Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
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– By Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Fully Engaged: Energy, Not Time, Is Our Most Precious Resource
We live in digital time. Our rhythms are rushed, rapid fire and relentless, our days carved up into bits and bytes. We celebrate breadth rather than depth, quick reaction more than considered reflection. We skim across the surface, alighting for brief moments at dozens of destinations but rarely remaining for long at any one. We race through our lives without pausing to consider who we really want to be or where we really want to go. We're wired up but we're melting down.
Most of us are just trying to do the best that we can. When demand exceeds our capacity, we begin to make expedient choices that get us through our days and nights, but take a toll over time. We survive on too little sleep, wolf down fast foods on the run, fuel up with coffee and cool down with alcohol and sleeping pills. Faced with relentless demands at work, we become short-tempered and easily distracted. We return home from long days at work feeling exhausted and often experience our families not as a source of joy and renewal, but as one more demand in an already overburdened life.
We walk around with day planners and to-do lists, Palm Pilots and BlackBerries, instant pagers and pop-up reminders on our computers -- all designed to help us manage our time better. We take pride in our ability to multitask, and we wear our willingness to put in long hours as a badge of honor. The term 24/7 describes a world in which work never ends. We use words like obsessed, crazed and overwhelmed not to describe insanity, but instead to characterize our everyday lives. Feeling forever starved for time, we assume that we have no choice but to cram as much as possible into every day. But managing time efficiently is no guarantee that we will
bring sufficient energy to whatever it is we are doing.
Consider these scenarios:
-- You attend a four-hour meeting in which not a single second is wasted but during the final two hours your energy level drops off precipitously and you struggle to stay focused.
-- You race through a meticulously scheduled twelve-hour day but by midday your energy has turned negative -- impatient, edgy and irritable.
-- You set aside time to be with your children when you get home at the end of the day, but you are so distracted by thoughts about work that you never really give them your full attention.
-- You remember your spouse's birthday -- your computer alerts you and so
does your Palm Pilot -- but by the evening, you are too tired to go out
and celebrate.
Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.
This insight has revolutionized our thinking about what drives enduring high performance. It has also prompted dramatic transformations in the way our clients manage their lives, personally and professionally. Everything they do -- from interacting with colleagues and making important decisions to spending time with their families -- requires energy. Obvious as this seems, we often fail to take into account the importance of energy at work and in our personal lives. Without the right quantity, quality, focus and force of energy, we are compromised in any activity we undertake.
Every one of our thoughts, emotions and behaviors has an energy consequence, for better or for worse. The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have. The premise of this book -- and of the training we do each year with thousands of clients -- is simple enough:
Performance, health and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy
BOOK EXCERPT By Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
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