University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Power of Full Engagement
Book

The Power of Full Engagement

Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Free Press, 2003
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Editorial Rating

10

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz offer a lot of solid, common sense advice. The authors recommend going to bed and getting up at a consistent time - not exactly Ben Franklin’s "early to bed, early to rise," but close. They recommend regular exercise. They say it’s good to work and to rest, and each has its place. They say to examine yourself and try to see yourself as others see you. In other words, they recommend many time-honored techniques of physical, mental and spiritual growth, combined with prioritizing how you use your energy and how you recharge your batteries. This attitude makes the book unique. The principles may be ancient, but getAbstract finds the vehicle distinctly contemporary, a combo of New Age jargon and workout-style performance charting, with (at last) a key to time management that makes sense and captures all areas of one’s life. Some readers will find that thrilling, others will groan.

Summary

Energy Excelsior

Time is not your most precious resource. Energy is. People can manage time well and still find themselves exhausted, stressed, unable to concentrate and unable to give other people the attention they merit. People use calendars, clocks, Palm Pilots and other impedimenta of time management - but how many do anything about energy management?

The path to power, productivity, success and satisfaction is energy management, the strategy of "full engagement." With full engagement, you’ll spring out of bed in the morning, champing at the bit to get to work, upbeat and positive. When you leave the office in the evening, you’ll look forward to going home and spending the evening with the important people in your life, or, what the heck, maybe hanging out and having fun alone. You’ll be creative, contented, challenged and fun. If you are a manager, your employees will be delighted to follow you, because you’ll show them the road to full engagement, and help them to align their individual goals and aspirations with those of your organization.

Full engagement ought to be a bottom line priority. Companies incur trillions of dollars of unnecessary costs merely...

About the Authors

Senior partners and principals at a performance consultancy, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz co-developed training packages that draw on their "Full Engagement" model. Loehr is a performance psychologist and the author of 12 books including Stress for Success. Schwartz co-authored Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal and also wrote What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America.

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