The power of routinized task behavior for energy at work

•Routinized task behavior can be developed over time with practice.•Proposes that routinized task behavior leads to higher level of energy.•This relationship is found in two studies on the intraindividual level.•Results suggest that routinized task behavior is a way to save energy.

According to conservation of resources model and control theory, routinized task behavior that develops through repeated execution under stable circumstances helps employees to deal with demanding aspects of their jobs. In two studies, we investigated whether routinized task behavior predicts momentary levels of energy. In the first study, 328 employees rated their level of routinization of five work tasks and subsequently provided information on their daily working on these tasks and energy twice a day on five consecutive workdays. Multilevel analyses reveal that employees experience higher levels of energy after they were working on a highly routinized task. In the second study, 32 employees provided ratings of their current routinized task behavior and energy three times a day for three consecutive workdays (in total 285 data points). Routinized task behavior at one point in time predicted energy at the next point in time when controlling for initial levels of energy. These results indicate that routinized task behavior is an effective way of managing energy at work, and that a microanalysis of task behaviors offers valuable insights.