Energy Management

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Competencies: time management, stress management, stress tolerance, adaptability, achievement orientation, self-control, psychological well-being, cognitive hardiness, emotional fitness, physical well-being, workplace health and safety

Who benefits: anyone and everyone

Consultant Usage: self-development, coaching, training programs

What’s it about? Don’t bother reading this unless you have recently experienced physical, mental and/or emotional drainage from work…especially if it is from long hours at work. 

If, however, you have that run down feeling perhaps this article is for you.  It is all about how to increase your capacity to get things done through higher sustained energy levels. 

I am going to take the liberty of quoting a paragraph from the article since it seems to sum up the article effectively and will certain give you the information you need to decide whether to read it or not:

“The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource.  Energy is a different story.  Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit.  In each, energy can be systematically expanded and regularly renewed by establishing specific rituals – behaviors that are intentionally practiced and precisely scheduled, with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic as quickly as possible.”

The authors offer multiple techniques (they call rituals) for increasing your energy levels in each of the four areas listed in the above paragraph.  None of the techniques is particularly new or surprising, yet intuitively we know the authors are on to something that we should pay attention to.

These “rituals” do lead to some very high level gains including getting more work done in less time, feeling better about yourself, having more time for what is really important in your life and (personally, I love this one) sleeping better at night. 

In addition, the article offers a short assessment to determine where you are on the energy management scale.

Not everything in the article is positive.  The authors are clear that some of the rituals need the support – or at least the lack of opposition – from your organization and your colleagues.  But even without their support there are still daily activities you can do to boost your energy levels in a healthy way.

Should you want more than the article provides, the authors have a book on the topic with the rather lengthy title of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal.

So my recommendation is that if you are frustrated by long work hours or experiencing loss of energy or frequently feeling tired, check out either the article or the book… that is, if you have the time or the energy. 

[tags]time management, stress management, stress tolerance, adaptability, achievement orientation, self-control, psychological well-being, cognitive hardiness, emotional fitness, physical well-being, workplace health and safety, bill bradley, william bradley,  bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.