The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

by Jim Loehr

To live like a sprinter is to break life down into a series of manageable intervals consistent with our own physiological needs and with the periodic rhythms of nature.

In tennis, Jim’s research proved this in measurable ways. The more linear or unvarying players’ heart rates became, the worse they tended to play and the more likely it was that they lost their matches. Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery caused their heart rates to become chronically elevated. Their performance was equally compromised when their heart rates remained chronically low—typically a sign that they were not committed enough or had given up the fight.

Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between work that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured. Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being.

physiologist Martin Moore-Ede, the president of Circadian Technologies and the author of The Twenty-Four-Hour Society, puts it: At the heart of the problem is a fundamental conflict between the demands of our man-made civilization and the very design of the human brain and body…. Our bodies were designed to hunt by day, sleep at night and never travel more than a few dozen miles from sunrise to sunset. Now we work and play at all hours, whisk off by jet to the far side of the globe, make life-or-death decisions or place orders on foreign stock exchanges in the wee hours of the morning. The pace of technological innovation is outstripping the ability of the human race to understand the consequences. We are machine-centered in our thinking—focused on the optimization of technology and equipment—rather than human-centered—focused on the optimization of human alertness and performance.

Because we have overridden the natural rhythms that once defined our lives, the challenge is to consciously and deliberately create new boundaries. We must learn to establish stopping points in our days, inviolable times when we step off the track, cease processing information and shift our attention from achievement to restoration. Moore-Ede calls this a “time cocoon.”

For Mark Ethridge, a former managing editor of The Charlotte Observer, the costs of his own addiction seemed clearer. “More and more what I find is that you don’t really live in the present anymore,” he explained. “You’re never fully engaged in what you’re doing at any given moment, because what you really want to do is finish it in order to get on to something else. You kind of skim along the surface of life. It’s very frustrating.”

It is not the intensity of energy expenditure that produces burnout, impaired performance and physical breakdown, but rather the duration of expenditure without recovery. In Japan, the term karoshi can be translated literally as “death from overwork”—most commonly from heart attack and stroke. The first case of karoshi was reported in 1969.

Some ten thousand deaths a year in Japan are now attributed to karoshi, and research shows that there are five key factors: Extremely long hours that interfere with normal recovery and rest patterns Night work that interferes with normal recovery and rest patterns Working without holidays or breaks High-pressure work without breaks Extremely demanding physical labor and continuously stressful work

He began taking a break every 90 to 120 minutes, during which he ate something, drank some water and took at least a brief walk. Based on this change alone, within two weeks William estimated a 30 percent increase in his energy in the afternoons.

Regularly renewing our energy insures that we can sustain full engagement—so long as demand remains constant. But what happens when increased demand overwhelms our capacity and even a full tank is not enough? The answer is paradoxical—and precisely the opposite of what you’ve probably been told most of your life. To build capacity, we must systematically expose ourselves to more stress—followed by adequate recovery. Challenging a muscle past its current limits prompts a phenomenon known as supercompensation. Faced with a demand that exceeds the muscle’s current capacity, the body responds by building more muscle fibers in anticipation of the next stimulus.

We grow at all levels by expending energy beyond our normal limits, and then recovering.

Expanding capacity requires a willingness to endure short-term discomfort in the service of long-term reward.

When there isn’t much fuel in our tanks and our inner experience is that we feel threatened, we tend to hoard the energy we have and use our limited stores in the service of self-protection. We refer to this phenomenon as defense spending. Accurately assessing the level of threat in our lives is critical if we are to continue to grow rather than forever defending what we have.

Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and recover energy. We call this oscillation. The opposite of oscillation is linearity: too much energy expenditure without recovery or too much recovery without sufficient energy expenditure. Balancing stress and recovery is critical to high performance both individually and organizationally. We must sustain healthy oscillatory rhythms at all four levels of what we term the “performance pyramid”: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. We build emotional, mental and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity. We must systematically expose ourselves to stress beyond our normal limits, followed by adequate recovery. Expanding capacity requires a willingness to endure short-term discomfort in the service of long-term reward.

most jobs, the physical body has been completely cut off from the performance equation. In reality, physical energy is the fundamental source of fuel, even if our work is almost completely sedentary. It not only lies at the heart of alertness and vitality but also affects our ability to manage our emotions, sustain concentration, think creatively, and even maintain our commitment to whatever mission we are on. Leaders and managers make a fundamental mistake when they assume that they can overlook the physical dimension of energy and still expect those who work for them to perform at their best.

In practical terms, the size of our energy reservoir depends on the patterns of our breathing, the foods that we eat and when we eat them, the quantity and quality of our sleep, the degree to which we get intermittent recovery during the day, and the level of our fitness. Building a rhythmic balance between physical energy expenditure and recovery insures that the level of our energy reserves remains relatively constant. Pushing past our comfort zone—and then recovering—is a means by which to expand physical capacity wherever it is insufficient to meet demand.

Sustained performance depends not just on eating at regular intervals but also on eating only as much as you need to drive your energy for the next two to three hours. Portion control is critical both in managing weight and in regulating energy.

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 90 to 120 minutes.

hysical energy is the raw fuel for igniting our emotional skills and talents. In order to perform at our best we must access pleasant and positive emotions: enjoyment, challenge, adventure and opportunity. Emotions that arise out of threat or deficit—fear, frustration, anger, sadness—have a decidedly toxic feel to them and are associated with the release of specific stress hormones, most notably cortisol.

Gallup found that the key drivers of productivity for employees include whether they feel cared for by a supervisor or someone at work; whether they have received recognition or praise during the past seven days; and whether someone at work regularly encourages their development. Put another way, the ability to communicate consistently positive energy lies at the heart of effective management.

Television, for example, is one of the primary means by which most people relax and recover. For the most part, however, watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food. It may provide a temporary form of recovery, but it is rarely nutritious and it is easy to consume too much.

There are times when demand overwhelms our emotional capacity, even if we are regularly seeking renewal. Just as there is only so much weight you can lift without running up against your limits, so there is only so much emotional demand you can tolerate without turning negative. The best way to build an emotional muscle, much like a physical muscle, is to push past your current comfort zone and then recover.