"the acquired ability to intentionally invest your full and best energy right here, right now." ~ Dr. Jim Loehr
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
In "The Power of Full Engagement," Jim Loehr challenges the conventional wisdom that success solely depends on time management. Instead, he introduces a groundbreaking approach to achieving high performance and personal renewal by focusing on managing and optimizing our energy. Drawing on his extensive experience as a performance psychologist, Loehr shares practical strategies to help individuals and organizations harness their energy to achieve peak performance and find greater fulfillment in life.
"The Power of Full Engagement" offers a refreshing perspective on achieving success and fulfillment by focusing on energy management. Through its practical insights and actionable advice, the book empowers readers to take charge of their energy levels, leading to enhanced performance, resilience, and personal growth. By redefining the way we approach productivity, Jim Loehr's work challenges us to embrace a more holistic and balanced approach to life and work.
"We live in a world that celebrates work and activity, ignores renewal and recovery, and fails to recognize that both are necessary for sustained high performance."
"-Physical energy is the fundamental source of fuel in life. -Physical energy is derived from the interaction between oxygen and glucose. -The two most important regulators of physical energy are breathing and eating. -Eating five to six low-calorie, highly nutritious meals a day ensures a steady resupply of glucose and essential nutrients. -Drinking sixty-four ounces of water daily is a key factor in the effective management of physical energy. -Most human beings require seven to eight hours of sleep per night to function optimally. -Going to bed early and waking up early help to optimize performance. -Interval training is more effective than steady-state exercise in building physical capacity and in teaching people how to recover more efficiently. -To sustain full engagement, we must take a recovery break every every 90 to 120 minutes. "
4- "-In order to perform at our best, we must access pleasant and positive emotions: the experience of enjoyment, challenge, adventure and opportunity. -The key muscles fueling positive emotional energy are selfconfidence, self-control, interpersonal effectiveness and empathy. -Negative emotions serve survival but they are very costly and energy inefficient in the context of performance. -The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership. -Access to the emotional muscles that serve performance depends on creating a balance between exercising them regularly and intermittently seeking recovery. -Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling and affirming serves as a source of emotional renewal and recovery. -Emotional muscles such as patience, empathy and confidence can be strengthened in the same way that we strengthen a bicep or a tricep: pushing past our current limits followed by recovery."
5- "-Mental capacity is what we use to organize our lives and focus our attention. -The mental energy that best serves full engagement is realistic optimism—seeing the world as it is, but always working positively towards a desired outcome or solution. -The key supportive mental muscles include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk, effective time management and creativity. -Changing channels mentally permits different parts of the brain to be activated and facilitates creativity. -Physical exercise stimulates cognitive capacity. -Maximum mental capacity is derived from a balance between expending and recovering mental energy. -when we lack the mental muscles we need to perform at our best, we must systematically build capacity by pushing past our comfort zone and then recovering. -Continuing to challenge the brain serves as a protection against age-related mental decline."
6- "The more preoccupied we are with our own fears and concerns, the less energy we have available to take positive action."
7- "-spiritual energy provides the force for action in all dimensions of our lives. It fuels passion, perseverance and commitment. -spiritual energy is derived from a connection to deeply held values and a purpose beyond our self-interest. -Character-the courage and conviction to live by our deepest values—is the key muscle that serves spiritual energy. -The key supportive spiritual muscles are passion, commitment. integrity and honesty. -spiritual energy expenditure and energy renewal are deeply interconnected. -Spiritual energy is sustained by balancing a commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves with adequate self-care. -Spiritual work can be demanding and renewing at the same time. -Expanding spiritual capacity involves pushing past our comfort zone in precisely the same way that expanding physical capacity does. -The energy of the human spirit can override even severe limitations of physical energy."
8- "The search for meaning is among the most powerful and enduring themes in every culture since the origin of recorded history. -The "hero's journey" is grounded in mobilizing, nurturing and regularly renewing our most precious resource—energy—in the service of what matters most. -when we lack a strong sense of purpose we are easily buffeted by life's inevitable storms. -Purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when its source moves from negative to positive, external to internal and self to others. - A negative source of purpose is defensive and deficit-based. -Intrinsic motivation grows out of the desire to engage in an activity because we value it for the inherent satisfaction it provides. -Values fuel the energy on which purpose is built. They hold us to a different standard for managing our energy. -A virtue is a value in action. -A vision statement, grounded in values that are meaningful and compelling, creates a blueprint for how to invest our energy."
9-"-Facing the truth frees up energy and is the second stage, after defining purpose, in becoming more fully engaged. -Avoiding the truth consumes great effort and energy. -At the most basic level, we deceive ourselves in order to protect our self-esteem. -Some truths are too unbearable to be absorbed all at once. Emotions such as grief are best metabolized in waves. -Truth without compassion is cruelty—to others and to our selves. -What we fail to acknowledge about ourselves we often continue to act out unconsciously. -A common form of self-deception is assuming that our view represents the truth, when it is really just a lens through which we choose to view the world. -Facing the truth requires that we retain an ongoing openness to the possibility that we may not be seeing ourselves—or others— accurately. -» It is both a danger and a delusion when we become too identified with any singular view of ourselves. We are all a blend of light and shadow, virtues and vices. -Accepting our limitations reduces our defensiveness and increases the amount of positive energy available to us."
10- "Our dual challenge is to hold fast to our rituals when the pressures in our lives threaten to throw us off track, and to periodically revisit and change them so that they remain fresh."
11- "-Rituals serve as tools through which we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on. -Rituals create a means by which to translate our values and priorities into action in all dimensions of our life. -All great performers rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and regulate their behavior. -The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in t^he fact that every demand on our self-control draws on the same limited resource. -We can offset our limited will and discipline by building rituals that become automatic as quickly as possible, fueled by our deepest values. -The most important role of rituals is to insure effective balance between energy expenditure and energy renewal in the service of full engagement. -The more exacting the challenge and the greater the pressure. the more rigorous our rituals need to be. -Precision and specificity are critical dimensions of building rituals during the thirty- to sixty-day acquisition period. -Trying not to do something rapidly depletes our limited stores of will and discipline. -» To make lasting change, we must build serial rituals, focusing on one significant change at a time."
I recently re-read this book and was curious to know to what extent (if any) it has lost any of its relevance during the years since it was first published, in 2003. My conclusion? If anything, it is even more relevant now than it was before. However, that said, I still presume to suggest to those who are thinking about reading that they ignore the title and focus on the methodology that Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz introduce and then explain. Of course, full engagement has power. However, I cannot think of even one company among those annually ranked by Fortune to be the most highly admired, the best to work for, etc. that has full engagement. In fact, the results of recent research by the Gallup Organization and Towers Perrin clearly indicate that, on average, about 25-30% of employees are actively and productively engaged, about 35-40% are passively engaged (doing as little as necessary to stay employed), and about the same percentage are actively disengaged, with many of them hostile and having a toxic effect within their workplace.
Obviously, the challenge for business leaders in all organizations (whatever their size and nature may be) is to increase the percentage of those workers who are actively and productively engaged. What do Loehr and Schwartz suggest? All of their insights and recommendations are based on a vast amount of real-world experience with all manner of organizations. What they offer in this volume is the Full Engagement Training System®, a comprehensive and cohesive program that enables us to manage energy efficiently. The methodology is based on four separate but interdependent principles:
Full engagement requires drawing on separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. "All four dynamics are critical, none is sufficient by itself and each profoundly influences the others [for better or worse]. To perform at our best, we must skillfully manage each of these interconnected dimensions of energy."
Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and 'under'use, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal. We rarely consider how much energy we are spending because we take it for granted that the energy available to us is limitless. In fact, increased demand progressively depletes our energy reserves - especially in the absence of any effort to reverse the progressive loss of capacity that occurs with age.
To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do. Stress is not the enemy in our lives. Paradoxically, it is the key to growth. In order to build strength in a muscle we must systematically stress it, expending energy beyond normal levels. Doing so literally causes microscopic tears in the muscle fibers. At the end of a training session, functional capacity is diminished. But give the muscle twenty-four to forty-eight hours to recover and it grows stronger and better able to handle the next stimulus.
Positive energy rituals - highly specific routines for managing energy - are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance. Change is difficult. We are creatures of habit. Most of what we do is automatic and nonconscious. What we did yesterday is what we are likely to do today...A positive ritual is a behavior that becomes automatic over time - fueled by some deeply held value.
As indicated earlier, Loehr and Schwartz have devised what they call the Full Engagement Training System® and one of several key points they make is that both supervisors and those for whom they are directly responsible are active in this program, one that involves a shared journey of observation, revelation, and increased understanding. Another is that there are continuous role reversals for both "students" and "teachers" during frequent knowledge exchanges.
Still another key point is that one of the most important drivers is the human need to find meaning, "among the most powerful and enduring themes in every culture since the origin of recorded history." And still another is that those who are purpose-driven must also constantly nurture and regularly renew their "most precious resource," energy, and expend it only in the service of what matters most.
Forget about having a workforce with full engagement and concentrate on increasing the number of workers who are fully engaged. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz can provide invaluable assistance to those who are now planning or who are only recently embarked on efforts to achieve that worthy objective.
Loehr asserts that the traditional approach of time management isn't enough to sustain peak performance. Instead, managing energy levels is the key to unlocking productivity, creativity, and overall well-being. By consciously monitoring and nurturing our energy, we can maximize our output and effectiveness in both professional and personal spheres.
The book introduces the concept of the "Four Energy Quadrants": physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Loehr emphasizes that each quadrant significantly influences our overall performance. To achieve full engagement, it's vital to address the needs of each quadrant and ensure they are in balance.
Loehr emphasizes the importance of rituals and routines in building resilience and enhancing energy levels. He suggests creating purposeful rituals to recharge and renew energy throughout the day. These rituals can be as simple as taking short breaks, practicing mindfulness, or engaging in physical exercises.
Stress and recovery are interconnected aspects of energy management. Loehr highlights the significance of stress as a catalyst for growth and performance, but he also underscores the importance of adequate recovery. It's crucial to find a healthy balance between challenging oneself and allowing sufficient time for rest and rejuvenation.
Having a clear sense of purpose in life fuels motivation and energy. Loehr encourages readers to identify their core values and align their actions with their purpose. This alignment provides a deeper sense of fulfillment and sustained energy.
The book emphasizes the role of positive habits in shaping our energy management. By consciously developing and reinforcing positive habits, we can enhance our performance, improve relationships, and maintain overall well-being.
Loehr suggests that even small, incremental changes can lead to significant improvements in energy management and overall performance. By making conscious efforts to optimize daily habits and routines, individuals can experience transformative results over time.