[SOLO] The Energy Audit: How To Protect Your Most Precious Asset, Identify Leaks & Strengthen Your Resilience Muscle
Hurdle with Emily Abbate
iHeartPodcasts
5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Listen to this episode, and upgrade your quality of life in 2026. In this week's podcast, Emily dives deep into a concept she calls Energy ROI—Return on Investment. As we navigate the start of a new year, it’s common to feel pressured to do more, but Emily challenges us to look at our calendars and ask: "What is the cost of this entry versus the payoff?"
Emily breaks down her "Four Quadrants of Effort" to help you identify where you are gaining momentum and where you are leaking energy. She also shares tactical tools like "Firing the Drain" and the "Power of the Floor" to help you move from decision fatigue into a state of strategic underperformance. By the end of this episode, you won't just have a to-do list; you'll have a "to-don't" list and a clear path to making this year one of actual growth, not just grinding.
IN THIS EPISODE
- The Four Quadrants of Effort: A breakdown of the Sweet Spot (Low Effort/High Joy), The Investment (High Effort/High Joy), The Drain (High Effort/Low Joy), and The Ghost (Low Effort/Low Joy).
- The Health Halo Trap: Why we often mistake suffering for progress and how to identify "healthy" habits that are actually costing you more than they give back.
- Four Pointed Questions: Emily offers an audit for your performance wellness versus your actual wellness.
- The Power of the Floor: Defining the bare minimum you do on your hardest days to ensure you never fail or "end up in the red."
- The 70% Rule: Why giving 70% effort to mundane tasks allows you to save 100% for the things that truly matter.
- Eliminating Decision Fatigue: How establishing a consistent routine and planning ahead can preserve your finite energy for the big hurdles.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:04.4 | Your most expensive asset, it isn't your time. |
| 0:08.0 | It's the finite energy you have to spend before you go to bed tonight. |
| 0:13.0 | If you're pouring all of your effort into habits that offers zero joy, you aren't winning. |
| 0:19.4 | You're just going bankrupt from the inside out. |
| 0:36.6 | Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Emily Abadi here. You are listening to another episode of Hurtle, a podcast featuring the mindset secrets and true stories of the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, empowering you to live a healthier, happier, more motivated life, and of course, conquer your own hurdles. Today, I'm doing things |
| 0:56.8 | a little a bit differently. You know me. You know I love the top of the year. And you know I love |
| 1:02.6 | a good solo. And that is why I'm here to talk about your energy R-O-I. Listen, we talk a lot about the grind. We talk about |
| 1:14.2 | pushing through. But my question for you this week is when was the last time you looked at |
| 1:19.5 | your calendar and asked what is the cost of this entry versus the payout? An example of this, |
| 1:26.3 | maybe you're meal prepping a perfect macro-balanced salad that you don't even enjoy |
| 1:31.8 | eating every single day. |
| 1:34.1 | And that meal prep takes you hours, well, that's a clear sign that your joy to effort ratio |
| 1:41.2 | is broken. |
| 1:42.5 | So today, we're doing a New Year's audit that has nothing to do with |
| 1:46.5 | things like your weight or your bank account and everything to do with, I'm going to say it again, |
| 1:52.3 | the energy R-O-I. That stands for return on investment. Let me dive into this just a little bit more so you can really holistically |
| 2:02.8 | see what I'm getting at. It's, let's say, seven o'clock on a Tuesday night and you just finished |
| 2:09.7 | a workout that you didn't really want to do, but you did it because someone told you you should. |
| 2:15.3 | You're looking at your refrigerator and it has nothing in there that entices you. |
| 2:22.5 | And you feel overwhelmed and exhausted and not like the good kind of exhausted, like that |
... |
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