My readings on productivity have lead me to purchase a book entitled The Power Of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. I was thoroughly excited to discover their approach to productivity that, I was convinced, was going to be ground breaking for me. Having already read quite a few books on the topic over the past months, I understood that in order to increase performance, one had to push their concentration to the limits of their abilities and work without any interruption or disruption whatsoever for hours. I tried the technique myself, and I can testify that it does wonders. The amount of work I am able to accomplish everyday is absolutely unreal.
To give you an example, I used to spend hours working on one article and would post one or two articles per week on the blog. One of the reasons for that being I feared running out of ideas at some point, and the other reason being that I couldn’t dedicate every day of the week to typing articles. As you can imagine, the job of a blogger does not consist in writing posts (or posting Instagram photos, although you may be surprised at how much work/thought actually goes into social media too), we basically have a company to run and I wear the editor, marketing, communication, accounting, web/graphic designer, saleswoman and photographer hats all by myself. Since increasing my performance levels thanks to the productivity techniques I read in these books, I am now able to write six to seven posts a day, which allows me to focus on all the other areas of my business the rest of the week. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.
But why is The Power Of Full Engagement different than all the other books on productivity and why am I dedicating an entire post to this book. Rather than focusing on time management as a means of increasing productivity, the authors of The Power Of Full Engagement claim that energy management is the high road to excellence and unmatched productivity. They go on to explain that our energy levels are finite, and that to be able to sustain productivity throughout the day, one must manage their energy carefully.
After a couple hours working, we get tired, less focused, are more prone to making mistakes or forgetting things and as a result, become unproductive. The authors explain that much like our body, our brain needs frequent recovery periods in order for it perform at its optimum capacity. They compared our brain’s functioning to high intensity interval training (HIIT), which is known to be the most effective way to build muscle and burn fat and calories. If you are not familiar with HIIT, it is a type of exercise that consists in alternating periods of extremely high intensity exercise with periods of lower intensity. Typically, you would alternate one minute of sprinting, with one minute of walking for 20 to 30 minutes. The low intensity periods allows you to recover energy before pushing yourself again to your limits. The authors claim that our brain too, needs periods of rest, of disengagement, in order for it to sustain maximum concentration and the highest level of performance it can reach. Precisely, they stress that one must take 15 to 20 minute breaks every 90 to 120 minutes of work. During their breaks, one must fully disengage from work: either nap, take a walk, eat something healthy, exercise, meditate.
Managing your energy means working extremely hard for an hour and a half to two hours without interruption or distraction and stoping to recover, rest, and refuel your energy reservoir. Failure to do so may lead to underperformance and exhaustion.
This was groundbreaking for me on so many levels: first, I’ve lost count of the times I felt tired after long hours of uninterrupted work and would sense my productivity decline but would keep pushing anyways. I always knew I had to find ways of renewing my energy levels after a couple hours, or whenever I would grow tired, but never took action, mainly because I would feel guilty of not working. Bu letting us know that breaks are necessary to high performance and by explaining what should these breaks consist in, this book has soothed me in more ways than I could tell. I plan on implementing the following energy renewal routines into my working schedule:
- Meditation: I used to meditate every morning for 20 minutes upon waking up and stopped about four years ago. While I do love the benefits of meditation, the meditative state I intend on implementing here is rather a quiet time for reflection or problem solving, while doing other things, like pouring myself a steaming cup of coffee, for instance.
- Short but explosive workouts: I started doing explosive HIIT workouts a couple mornings a week, to replace some of my weekly stationary bike workouts and noticed such an drastic difference in how bursting with energy I am after a workout that involves lots of jumps. They’re shorter but much more challenging and more efficient than the stationary bike. So this is definitely something I will do at times to feel more energized.
- Coffee or tea and listening to classical music.
Interested in reading the book? Purchase below!
Did you like this post? You can reach your highest potential and become the best, most productive and happiest version of yourself now.
