Your Energetic Bank Account: Deposits, Withdrawals, and the Audit

A few years ago, in the middle of a demanding season, I spent an afternoon on what I call a brain-body reset. I went to the chiropractor, sat in an infrared sauna for 30 minutes, took a nap, had a fabulous dinner with my family, and went to bed early. The next morning I told a room full of managers why:

I know that if I don't stop and regenerate and put in some of those deposits to my own energetic bank account, I will overdraft. And I cannot afford to overdraft. And neither can you. You are not a robot, and even robots need charged batteries.

I've been teaching the energetic bank account since 2019, in coaching rooms and corporate masterclasses, including to US government agency teams during the pandemic. This page is the full framework: the ledger itself, plus the audit that turns awareness into a schedule.

TL;DR: Your energetic bank account is the balance of energy you wake up with each day. Every activity makes a withdrawal or a deposit, and most exhausted high performers withdraw all day while postponing deposits to the evening. The fix is bank-account literacy applied to energy: deposit early, budget honestly, and audit what gives energy and what drains it.

About the author: I'm Marissa Brassfield. I've taught the energetic bank account framework on tape since July 2019, across coaching sessions and corporate trainings, and I've coached 500+ senior leaders through energy-first redesigns of their schedules since November 2022. I run my own business on a 3.5-day workweek, documented publicly since March 16, 2023, and the deposits-first morning you'll read about below is how the schedule stays standing.

What Is an Energetic Bank Account?

Here is how I introduce it live, lightly trimmed from a 2020 masterclass:

We wake up, and it's like a bank account: you wake up with a certain amount of credits in your energy bank account. And every time you do an activity, you're making withdrawals and withdrawals and withdrawals. Most of the time, before people meet me, they are making withdrawals all day and then trying to make deposits at the end of the day.

The name tips its hat to Stephen Covey, whose emotional bank account described trust between people. Mine tracks energy across a whole life, and the daily balance changes everything downstream: decision quality, patience, creative output, and how much of you gets home at the end of the day. Harvard Business Review made the classic corporate case for managing energy as the core resource back in 2007. My version starts earlier in the day and reaches further into the life.

How Do Deposits and Withdrawals Work?

Deposits go first. The opening 90 minutes of my day hold reflection and movement, with the phone left inside, before any message reaches me. Deposits made in the morning compound through the day; deposits postponed to the evening arrive after the overdraft.

Two ledger entries surprise people most. The first is other humans:

There are some conversations where you are speaking with somebody, and five minutes later you need a nap, because it's so exhausting. Whereas there are other people where you leave with more energy than you came in with, because they are energy givers.

The second is your own wiring. Some activities return more energy than they cost, and a day that stacks even one of them changes the closing balance. Elite performers already run this ledger: they track sleep quality, nutrition, emotional wellness, and their support system alongside their tactical skills, because the performance rides on the balance. Sleep research backs the accounting: the credits you wake up with were funded the night before.

The Financial Literacy You Already Have

You already know how to run a bank account. The move is applying that literacy to energy, the way I teach it in my burnout masterclass:

On a day where you're making lots of withdrawals, you might look to make some deposits. Perhaps you'd have a realistic budget for yourself for certain times of the year. Maybe you would think about investing some of your energy for a bigger, better future. Perhaps you'd set aside an emergency fund, a rainy day fund, for the days where surprise withdrawals have to happen. And of course, you would do your very best to avoid overdraft fees.

When I use financial examples, people can suddenly access how their own decision making changes, because nobody argues for overdrafting a checking account on purpose. Yet the same rooms nod along to "if you need something done, ask a busy person," a phrase that keeps handing new withdrawals to the people closest to overdraft. Gallup's burnout research names unmanageable workload as a leading driver, the APA's Work in America survey measures how many professionals run overdrawn, and the World Health Organization classifies the overdrafted endpoint as an occupational phenomenon.

The Energy Audit

Awareness converts to schedule design through one exercise I run in every workshop: games and drains. The core question comes first. What gives you energy, and what drains it?

1. List a normal week's activities. Meetings, deep work, commutes, conversations, chores, workouts. All of it.
2. Mark each one: deposit or withdrawal. Go by felt sense, by how your body responds during and after, rather than by what should energize you. Recovery research treats that after-effect as the real data.
3. Check all 8 areas of well-being. My workshop graphic runs from physical environment to health to spirituality. Energy leaks hide in areas the calendar never shows.
4. Redesign the mornings first. Move one deposit into the opening 90 minutes of the day. Guard it the way you'd guard payroll.
5. Schedule the rest. Deliberate rest is a skill, and a week with rest scheduled first runs on a different balance, a rule I unpacked in the earned laziness refresh.

The audit pairs with the calendar-level energy audit I run quarterly, and the Three Day Types structure gives the deposits a place to live all year. The guided notebook version of the audit lives here, free with membership.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an energetic bank account?

The balance of energy you wake up with each day. Every activity through the day makes a withdrawal or a deposit against it, and the goal is finishing days with a positive balance instead of an overdraft.

Where does the term energetic bank account come from?

I've taught it on tape since July 2019. The name nods to Stephen Covey's emotional bank account, his metaphor for trust in relationships; my version tracks personal energy across every area of a life.

What counts as a deposit?

Anything that leaves you with more energy than it cost: movement, real rest, time with energy givers, and work inside your strongest abilities. Deposits made in the morning compound; deposits postponed to the evening arrive after the damage.

What is an energy vampire?

A person or recurring interaction that leaves you needing a nap 5 minutes after it ends. The audit treats those conversations as scheduled withdrawals, worth pricing honestly and, where possible, redesigning.

How do I audit my energetic bank account?

List a normal week's activities, mark each as deposit or withdrawal by how your body responds, check the 8 areas of well-being for hidden leaks, then move one deposit into your first 90 minutes and schedule rest before anything else claims the space.

Check Your Balance

You budget money you can earn back. Energy spends differently, and the body keeps the statement whether you read it or skip it.

Here is the closing question I ask every workshop room: what was your balance when you got home yesterday?

If you want a guided pass through the audit, a Strategic Clarity Session maps your deposits and withdrawals in 60 minutes. And The Simplicity Protocol newsletter delivers one elimination strategy every Tuesday, implementable in 20 minutes or less.