 8am-6pm, each day, two weeks) ask: did I have more energy or less at the end? Green for more, red for neutral or negative.
- 3
Theme the reds
Look across all the red hours and name the themes (e.g. unprepared verbal team meetings, interviews with people you didn't hire, valueless informational chats).
- 4
Triage each red: cancel, delegate, or make exquisite
For each red item ask: (1) does it need to be done at all? If not, cancel. (2) Can someone else do it? Delegate. (3) If only you can do it, ask what would make it exquisite and redesign it.
Pro tip Someone out there loves the very task you dread — find who and hand it over.
- 5
Repeat until 80% green
Run the audit one, two, three times until your calendar is ~80% green; then magic occurs and your life becomes phenomenal.
In the wild
For a mandatory team meeting only the CEO could attend, Mochary asked what would make it exquisite: everyone pre-writes their update (progress on priorities, red/green, last week, this week) plus any problems and proposed solutions. The first 15 minutes are silent reading and processing.
→ A three-hour meeting collapses to 45 minutes; when shared with the group, nine out of ten times people say it'd be amazing because they felt the same way.
Mochary ran the audit with Brex's founders, then all their managers. Enrique and Peter discovered one loved internal meetings and the other external meetings, so they split accordingly.
→ It changed how the two operated together and shifted the trajectory of the company; they then rolled it out to every manager.
Common mistakes
Trying to add more of what you love
The zone of genius is reached by eliminating what it isn't, not by bolting on more of what it is; chasing 'more of what I love' without clearing the drains keeps you stuck in the Excellence danger zone.
Staying in the zone of Excellence because it pays
Being uniquely good at something you don't love is well-compensated and others push you toward it, but it sucks out your life force and blocks you from creating the massive value your genius would.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders and solo operators whose calendars are full of competent-but-draining work and who want to reach their zone of genius
Not ideal for
People early in a career or in survival mode who can't yet cancel or delegate the draining work
From the transcript
“there are four zones I posit and I learned this from Diana Chapman at conscious leadership group”
“zone of Excellence this is something that you're uniquely good at but you don't love it this is the danger zone”
“how do you move into the zone of genus it's not that you figure out what it is and do more of that it's that…”
“each hour ask yourself during that at the end of that hour that I have more energy or less energy and if it's more energy…”
“you keep doing this energy audit repeatedly one two three times until your calendar is eighty percent green”
From the episode
How to fire people with grace, work through fear, and nurture innovation
Matt Mochary (CEO coach)