Five Budgeting Mistakes That Drain Your Energy

Budgeting is a skill, not a formula

Zero-sum energy budgeting is powerful, but it's easy to fall into traps that make the system work against you instead of for you. Here are the five most common mistakes we see — and how to fix them.

1. Budgeting for the week you wish you had

It's tempting to allocate energy to aspirational categories — two hours of creative work, daily exercise, long walks. But if your actual week includes back-to-back meetings and a deadline, that budget is fiction. Start with your calendar, not your ideals.

2. Ignoring carryover

Unused energy in a category doesn't have to vanish. Enable carryover for categories where surplus makes sense (like rest or social time) and disable it where it doesn't (like focused work — you can't bank deep focus).

3. Treating every category equally

Not all categories deserve the same precision. High-impact categories (the ones that most affect your mood) benefit from tight budgets. Low-impact ones can share a looser “miscellaneous” group. Use category groups to reflect this hierarchy.

4. Never using "Set from averages"

The budget page offers a “Set from averages” action that pre-fills allocations based on your historical spending. It's the fastest way to create a realistic baseline, and you can adjust from there.

5. Skipping the weekly review

A budget without a review is just a guess. Set a weekly reminder (Settings → Budget Reminders) to compare your allocations against actuals. Five minutes of reflection each week compounds into real behaviour change over months.