Managing Energy, Not Time

Just about everyone is in a hurry these days, juggling work, family, and play like so many balls in the air. We pride ourselves on our ability to multitask. We use e-mail, cell phones, and other devices to keep in touch so we don’t miss anything. About the only thing that seems to be slowing us down is traffic, and then we use that time to catch up on phone calls and messages.

However, the more timesaving devices we have at our disposal, the more time we have to cram in extra tasks, more contacts, and more meetings. Instead of saving time, we are creating more possibilities. We are wired up but melting down. We assume that if only we had more time, we could accomplish more and be more satisfied.

We survive on too little sleep, grab a bite here and there without taking time to enjoy a meal in good company, fuel up on coffee, chill out on alcohol, and throw medications at symptoms of stress. Faced with relentless demands at work, we return home exhausted, only to face children and spouses with less than a cheerful disposition. Instead of experiencing our families as a source of joy and renewal, we see them as one more demand in an overburdened life.

We say that we are starved for time. Even if we manage our time more efficiently, there is still never enough of it in a 24-hour day. We cut back on sleep, skip meals and exercise, cut down on meetings, but the schedule just gets filled up again. That’s because time isn’t really the key issue in the first place.

Energy is the Key

The issue isn’t time—or time management. It’s energy. And this requires us to rethink much of what we’ve believed about organizing our lives. Managing time efficiently is no guarantee that we’ll bring sufficient energy to whatever it is we’re doing. We need to learn two new rules:

1. Energy is the fundamental currency of high performance.

2. Performance, health, and happiness are grounded in the skillful management

    of energy.

According to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their recent book, The Power of Full Engagement (Free Press, 2003), the skillful management of energy—individually and organizationally—makes full engagement possible. To be fully engaged in our lives, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest. This is a phenomenal insight most of us ignore.

Everything we do requires energy. As obvious as this is, we fail to take into account the importance of energy at work and in our personal lives. Without the right quantity and quality of energy, we are compromised in any activity we undertake.

We take energy for granted, assuming we have unlimited amounts. We don’t take time for recovery or renewal. We get angry when we get tired or forgetful. We don’t appreciate the impact focus and energy have on our successful interactions with others. When you think about it, the ultimate measure of our lives is neither how much time we spend on the planet nor how much we get done, but rather it is in the quality of our moments. We can’t have memorable moments without investing energy.

Performance, Health, and Happiness

Performance, health, and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy. Research by the Gallup Organization reports less than 30 percent of employed people are fully engaged at work. Over half are not engaged, and 17 percent are actively disengaged. That means over two-thirds of people at work are not enthusiastic about what they are doing. While the causes may be varied, and it is hard to say if lack of energy is the cause or effect, it is hard for people to change if they are exhausted.

Four Principles for Energy Management

Here are four important principles put forth by Loehr and Schwartz in their book:

PRINCIPLE 1: Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

PRINCIPLE 2: Because energy capacity diminishes with both overuse and under-use, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.

PRINCIPLE 3: To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way elite athletes do.

PRINCIPLE 4: Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.

It becomes evident that the key to living a life more fully engaged—one leading to more health and happiness—is not in the quantity of things but rather in the quality of crucial moments.

Forget time—we all have the same amount. But we can learn to improve the quality of our energy. There are actual steps we can take to increase our energy capacity in all four domains: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

To Be Continued…

One of the ways to improve your energy capacity is to explore these issues with your coach. Your coach can help you become aware of the ways in which you expend energy and how you can improve your ability to renew it. The four domains of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual all need to be examined. In some cases, you may need to stretch yourself to expand your capacities. In others, you may need to build in renewal and recovery rituals.

Attaining full engagement in life involves having positive habits or rituals that will help you connect with your deep sense of purpose. Such rituals help us to conserve energy rather than deplete it. These rituals may include writing in a journal, meditating, engaging in a regular workout routine, praying, reading something inspirational, or looking daily at your vision statement of what you’re trying to achieve in your life. They help connect you to your purpose and complement the changes you make to help improve physical energy. Together, they can help you to manage your energy and achieve high performance.

Recommended Reading:

Groppel, J. (2000). The Corporate Athlete. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Loehr, J. & Schwartz, T. (2003). The Power of Full Engagement. Free Press.