每天的精力像 AI 的 token 额度一样有限，熟悉的日常事务与复杂决策会消耗不同的注意力。把休息当作恢复，把精力留给重要的事，比每天耗尽自己更有价值。
1. The Inspiration
This idea was inspired by Tw93, the developer behind Mole/Kaku. He suggested that we can think of our daily energy in terms of an LLM's token usage.
When we start a fresh day, it's like our daily usage limit has been reset. Taking a shower or taking a nap during the day can feel like a five-hour reset. A full night's sleep is like a daily reset, while the weekend serves as a weekly reset.
The purpose of these resets is to refresh our minds and help us think clearly. This idea gave me a new perspective: we should manage our lives as carefully as we manage our token usage.
2. How Do We Treat Our Tokens?
When using an LLM, we want to spend our tokens on important tasks and avoid wasting them on things that don't matter. However, not every task is equally important, and we often end up wasting tokens on low-value activities.
The same thing happens in our daily lives.
In a way, each of us is like a model operating with a limited energy budget. When we wake up in the morning, we start with a fresh supply of energy, although we don't always feel 100% refreshed.
We perform many routine tasks throughout the day. Because these tasks are familiar, they require relatively little conscious effort. It's like running a simple operation that consumes very few tokens.
But when we face an unfamiliar problem or need to make an important decision, the situation changes. It's like enabling a thinking mode in Claude Code: the model needs more tokens to explore different possibilities, analyze the problem, and arrive at a reasonable conclusion.
Deep thinking consumes more energy than routine work.
3. Not All Tasks Deserve the Same Amount of Energy
This leads me to an interesting question: if our daily energy is a limited resource, how should we allocate it?
In software development, we wouldn't want to spend a large number of tokens solving a trivial problem. We would rather save those resources for tasks that require more reasoning.
Why don't we apply the same principle to our lives?
Some tasks deserve our full attention. Building a product, learning a new skill, making an important investment decision, or spending meaningful time with our family can have a lasting impact on our lives.
Other tasks may feel urgent but create little real value. Scrolling through social media, repeatedly checking notifications, or worrying about things beyond our control can consume a surprising amount of mental energy.
The problem isn't necessarily that these activities are bad. It's that we often spend our best energy on them without realizing it.
We need to distinguish between tasks that consume energy and tasks that create value.
4. Manage Energy, Not Just Time
For a long time, I thought productivity was mainly about time management. If I could organize my schedule better, I could get more things done.
But time is only one part of the equation. Our energy and ability to think clearly are limited, too.
Imagine having three hours of free time. You could spend them answering messages, browsing the internet, and switching between different tasks. Or you could spend that time working on a difficult problem that moves an important project forward.
The amount of time is the same, but the value created can be completely different.
This is why I think we should consider the cognitive cost of each task, not just the time it takes.
We can also reduce unnecessary energy consumption by turning repeated decisions into routines, using tools to automate simple work, and avoiding constant interruptions.
In programming, we optimize code to use resources efficiently. In life, we can optimize our habits and environment in much the same way.
5. Rest Is a Reset, Not a Waste
There is one more important lesson from this analogy: we shouldn't expect ourselves to operate at maximum capacity all the time.
When an LLM reaches a usage limit, it may need to wait for the limit to reset. Similarly, when we become mentally exhausted, pushing ourselves harder doesn't always produce better results.
Sometimes, the best thing we can do is stop working, take a walk, have a nap, or get a good night's sleep.
Rest isn't simply time when we produce nothing. It helps restore the capacity we need to think, create, and make decisions.
Of course, human energy doesn't work exactly like an API quota. A shower doesn't literally reset our brains, and sleep doesn't guarantee that we'll wake up feeling completely refreshed. But the analogy reminds us that recovery is part of the process, not a reward we earn only after finishing everything.
6. Spend Your Tokens Wisely
Ultimately, this analogy has changed how I think about my daily life.
I don't need to fill every hour with activity, just as I don't need to consume every available token. The goal isn't to maximize consumption. It's to maximize the value created with the resources available to me.
Before starting a task, I can ask myself three questions:
- Is this task important enough to deserve my energy?
- Can I accomplish it with less effort by using a routine, a tool, or a simpler approach?
- Am I in the right mental state to do it now, or would a reset help me do it better?
We all have a limited amount of time, attention, and energy. We cannot give everything our full attention, and we don't need to.
The real skill is learning where to spend our mental resources, when to conserve them, and when to take a break.
A good day isn't necessarily one in which we use all our tokens. It's one in which we spend them on the things that truly matter—and still have enough energy to start again tomorrow.