I am reading “The Power of Full Engagement” (Loehr, J. & Schwartz, T.) and found some interesting ideas. The authors relate engagement with how we manage our energy. More engaged employees are those who can manage their physical/emotional/spiritual energy better. And “better” meaning balancing periods of stress and recovery.

“Full engagement requires cultivating a dynamic balance between the expenditure of energy (stress) and the renewal of energy (recovery) in all dimensions (physical, emotional, spiritual)”

They studied athletes and describe a study among world-class tennis players. They tried to understand the factors that differentiate the best competitors from the rest and found out that there was almost no difference in the performance during the points. They observed that one of the success factors was the recovery routines between points that the best players do. They observe differences in how they held their heads and shoulders and the breathing pattern. Many lower-ranked competitors had no recovery routines at all.

The bad news are that our western culture does not incentive recovery routines at work thus we see how people work on weekends, thanks to smart phones we do not disconnect from work after 6pm or even on vacation. Our eating practices have become unhealthy (do you have lunch at your desk? Or do you have lunch regularly?) and our sleeping habit has become shorter.

We are experts in spending energy but we do not know anything about how to renewing it and that is threatening our engagement, our passion, and finally, our performance.

I leave you this matrix of the dynamics of energy. The upper-right quadrant represents the fully engaged….. where would you place yourself?