Tony Schwartz' The Power of Full Engagement is a transformational book, especially with for anyone concerned with time management as the key to enhanced productivity.Instead of managing time to become more productive and fulfilled, The Power of Full Engagement focuses on managing energy, based on co-author Jim Loehr's work with the world-class athletes.While time is a limited resource, with 24 hours in a day, we can always take our energy reserves to the next level.We do this by building capacity and by building in periods of recovery.We have four types of energy to work on and with..Physical energy.This includes cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, and proper nutrition.Emotional energy.Healthy relationships and enjoyable activities that often get suppressed by constant busyness.Mental energy.The ability to maintain singular focus on an activity and avoid distraction.Spiritual energy.The commitment that comes from having a clear purpose in life.Let's look at each of these types in detail.First is the physical.Instead of thinking of ourselves as machines capable of working indefinitely, Schwartz maintains that humans are cyclical, periodic beings, requiring periods of recovery in order to be fully engaged during periods of work.Instead of doing slow, steady work like a marathoner, we should work in short, high-energy bursts, like a sprinter.Then we take a break to recover, then engage in another work sprint, and continue to alternate between rest and reengagement.Breaks can be anything from 20-minute naps to 1-minute deep breathing exercises.This is based on the counterpart to our circidian rhythm (physiological sleep cycle), the ultradian rhythm - our natural energy ("wake") cycle.According to Schwartz, our energy waxes and wanes in cycles of 90 to 120 minutes.Constantly working on a task past this length of time is suboptimal.We start to glaze over, losing concentration, momentum and motivation.By segmenting work to fit these cycles, staging short recovery periods in between, we can get much more done in less time.Towards the end of the book, Schwartz provides a dramatic example of much faster we was able to write the book within a few weeks, working only four hours a day, by splitting his writing periods into short, intense work sprints.Through exercise we increase the supply the reserve of energy we have to feed into our work.To make exercise a habit (as well as anything we want to make habitual), Schwartz recommends creating what he calls positive rituals, consciously scheduled routines which, over the course of three or four weeks, become ingrained in the fabric of our lives to the point where they no longer have to be consciously enforced.According to the author, we should limit ourselves to establishing only one or, at most, two rituals at a time.Once we accept that willpower is more finite than we would like to believe, it becomes clear that trying to add more than a couple of rituals to our lives at once is guaranteed to spread ourselves too thin.Emotional energy involves emotional renewal.Many of us work in what Schwartz calls the grey zone, where we're preoccupied with work issues during periods of rest and recreation, or we're consumed by personal issues when trying to be productive at work.To get out of the gray zone, we need to acknowledge our emotional needs and commit to addressing them with the same discipline we apply to our work tasks, scheduling in rituals to satisfy these needs.This might be committing to coming home at 6 p.M.To spend time with family as reliably as getting into the office at 7 a.M.; or it might be committing to gardening three times a week, taking dance classes, taking day trips on the weekend, or any other activity we find personally gratifying.Mental energy is largely built by removing distractions and working within our ultradian cycles.During sprints, we need to shut off any potential disruptions like cell phones, email notifiers and browsers.The biggest distractions are negative thoughts, since they tend to have a cascading effect.Though it might be considered a platitude, positive thinking is the key to increasing focus.As with the physical realm, recovery periods are vital to maintaining mental energy.We often tend to forget that the mind - the brain - is a physical organ that expends energy with use, so spending extended periods devoted to a single tasks can hit a point of diminishing returns.There's a critical threshold where our single-minded focus becomes diffused, at which point our output begins to flatline.The best way to maintain peak concentration is by limiting our work sessions to two hours at a time at most, then doing a recovery activity.Spiritual energy is the power of purpose.Schwartz doesn't necessarily mean confrontation with a deity - in fact, most of his case studies are fairly secular examples.The point is to clarity why we live.To what end are we applying our life energy? Are we spending our work lives doing things that we know will have a positive impact on the world, our families or communities? Are we challenging ourselves to achieve something beyond ourselves?Sometimes this transpersonal focus is suddenly thrust upon us, like the book's example of the Cantor Fitzgerald executive to whose responsibilities increased dramatically after the Word Trade Center attacks of 9/11.But it can also take the form of another executive in the book becoming a basketball coach for kids, experiencing the joy of mentorship.The Power of Full Engagement is a more humanistic, yet more realistic, approach to personal fulfillment and performance enhancement than the time management paradigm.You don't have to be an athlete or executive for this book to have a huge impact on the way you engage yourself with the world.Students, parents, teachers, and just about anyone can benefit from taking even a couple of principles from the book and applying them.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
The Power of Full Engagement
Tony Schwartz' The Power of Full Engagement is a transformational book, especially with for anyone concerned with time management as the key to enhanced productivity.Instead of managing time to become more productive and fulfilled, The Power of Full Engagement focuses on managing energy, based on co-author Jim Loehr's work with the world-class athletes.While time is a limited resource, with 24 hours in a day, we can always take our energy reserves to the next level.We do this by building capacity and by building in periods of recovery.We have four types of energy to work on and with..Physical energy.This includes cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, and proper nutrition.Emotional energy.Healthy relationships and enjoyable activities that often get suppressed by constant busyness.Mental energy.The ability to maintain singular focus on an activity and avoid distraction.Spiritual energy.The commitment that comes from having a clear purpose in life.Let's look at each of these types in detail.First is the physical.Instead of thinking of ourselves as machines capable of working indefinitely, Schwartz maintains that humans are cyclical, periodic beings, requiring periods of recovery in order to be fully engaged during periods of work.Instead of doing slow, steady work like a marathoner, we should work in short, high-energy bursts, like a sprinter.Then we take a break to recover, then engage in another work sprint, and continue to alternate between rest and reengagement.Breaks can be anything from 20-minute naps to 1-minute deep breathing exercises.This is based on the counterpart to our circidian rhythm (physiological sleep cycle), the ultradian rhythm - our natural energy ("wake") cycle.According to Schwartz, our energy waxes and wanes in cycles of 90 to 120 minutes.Constantly working on a task past this length of time is suboptimal.We start to glaze over, losing concentration, momentum and motivation.By segmenting work to fit these cycles, staging short recovery periods in between, we can get much more done in less time.Towards the end of the book, Schwartz provides a dramatic example of much faster we was able to write the book within a few weeks, working only four hours a day, by splitting his writing periods into short, intense work sprints.Through exercise we increase the supply the reserve of energy we have to feed into our work.To make exercise a habit (as well as anything we want to make habitual), Schwartz recommends creating what he calls positive rituals, consciously scheduled routines which, over the course of three or four weeks, become ingrained in the fabric of our lives to the point where they no longer have to be consciously enforced.According to the author, we should limit ourselves to establishing only one or, at most, two rituals at a time.Once we accept that willpower is more finite than we would like to believe, it becomes clear that trying to add more than a couple of rituals to our lives at once is guaranteed to spread ourselves too thin.Emotional energy involves emotional renewal.Many of us work in what Schwartz calls the grey zone, where we're preoccupied with work issues during periods of rest and recreation, or we're consumed by personal issues when trying to be productive at work.To get out of the gray zone, we need to acknowledge our emotional needs and commit to addressing them with the same discipline we apply to our work tasks, scheduling in rituals to satisfy these needs.This might be committing to coming home at 6 p.M.To spend time with family as reliably as getting into the office at 7 a.M.; or it might be committing to gardening three times a week, taking dance classes, taking day trips on the weekend, or any other activity we find personally gratifying.Mental energy is largely built by removing distractions and working within our ultradian cycles.During sprints, we need to shut off any potential disruptions like cell phones, email notifiers and browsers.The biggest distractions are negative thoughts, since they tend to have a cascading effect.Though it might be considered a platitude, positive thinking is the key to increasing focus.As with the physical realm, recovery periods are vital to maintaining mental energy.We often tend to forget that the mind - the brain - is a physical organ that expends energy with use, so spending extended periods devoted to a single tasks can hit a point of diminishing returns.There's a critical threshold where our single-minded focus becomes diffused, at which point our output begins to flatline.The best way to maintain peak concentration is by limiting our work sessions to two hours at a time at most, then doing a recovery activity.Spiritual energy is the power of purpose.Schwartz doesn't necessarily mean confrontation with a deity - in fact, most of his case studies are fairly secular examples.The point is to clarity why we live.To what end are we applying our life energy? Are we spending our work lives doing things that we know will have a positive impact on the world, our families or communities? Are we challenging ourselves to achieve something beyond ourselves?Sometimes this transpersonal focus is suddenly thrust upon us, like the book's example of the Cantor Fitzgerald executive to whose responsibilities increased dramatically after the Word Trade Center attacks of 9/11.But it can also take the form of another executive in the book becoming a basketball coach for kids, experiencing the joy of mentorship.The Power of Full Engagement is a more humanistic, yet more realistic, approach to personal fulfillment and performance enhancement than the time management paradigm.You don't have to be an athlete or executive for this book to have a huge impact on the way you engage yourself with the world.Students, parents, teachers, and just about anyone can benefit from taking even a couple of principles from the book and applying them.
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