These days, who isn’t
trying to get more done in less time?
Organizations want the best from their workforces, and people
are trying their best to comply. Yet working longer hours, the
most commonly employed solution to workplace demands, can often
reduce one's level of engagement with their work, brings distraction
to other areas of their lives, and eventually leads to higher job
turnover rates.
In this state, people frequently find themselves becoming anxious
and irritable at work; they spend their productive hours focusing
on immediate crises rather than on activities that bring long-term
rewards; and there becomes a huge discrepancy between what they
say is important to them, as opposed to how they actually allocate
their time and energy.
According to Tony Schwartz, president and founder of The Energy
Project in New York and a co-author of The Power of Full Engagement
(Free Press, 2003), when people are exhausted, disengaged, getting
sick, and leaving their jobs, they are in the thralls of a full-blown "energy
crisis."
Over the years, Schwartz has worked as a consultant for thousands
of leaders and managers in large organizations. His findings, recently
published in The Harvard Business Review (Manage Your Energy, Not
Your Time), conclude that people are pushing themselves harder
than ever to keep up, and are under increasing threat of reaching
the "breaking point."
The essential conflict with working longer hours is that, while
time is a finite resource, energy is not. In physics, energy is
defined as the capacity to work, and Schwartz has based his research
on the premise that our capacity to work comes from four main "wellsprings":
the body, emotions, mind, and spirit.
People, Schwartz asserts, need to recognize the costs of their
own energy-depleting behaviours, and take responsibility for changing
them. Organizations, meanwhile, need to be aware of the connection
between the energy levels of their employees and their bottom line.
"It takes a visionary thinker to be able to connect the dots
between something like energy management and bottom line results," says
Christina Sestan, a professionally certified business coach, corporate
facilitator and speaker based in Vancouver, BC, and San Francisco,
CA.
"I work with a lot of personal and corporate clients around
'energy,' (i.e. The lack of, how to tap it, what drives it), and
I find that it's very common for people to come to me in an energy
crisis. These clients are fatigued, overwhelmed, and there is an
imbalance between their work and their home life," says Sestan.
Energy
vs. Time
Energy management, unlike time management, is a cyclical process, not a linear
one. Time management is the ability to organize and prioritize our activities
so that we can get the most value out of their time. We are often praised and
rewarded for the more things we do, the more tasks we complete, and the more
hours we work.Yet while we may accomplish 100 tasks during a day, if none of
them are being done very thoroughly, how much value are they adding to our
lives?
Most of Sestan’s clients come to her with a typical request: "I
want you to help me do more in my day."
"I tell them that they need to slow down and start practicing greater self-awareness," she
says. "Paradoxically, they tell me: I can’t afford the time to do
this."
There's a theory that holds for time management: one hour of planning
saves 8 hours of work. Likewise, says Sestan, "For every hour
spent on a study in self-awareness, one saves 8 hours of energy."
Energy Management is about the quality that we put into our work,
and it is best maximized in cycles that vary between work and rest.
Working with these natural cycles instead of against them gives
a person the opportunity to replenish their energy each day, instead
of spending energy that their body cannot keep producing.
In a perfect world, we would be working in intensive "sprints" – 90
to 120 minutes of uninterrupted, fully engaged concentration, followed
by a 15 or 20 full recovery period where energy is regained for
the next sprint. This method replenishes mental energy as well
as physical energy, which helps us in the form of sustained concentration.
When the balance between work and recovery isn't implemented,
we go into an energy deficit and our nervous systems put us in
fight or flight response. At this stage, how we manage our time
is useless if we don’t have any energy to give.
As Schwartz aptly stated in a recent interview with Computerworld
magazine, "If I give you my time but I don't give you my energy,
I'm not giving you much."
In terms of small but effective actions, or rituals, to use for
energy management, consider the following:
a) eat frequent, smaller portions, throughout the day
b) eat nutritiously
c) work out regularly
d) get enough sleep
e) take short breaks every 90 to 120 minutes during the work day.
"If you’ve got those nailed, you're in great shape." states
Schwartz. "The problem is that virtually no one we work with
does have those nailed."
Why is such common-sense advice so hard to achieve?
Often, an energy crisis occurs because we are having difficulties
dealing with conflict or are disengaged from our jobs because what
we are doing is not aligned with our values.
Sestan believes that change cannot be employed until a person
is aware about what is causing the symptoms of energy depletion
in the first place. "Often people come to me wanting to treat
the symptoms, but what inevitably becomes revealed to them are
their own self-barriers."
While actions such as getting more sleep, eating healthier, etc.
certainly help to maintain one's physical energy, they cannot solve
energy drains on an emotional or a spiritual level.
In Sestan's experience, the two biggest energy drains in a working
environment are conflict in the workforce and fear of competition.
"Most people just don’t know how to deal with these
issues," she says.
One aspect of Schwartz's work with energy management is to bring
more awareness to the "stories" that we tell ourselves.
In dealing with conflict, he suggests taking the perspective of
the other person, and re-evaluating the conflict through a "different
lens."
Sestan suggests the same, offering a good perspective-shifting
exercise she learned once, and has found to be invaluable. First,
she says, write down the conflict from your perspective, then write
it from the second person’s perspective, then write it from
the third person, observer perspective. "You’d be surprised
at how much energy you can let go out of this."
This article will continue in a
second part.
Christina Sestan is the founder of Citrus
Coaching Solutions, a cutting-edge human potential company that
works with corporations and individuals to help achieve groundbreaking
results in the areas of productivity/profitability, performance,
team cohesion, effective communication, and job satisfaction.
Christina works with individual and corporate clients in Canada,
the US, Asia and Europe and has offices in both Vancouver and
San Francisco.
You can reach Christina and Citrus Coaching
at (604)264-0224, christina@citruscoaching.com, http://www.citruscoaching.com.
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