Are you headed for an Energy Crisis?
Martin Doulton
Martin Doulton
Hands up who doesn’t regularly get seven to eight hours of sleep and often feels more tired when they wake up than when they went to bed? Who gets irritable or impatient at work especially when work gets a bit demanding? Who tends to work in the evening and at weekends and rarely takes an email-free holiday? Who never spends enough time at work doing what you do best and enjoy the most?
If you answered yes to all four then I am sorry to tell you that you are on your way to a fully-fledged personal energy crisis. And you are not alone.
It appears that many of us who have rising workplace pressures tend to work longer hours, which inevitably means less quality home time, less time to exercise, and more time missing lunch (or eating it on the run or at our desk). For all our modern time-saving devices, it appears that time is still our most precious commodity. We have less of it to use as we wish, and more of us suffer from feelings of tiredness and unproductiveness.
Fortunately I am the bearer of some good news! There is a way for you to feel more energetic throughout the day, to fit in more of what you want to do and to regularly feel and be more productive. But it will take a shift in the thinking.
Perhaps a good starting point is to consider the concepts contained in an October 2007 Harvard Business Review article by Tony Schwartz. Basically Schwartz advocates that it’s not time that’s the problem, it’s actually about one’s personal energy management. We need to accept that time is a finite resource and recognise that energy is a renewable one. Then what we have to do is ensure that our daily rituals contribute to improving our energy levels rather than taking away from them.
We also have to be brave. We have to recognise the costs of not being energetic and also take responsibility to change our behaviours - importantly, we can’t wait for someone else to change them for us.
Schwartz’s article contains a number of work-based energy improving interventions that we have been advocating at Monash Sport for many years. Actions like those below will all contribute to heightened energy and productivity levels. In your working week, why not try:
- Taking a regular exercise break during the work day
- Having walking meetings
- Scheduling your critical actions for early in the day
- Breaking up your work day tasks into bite size chunks
- Exercising in your lunch break
- Taking time to eat your meal away from your desk or your email
Having personally piloted a refocus on managing my energy and not my time I can testify that it works - and it’s so much more fun feeling more energetic and healthier than not.
Martin Doulton is the Director of Monash Sport.