The Power of Full Engagement

Do you recognize yourself in any of the following 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 and irritable.
• 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.

 If any of the above scenarios (taken from The Power of Full Engagement, co-authored by Tony Schwartz) sound like they were ripped directly from your diary, Tony Schwartz has words of hope and techniques that will help you increase your performance - and the performance of your organizations.

Read more about the book

According to Schwartz, Americans now work an average of 46 hours per week (52 hours per week if you include work at home), which is more than the citizens of any other country in the world. If you're thinking, "I WISH I was only working 46 hours a week," then the techniques from this presentation are even more critical for you to regain balance, focus, and engagement in your life.

Unlike others who admonish us to work less to regain balance and energy, Schwartz does not proselytize. He recognizes the lure of work; most of us feel more competent and rewarded by our work than by any other part of our life. Work is a measure - and for many, THE measure - of our success. Work, for many, is the "drug of choice."

The problem isn't work, per se, or even our drive to cram more work into a day. If it was, time management techniques would suffice and technological breakthroughs in information access and communications would make life simpler, less rushed.

Managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance, health, happiness, and life balance. Tony Schwartz will share key lessons for managing energy - yours as well as your organization's in this book.

Tony Schwartz is president and founder of The Energy Project, a company that helps organizations and their leaders build and sustain capacity by learning to more skillfully manage energy. He has spent 30 years studying, writing about, teaching, and coaching people in how to perform more effectively in all dimensions of their lives. His most recent book, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy Not Time, co-authored with Jim Loehr, was a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and has been translated into 24 languages. He has written three other books, including the #1 worldwide bestseller, The Art of the Deal with Donald Trump, Work in Progress with Michael Eisner, and What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America. He has given keynotes, delivered workshops, and coached senior executives at dozens of Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Sony, Credit Suisse, MasterCard and Wachovia Bank.

Read more of book review

 I work as a stress management trainer for humanitarian relief and development workers around the world, so I've read a lot of self-help books in my time. This is one of the best I've read. Beautifully structured, it's finely balanced between research, anecdotes and application. It kept my attention throughout, and most pages now have highlighter on them. It's well worth the time to read and will challenge you gently, but firmly, to assess your priorities and how you are living your life. - Lisa McKay

As opposed to simple time management, this book covers the much-neglected dimension of energy management, arguing that it's more effective to focus on structuring your energy to optimize your productivity and your experience. To do this, the four dimensions of energy are covered (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), and exercises and scorecards are provided to help you gauge yourself in these areas.

One powerful insight I took away from the book was the idea that self-will, discipline, is very hard to maintain for a sustained period of time (which is why indefinite resolutions to "do better" in some area often tank after a few weeks). Instead of making vague self-promises it's better to design specific rituals that embody the values you desire to be primary in your life. They have examples of specific rituals they've helped design for people whose chief struggles are a) being focused, or b) stressed, and c) etcetera. A ritual is a specific sequence of steps done at a specific time of day, on a regular schedule. The idea is to preplan the rituals so you don't think too hard about them, and they become habits that help you stay on track and reenergize.

--- Jeff Benson