I finished this book in June 2024. I recommend this book 8/10.
Why you should read this book:
The book highlights that you need to manage your energy over your time. You need the emotional, mental, and physical energy; you can't just make these things up because you have put too much on your calendar. It is a process, and it starts by changing your priorities and implementing better rituals.
Get your copy here.
🚀 The book in three sentences
You need a plan for recharging
Focus on the right things at the right time
It's a process; it takes time
📝 My notes and thoughts
P35. Carisa Bianchi, president and CEO of the advertising company TBWA/Chiat/Day in San Francisco, built recovery into her frequent travel. "I never work on airplanes—no computer, no phone, nothing." she said, "I read books and magazines and listen to music—things that I don't usually have the time to do. You can always find reasons to work. There will always be one more thing to do, but when people don't take time out, they stop being productive."
P40. Take Dick Wolf, the executive producer of Law & Order and half a dozen other network television series. He once told a reporter that he had worked as many as thirty-four days consecutively and gone as long as four years without a vacation. "The scary thing," he explained, "is that I've lost the ability to shut off, even on a weekend, even when I'm up in Maine, where we have a vacation house away from it all, and even if I have nothing to do when I'm there. I find myself feeling guilty if I'm not working. I'll think, 'I really should be doing something.' And I'll almost always find something to do. It's an inability to pull the plug and just vegetate." It never dawned on Wolf that what he called vegetating might actually be a powerful way to refill his energy reservoir.
P46 Balancing Stress and Recovery:
Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and recover energy. We call this oscillation.
The opposite of oscillation is linearity: too much energy expenditure without recovery or too much recovery without sufficient energy expenditure.
Balancing stress and recovery is critical to high performance both individually and organizationally.
We must sustain healthy oscillatory rhythms at all four levels of what we term the "performance pyramid": physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
We build emotional, mental, and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity. We must systematically expose ourselves to stress beyond our normal limits, followed by adequate recovery.
Expanding capacity requires a willingness to endure short-term discomfort in the service of long-term reward.
P71. Fueling the fire:
Physical energy is the fundamental source of fuel in life.
Physical energy is derived from the interaction between oxygen and glucose. The two most important regulators of physical energy are breathing and eating.
Eating five to six low-calorie, highly nutritious meals a day ensures a steady resupply of glucose and essential nutrients.
Drinking sixty-four ounces of water daily is a key factor in the effective management of physical energy.
Most human beings require seven to eight hours of sleep per night to function optimally.
Going to bed early and waking up early help to optimize performance.
Interval training is more effective than steady-state exercise in building physical capacity and in teaching people how to recover more efficiently.
To sustain full engagement, we must take a recovery break every 90 to 120 minutes.
P95. I received a call from middleweight boxing champion Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, with whom he was then working. "I'm really concerned," Mancini said. " I had a negative thought in the ring today." " Just one negative thought?" Jim answered, a little incredulous. "You don't understand, Doc," Mancini said, "A single negative thought is what gets you hit in the face."
P108. Appropriate focus and realistic optimism:
Mental capacity is what we use to organize our lives and focus on our attention.
The mental energy that best serves full engagement is realistic optimism—seeing the world as it is but always working positively towards a desired outcome or solution.
The key supportive mental muscles include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk, effective time management, and creativity.
Changing channels mentally permits different parts of the brain to be activated and facilitates creativity.
Physical exercise stimulates cognitive capacity.
Maximum mental capacity is derived from a balance between expending and recovering mental energy.
When we lack mental muscles, we need to perform at our best; we must systematically build capacity by pushing past our comfort zone and then recovering.
Continuing to challenge the brain serves as a protection against age-related mental decline.
P119. The first thing I did was get more focused about covering my agenda in the time allotted," he explained. "In cases where time begins to run out and we still aren't finished, I now simply stop and explain that I am very sorry but that I have made it a policy not to keep people waiting and that we'll have to schedule more time later. What I found is that it seems to make even the people I am meeting with feel more respected. It also makes them much more efficient about getting through their agendas."
P127. Spiritual energy:
Spiritual energy provides the force for action in all dimensions of our lives. It fuels passion, perseverance and commitment.
Spiritual energy is derived from a connection to deeply held values and a purpose beyond our self-interest.
Character—the courage and conviction to live by our deepest values—is the key muscle that serves spiritual energy.
The key supportive spiritual muscles are passion, commitment, integrity, and honesty.
Spiritual energy is sustained by balancing a commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves with adequate self-care.
Spiritual work can be demanding and renewing at the same time.
Expanding spiritual capacity involves pushing past our comfort zone in precisely the same way that expanding physical capacity does.
The energy of the human spirit can override even severe limitations of physical energy.
P135. Purpose fueled by the feeling of deficit also narrows our attention and limits our possibilities. Imagine, for a moment, that you are out on the sea in a boat that springs a leak. Your purpose immediately becomes mobilized around keeping the boat from sinking. But so long as you are busy bailing water, you can't navigate towards a destination. The same is true in our lives. When we are preoccupied with filling our own holes to stay afloat, we have little energy available to define any deeper or more enduring purpose. By contrast, when we are able to move from the inner experience of threat to one of challenge, we introduce a whole new range of possibilities into our lives. Rather than reacting to fear, we can focus on what moves us and feels meaningful.
P137. While money serves as a primary source of motivation and ongoing preoccupation for many of us, researchers have found almost no correlation between income levels and happiness. Between 1957 and 1990, per-person income in the United States doubled, taking into account inflation. Not only did people's reported levels of happiness fail to increase at all during the same period, but rates of depression grew nearly tenfold. The incidence of divorce, suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse also rose dramatically. "We humans need food, rest, warmth, and social contact." writes David Myers, author of The Pursuit of Happiness. "For starving Sudanese and homeless Iraqis, money would buy more happiness. But having more than enough provides little additional boost to well-being. Once we're comfortable, more money, therefore, provides diminishing returns...The correlation between income and happiness is modest, and in both the U.S. and Canada, [it] has now dropped to near zero. Income also doesn't noticeably influence satisfaction with marriage, family, friendship, or ourselves—also which does predict a sense of well-being. "Happiness, in turn, has been clearly associated with higher productivity. In short, money may not buy happiness, but happiness may help you get rich.
P138. A good story of someone who stops racing through the corporate life, and enjoys education instead.
P141. Across cultures, religions, and time itself, people have admitted and aspired to the same universal values—among them integrity, generosity, courage, humility, compassion, loyalty, and perseverance—while rejecting their opposites—deceit, greed, cowardice, arrogance, callousness, disloyalty, and sloth. To begin to explore more deeply the values that are most compelling to you, we suggest that you set aside uninterrupted time to respond to the following questions:
Jump ahead to the end of your life. What are the three most important lessons you have learned, and why are they so critical?
Think of someone that you deeply respect. Describe three qualities in this person that you most admire.
Who are you at your best?
What one-sentence inscription would you like to see on your tombstone that would capture who you really were in your life?
P146. The rules of engagement:
The search for meaning is among the most powerful and enduring themes in every culture since the origin of recorded history.
The "hero's journey" is grounded in mobilizing, nurturing and regularly renewing our most precious resource—energy—in the service of what matter most.
When we lack a strong sense of purpose, we are easily buffeted by life's inevitable storms.
Purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when its source moves from negative to positive, external to internal, and self to others.
A negative source of purpose is defensive and deficit-based. Intrinsic motivation grows out of the desire to engage in an activity because we value it for the inherent satisfaction it provides.
Values fuel the energy on which purpose is built. They hold us to a different standard for managing our energy.
A virtue is a value in action.
A vision statement, grounded in values that are meaningful and compelling, creates a blueprint for how to invest our energy.
P156. Facing the truth requires making yourself the object of inquiry—conducting an audit of your life and holding yourself accountable for the energy consequences of your behaviors. To get a quick overview, take out a piece of paper and a pen and set aside at least thirty quiet minutes to answer this series of questions:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how fully engaged are you in your work? What is standing in your way?
How closely does your everyday behavior match your values and serve your mission? What are the disconnects?
How fully are you embodying your values and vision for yourself at work? At home? In your community? Where are you falling short?
How effectively are the choices that you are making physically—your habits of nutrition, exercise, sleep, and the balance of stress and recovery—serving your key values?
How consistent with your values is your emotional response in any given situation? Is it different at work than it is at home? and if so, how?
To what degree do you establish clear priorities and sustain attention to tasks? How consistent are those priorities with what you say is most important to you?
How do your habits of sleeping, eating, and exercising affect your available energy?
How much negative energy do you invest in defense spending—frustration, anger, fear, resentment, envy—as opposed to positive energy utilizing in the service of growth and productivity?
How much energy do you invest in yourself, how much in others, and how comfortable are you with that balance? How do those closest to you feel about the balance you've struck?
How much energy do you spend worrying about, feeling frustrated by, and trying to influence events beyond your control?
Finally, how wisely and productively are you investing your energy?
P158. A good story about the stories you tell yourself in your head.
P160. As the psychiatrist Robert Assagioli puts it, we may move from a feeling of "I am overwhelmed by my anxiety" to the more dispassionate "My anxiety is trying to overwhelm me." In one, we are victims. On the other, we have the power to make choices and take action.
P162. Julie, the executive coach, reported a remarkable transformation when she began asking herself a variation on this question any time that someone disagreed with her, and she felt certain that she was right: "How might the opposite of what I'm thinking or feeling also be true?"
P164. How are you managing your energy now:
Facing the truth frees up energy and is the second stage, after defining purpose, in becoming more fully engaged.
Avoiding the truth consumes great effort and energy.
At the most basic level, we deceive ourselves in order to protect our self-esteem.
Some truths are too unbearable to be absorbed all at once. Emotions such as grief are best metabolized in waves.
Truth without compassion is cruelty—to others and to ourselves.
What we fail to acknowledge about ourselves, we often continue to act out unconsciously.
A common form of self-deception is assuming that our view represents the truth when it is really just a lens through which we choose to view the world.
Facing the truth requires that we retain an ongoing openness to the possibility that we may not be seeing ourselves—or others—accurately.
It is both a danger and a delusion when we become too identified with any singular view of ourselves. We are all a blend of light and shadow, virtues and vices.
Accepting our limitations reduces our defensiveness and increases the amount of positive energy available to us.
P174. Doug L. is an executive who spent nearly a decade overseeing several thousand financial advisers at a large financial services company. From early on, he instinctively understood the role of rituals. To ensure that he embodied the values he had defined as important and the goals he had set for himself, he developed a series of what he called "key behaviors." In his personal life, these included a weekly date night with his wife and a commitment to attend all of his daughter's athletic events. One of the more unusual rituals for an executive at his level was that on Wednesdays at 1:00 P.M., he left his office to play tennis for an hour, and on Fridays at 1:00 P.M., he played basketball for ninety minutes at a nearby YMCA. His secretary put these two dates on his weekly calendar and protected them the way she would any other high-priority appointment. For Doug, these two activities were critical sources of renewal in the course of his very demanding days. If he had been more casual about trying to find the time to exercise in the middle of workdays, he told us, it never would have happened. The same was true of the date night with his wife and the time he committed to his daughters.
P178. Our method is to build rituals in increments—focusing on one significant change at a time and setting reachable goals at each step of the process. If you have been completely sedentary and want to begin exercising, it doesn't make sense to start by trying to jog three miles a day, five days a week. Your odds of success are far higher if you begin with a highly specific but carefully calibrated training plan. That might mean walking for fifteen minutes a day three times a week at first, with predetermined increases in time or pace built in for each subsequent week. Growth and change won't occur unless you push past your comfort zone, but pushing too hard increases the likelihood that you will give up. It is far better to experience success at each step of the progressive process. Building confidence fuels the persistence to pursue more challenging changes. We called these "serial rituals."
P181. The power of powerful rituals:
Rituals serve as tools through which we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on.
Rituals create a means by which to translate our values and priorities into action in all dimensions of our lives.
All great performers rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and regulate their behavior.
The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in the fact that every demand on our self-control draws on the same limited resource.
We can offer our limited will and discipline by building rituals that become automatic as quickly as possible, fueled by our deepest values. The most important role of rituals is to insure effective balance between energy expenditure and energy renewal in the service of full engagement.
The more exacting the challenge and the greater the pressure, the more rigorous our rituals need to be.
Precision and specificity are critical dimensions of building rituals during the thirty to sixty-day acquisition period.
Trying not to do something rapidly depletes our limited stores of will and discipline.
To make lasting change, we must build serial rituals, focusing on one significant change at a time.
P217. Personal Development Plan.
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