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

by Jim Loehr

Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.

The more we take responsibility for the energy we bring to the world, the more empowered and productive we become. The more we blame others or external circumstances, the more negative and compromised our energy is likely to be.

To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest. Full engagement begins with feeling eager to get to work in the morning, equally happy to return home in the evening and capable of setting clear boundaries between the two.

Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.

The richest, happiest and most productive lives are characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand, but also to disengage periodically and seek renewal.

We, too, must learn to live our own lives as a series of sprints—fully engaging for periods of time, and then fully disengaging and seeking renewal before jumping back into the fray to face whatever challenges confront us.

To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.

Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.

The power of rituals is that they insure that we use as little conscious energy as possible where it is not absolutely necessary, leaving us free to strategically focus the energy available to us in creative, enriching ways.

Creating positive rituals is the most powerful means we have found to effectively manage energy in the service of full engagement.

Cultures that encourage people to seek intermittent renewal not only inspire greater commitment, but also more productivity.

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.

The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership.

A value is ultimately just a roadmap for action. Values that we fail to reflect in our behavior are ultimately empty. To be meaningful, a value must influence the choices that we make in our everyday lives.

Denial is effectively a form of disengagement: It means shutting down a part of ourselves. When we fear the truth, we become more defensive, rigid and constricted.

The challenge is not just to acknowledge the fact of being over-weight, but also to face the truth about its consequences—compromised energy, a much higher likelihood of diabetes and heart disease and a far greater likelihood of early death. Only when we face these truths and act upon them do we fully embrace the truth.

Facing the truth requires that we retain an ongoing openness to the possibility that we may not be seeing ourselves—or others—accurately.

Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action—to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors.

Practice makes perfect only if the practice is perfect—or at least aims for perfection. If you cannot perform a particular task effectively when you are feeling relaxed and unpressured, it is unlikely that you will be able to do so when the pressure is high, or when you are in the midst of a crisis. Building precise rituals makes it possible to push away the distractions and fears that arise under pressure.