Life at full capacity! Living at Full Power - Jim Lauer, Tony Schwartz.

Time management is a wonderful invention. It helps you set bigger goals, achieve more at work, and earn a higher income. Books on this topic often feature advice like “get to work an hour early and leave an hour late—you’ll be amazed at how much more you’ll get done.” But for some reason, failures occur in this scheme. There are a lot of things planned, but there is not enough energy even for half of them. In order to keep up with things, you are returning home later, and your family and friendship ties are bursting at the seams. Diseases begin from unhealthy food and stress. What to do? Give up your ambitions? Or try to find a new source of energy?

The answer to this question came from big sport. Authors of the book The Power of Full Engagement For many years we have been involved in the psychological preparation of tennis stars. They were looking for an answer to the question: why do two athletes have the same skills, but one always defeats the other? What's the secret? It turned out that the winner knows how to instantly relax between serves. And his opponent is in suspense throughout the game. After some time, his ability to concentrate decreases, his strength goes away, and he inevitably loses.

The same thing happens with corporate employees. Monotonous loads lead to loss of strength and physical ailments. To prevent this from happening, we need to learn how to manage our energy - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. The principles and techniques described in the book will explain how to do this.

Who is this book for?

For anyone who works hard, sets professional and personal goals, and strives every day to achieve them.

"Trick" of the book

The authors have been involved in the psychological preparation of world sports stars for many years, including tennis players Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, Arantha Sanchez, Sergi Brugueira, Gabriela Sabatini and Monica Seles, golfers Mark O'Meara and Ernie Els, hockey players Eric Lindros and Mike Richter, boxer Rey " Boom Boom" Mancini, basketball players Nick Anderson and Grant Hill, and speed skater Dan Jensen.

“Many of us live life like an endless marathon, constantly pushing ourselves to extreme and dangerous stress. We make ourselves mental and emotional heavyweights, constantly expending energy without sufficient recovery.

We must learn to live our years as a series of sprints—periods of intense activity, interspersed with periods of rest and recuperation.”

Appendix 2 Personal planfull power development

Expand description Collapse description

Publishers tried to persuade me for a long time to give them the right to use my photograph on the cover of this book, and I refused for a long time, not understanding why I needed it. The fact is that I liked the book: everything in it is reasonable and simple, but what I have to do with it is not very clear. However, I wondered: could it encourage entrepreneurs to take up exercise and save themselves? And I thought that most likely yes. I am for our country to have more talented guys who will achieve success, and the methods of big sport can help them with this. That's how my story and photo ended up here. I hope the book helps you!

Ride your bikes!

Oleg Tinkov

Champion of Russia in business!

When preparing the Russian edition of this book, the image of Oleg Tinkov immediately appeared in my thoughts. It is he who personifies in Russia the image of a businessman who was seriously involved in sports, namely cycling, and applies the methods of big sports in big business. Perhaps Oleg does this even unconsciously, but the result is obvious. He is undoubtedly the champion of Russia in business! And even though he is not the richest entrepreneur in the country, he started each of his businesses from scratch, without privatizing or taking away anything. This deserves special respect.

I have no doubt that if Oleg had not become a businessman, he would probably have won the Tour de France and Olympic Games. Not less! His irrepressible energy is infectious from the first meeting. His charm is captivating. He is not afraid to be himself and remains himself in the most different situations- from dancing at an Odessa disco with the “bros” to dinner with oligarchs in London.

Having gone through all the leagues, from the black market in the early 1990s to the bank in the 2000s, he created such bright brands as Tinkoff beer and Daria products. He has a good feel for the game and knows how to sell a business at its peak in time in order to launch new, even more ambitious projects.

Recently, Oleg entered a new race in the major banking league, creating a bank “not like everyone else”, Tinkoff Credit Systems. It looks like he will turn this business around, proving that logic, energy and creativity work great in this very conservative industry. Surely, having won the Russian championship, he will not stop and will move on to the most interesting world markets. He simply cannot ignore this challenge. Russia is too small for him.

What do big sports and big business have in common? A lot of things. Ability to endure stress – emotional and physical. Ability to recover. The ability to count the opponent’s moves and create the infrastructure for victory. Ability to play in a team and win.

In fact, today's businessmen experience, perhaps, even greater stress than professional athletes themselves. high level. And at the same time, very often they do not take care of themselves, burning their lives at the stake of business. Oleg is not like that. He knows how to work and how to relax one hundred percent.

It was cycling that saved Oleg as a child from the crooked path that many of his peers followed in Leninsk-Kuznetsky and throughout the country. And now, riding a bicycle five to six thousand kilometers a year, he maintains excellent shape. During training, he makes decisions on the most complex issues, both in business and in personal life. In his inspiring book “I'm Like Everyone Else,” he wrote that it was during training that he decided to get married to his wife after twenty years of marriage.

I think the bike and skiing(another of his hobbies) make him a better entrepreneur and the best person. He lives to the fullest. It is known that we cannot control the length of our lives, but its width and depth are completely in our hands. You can spend even a very long life in the offices of ministries, or you can take risks, open new businesses and markets, and during breaks ride around your beloved Tuscany.

Interestingly, there is a cause-and-effect spiral at work here. Exercising makes you more resilient, you eat and sleep better, your head works better, and you do better business.

Unfortunately, a reverse spiral is also inevitable. The lack of sports in your life and poor nutrition lead to decreased stamina and immunity, which leads to illness, bad mood and defeat.

This book collects and transfers to the lifestyle of a businessman best practices training world-class athletes. After reading it, Oleg wrote “simple and effective” on his blog. And indeed it is.

It would seem that if everything is so obvious, then why do we change our habits only when we start to get very sick? Why do we waste our health so thoughtlessly?

In conclusion, I would like to wish you to be different from everyone else. Take the example of Oleg Tinkov and live to the fullest.

Mikhail Ivanov,

publisher

Part one

Full Power Driving Forces

1. At full power. The most precious resource is energy, not time

We live in a digital age. We are running at full speed, our rhythms are accelerating, our days are cut into bytes and bits. We prefer breadth to depth and quick response to thoughtful decisions. We glide across the surface, ending up in dozens of places for a few minutes, but never staying anywhere for long. We fly through life without pausing to think about who we really want to become. We are connected, but we are disconnected.

Most of us are just trying to do the best we can. When demands exceed our capabilities, we make decisions that help us break through the web of problems but eat up our time. We sleep little, eat on the go, fuel ourselves with caffeine and calm ourselves down with alcohol and sleeping pills. Faced with unrelenting demands at work, we become irritable and our attention is easily distracted. After a long day of work, we return home completely exhausted and perceive family not as a source of joy and restoration, but as just another problem.

We have surrounded ourselves with diaries and task lists, handhelds and smartphones, instant messaging systems and “reminders” on computers. We believe this should help us manage our time better. We pride ourselves on our ability to multitask, and we demonstrate our willingness to work from dawn to dusk everywhere, like a medal for bravery. The term “24/7” describes a world where work never ends. We use the words “obsession” and “madness” not to describe madness, but to talk about the past working day. Feeling that there will never be enough time, we try to pack as many things as possible into each day. But even the most effective management time does not guarantee that we will have enough energy to do everything we planned.

Are you familiar with such situations?

You are in an important four-hour meeting where not a second is wasted. But the last two hours you spend the rest of your energy only on fruitless attempts to concentrate;

You carefully planned all 12 hours of the upcoming working day, but by the middle of it you completely lost energy and became impatient and irritable;

You are planning to spend the evening with your children, but you are so distracted by thoughts about work that you cannot understand what they want from you;

You, of course, remember your wedding anniversary (the computer reminded you of this this afternoon), but you forgot to buy a bouquet, and you no longer have the strength to leave the house to celebrate.

Energy, not time, is the main currency of high efficiency. This idea revolutionized our understanding of what drives high performance over time. She led our clients to reconsider the principles of managing their own lives - both personal and professional. Everything we do - from walking with our children to communicating with colleagues and accepting major decisions, – requires energy. This seems obvious, but it is what we most often forget. Without the right quantity, quality and focus of energy, we endanger any task we undertake.

Jim Lauer and Tony Schwartz

About the book

Time management is a wonderful invention. It helps you set bigger goals, achieve more at work, and earn a higher income. Books on this topic often feature advice like “come to work an hour early and leave an hour late—you’ll be amazed how much more you’ll get done.” But for some reason, failures occur in this scheme. There are a lot of things planned, but there is not enough energy even for half of them. In order to keep up with things, you are returning home later, and your family and friendship ties are bursting at the seams. Diseases begin from unhealthy food and stress. What to do? Give up your ambitions? Or try to find a new source of energy?

Who is this book for?

For anyone who works hard, sets professional and personal goals, and strives every day to achieve them.

"Trick" of the book

We must learn to live our years as a series of sprints—periods of intense activity, interspersed with periods of rest and recuperation.”

I read this book a year and a half ago. I recommended it to a bunch of people, and they recommended it further.
The moment came and I felt the need to read it again. To remember the main points, to correct the course that I took after the first reading, but which began to go astray.

This book should be read by those who have repeatedly wanted to give up everything, or think about it constantly. Who always doesn't have time to do everything, even despite attempts at time management. For those who feel disappointed with what they are doing now.

So, below I have written down the main points that caught my attention in the book “Life at Full Power! Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness" by Jim Lauer and Tony Schwartz.

People have different resources. For example, one of them, non-renewable, is time. Managing this resource is described in a bunch of other books on time management. The authors say that you can perfectly fit everything into a schedule, but if you have a problem with another resource, namely energy, then there is exactly zero sense in all these closed lists, pomodoros, etc.

At one time, the authors were engaged in optimizing the resources of professional athletes and noticed that the requirements for ordinary people, exceed the requirements for any athletes. Those 90% of your time training for the 10% you give to competitions. And they know something about energy management procedures: time, sleep, proper food, rest, etc. Ordinary people work 8/10/12 hours every day. And they don't have an "off-season" other than a couple of weeks of vacation.

The authors identify 4 key types of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Each energy is fuel for the next. And you cannot focus only on one energy and ignore others.

The following quadrants of energy and the states by which they are characterized can be distinguished:

Low negative: depression, fatigue, burnout, hopelessness, defeat.
High negative: anger, fear, anxiety, defensiveness, resentment.
Low positive: relaxation, lack of composure, peacefulness, calmness, serenity.
High positive: cheerfulness, confidence, challenge, joy, participation.

The following analogy is repeated several times in the book: marathon runners look tired, while sprinters look full of energy. This is all because the latter see the finish already from the start. And therefore you need to give your all on the track, and forget about it outside the stadium.

Energy capabilities are reduced by both excess and underuse of energy. There needs to be a balance between spending and saving. The situation is similar to the state of the muscles: with regular training, strength increases, with overexertion, a long recovery is needed, and if the muscles are not trained, they lose their “capacity”.
To increase capacity, you need to train and go beyond the usual limits of energy consumption. Surprisingly, stress is good and healthy. But there is an important “but”. When we load the muscles, they are then ready for stress. Therefore, it is possible to create reserves not only for physical ones. strength. But you need to train at least until you get tired, to the limit (go beyond your comfort zone, but don’t break it). The most important thing after stress is recovery.

If you bring clear example, then there may be exhaustion, or there may be an excess of energy without insufficient use: for example, when an arm is broken, a plaster cast is put on it, and the muscles weaken and atrophy. Therefore, years of training can easily be erased by just one week of break.

To get out of our comfort zone, we need a positive ritual that, unlike willpower and discipline, is not a push behavior, but a pull, like brushing your teeth on autopilot. If you are doing well in something, it means there is a well-established ritual.

define a goal
face it,
take action.

The problem with the first point is that at today’s exorbitant speeds of life, we don’t even have time to meaningfully determine true values. We spend time and energy quickly responding to sudden crises and meeting the expectations of others, rather than choosing what is truly meaningful in our lives.

The second step is to determine how energy is currently being used. Understand what problems there are now. Look at yourself from the outside.

The third is to create a personal development plan based on creating rituals of positive energy. Doing the unimportant instead of the important, dousing the mind with alcohol for a temporary solution, such as relieving stress from work, is not a solution.

Even ancient Greek athletes were trained and forced to rest, that is, to alternate between activity and rest. Following a period of activity, our body must replenish basic biochemical energy sources. This is called "compensation".
Therefore, if a company introduces a culture continuous operation and hopes that employees will “volunteer” to work evenings and weekends, she will only get exhausted people with low productivity. And the same companies and managers who encourage alternation of work and rest get loyal and productive employees.

Both sleep and wakefulness have cycles. Therefore, after activity, hunger and sleep attack, and it becomes difficult for us to concentrate. In response, you can mobilize by producing stress hormones, but this is a short-term solution that is more suitable for situations of danger. The constant production of such hormones will lead to hyperactivity, aggressiveness, impatience, irritability, anger, egocentrism and insensitivity to others. If you do not recover for a long time, migraines, back pain, and gastrointestinal upset will appear. And in the worst case, you can have a heart attack.
And when we cannot keep ourselves in good shape, we use coffee and nicotine. And when we can’t relax, we use alcohol and sleeping pills. If you try to artificially invigorate during the day and relax in the evening, then you are masking linearity. In life, everything is cyclical (periodic). After the activity phase there should be a rest phase.

In Japan there is a term "karoshi" - death from excess work. About 10,000 people die from this every year. Think about these numbers.

Physical energy, which, as I mentioned above, is the fuel for igniting emotional talents and skills, depends on breathing and nutrition. Therefore, we need to consume slow carbohydrates and not skip breakfast (yes, the authors in the book even touch on the issue of diet and healthy sleep!) We need to eat more often, but little by little. Drink 1.5−2 liters of water per day. Sleep 7-8 hours (while sleeping a lot, as well as little, is bad).
According to some experiments, just 40 minutes of midday sleep increases productivity by 34% and alertness by 2 times. I want to try this approach personally (-: Anyway, the lunch break is not spent directly on lunch, and sleeping (at least sitting without thinking about anything) is better than sitting on all sorts of Internet resources.

The authors argue that any activity that engages or builds self-confidence brings joy. This could be reading books, singing, gardening, dancing, photography, sports, museums, even loneliness after a hard day at work.
And they are calling for this activity to be given the status of “holy of holies,” the highest priority. The pleasure of this activity is not only a reward, but important part maintaining long-term effectiveness. Television is intellectual fast food. It gives rest, but does not nourish, and even leads to irritation and depression.

You need to experience joy, challenge, adventure and opportunity. This is helped by self-confidence and self-control.

Michael Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, asked the question: “Where were you when your best ideas? The most common answers: in the bathroom, in bed, while walking in nature, while listening to music. Almost no one answered: “At the workplace.”
Thanks to physical exercise the brain will be better supplied with oxygen. Why not take a walk during your lunch break to oxygenate your brain for the afternoon? Or walk part of the way home.

In addition to physical, emotional and mental energy, there is spiritual energy. She is the one responsible for motivation. It is the fuel for enthusiasm, perseverance, commitment.

To introduce changes into your life, to fill it with energy, you need to move from above the pyramid of energies, from the spiritual level. He is the one responsible for the goal. The desire to achieve a goal can force concentration of attention, effort and action. After all, if there are no strong roots - firm beliefs and deep values - we are easily subject to all sorts of hesitations. Without a strong sense of purpose, we are unable to hold our ground and react defensively.
That is why the goal should be positive, internal and aimed at others, not yourself.
Negative energy is defensive and based on lack of something. It arises as a reaction to a threat (survival and security).
What's wrong with extrinsic motivation? It is based on the fact that we want to get more money, attention, approval, etc. than we currently have. They make up for the deficit, and do not give growth. Internal motivation gives us what we ourselves enjoy.

The authors mention an experiment in which children were rewarded for doing something they themselves liked, and they stopped liking it.
There are wonderful books on the topic of motivation. For example, Maxim Ilyakhov wrote about one of them in one of the issues of the Megaplan newsletter - “Drive” by Daniel Pink.

Quotes

The most precious resource is energy, not time. After a long day of work, we return home completely exhausted and perceive family not as a source of joy and restoration, but as just another problem.
Energy, not time, is the currency of high performance.

We pride ourselves on our ability to multitask, and our willingness to work from dawn to dusk is on display everywhere, like a medal for bravery.

Feeling that there will never be enough time, we try to pack as many things as possible into each day.

The final assessment of our lives is not based on the amount of time we spend on this planet, but on the basis of the energy we invest in this time.

Efficiency, health and happiness are based on skillful energy management.

To be fully energized, we must be physically energized, emotionally engaged, mentally focused, and united in a common spirit to achieve our goals. Working at full capacity begins with a desire to start work earlier in the morning, an equal desire to return home in the evening, and drawing a clear boundary between work and home.

To maintain a powerful rhythm in our lives, we must learn to expend and renew energy rhythmically.
The richest, happiest, and most productive lives are characterized by the ability to fully devote ourselves to the tasks before us, but at the same time periodically disconnect from them and recover.

Energy is simply the ability to do work. Our most fundamental biological need consists of spending and storing energy.

Restoring energy is more than just not working.

Sounds become music through the pauses between notes, just as words are made through the gaps between letters. Without allocating enough time for recovery, we replace our lives with activities that are not always useful and clearly defined.

We live in a world that glorifies work and activity, ignores rest and recovery, and fails to recognize that both are important for high productivity.

To increase the capacity of our batteries, we must expose ourselves to more stress - accompanied by adequate recovery.

The key “muscles” for achieving a positive emotional state are self-confidence, self-control, communication skills and emation. The small supporting muscles are patience, openness, trust and pleasure.

Any activity that brings a feeling of joy, self-realization and self-affirmation is a source of emotional recovery.

Most often, we are told that we will be more productive if we think about work as long and continuously as possible. We are not entitled to any rewards for breaks or any way of working other than keeping our heads down for as long as possible.

The stronger the storm, the more we tend to turn to our habits—and the more important positive rituals become.
The most effective people necessarily have rituals that optimize their ability to move rhythmically from stress to recovery.
The rituals of the annual holidays give us the opportunity to remember important events. More broadly, rituals imbue key moments in our lives with meaning.
We have negative associations with rituals, but this is because we do not choose them ourselves, but rather they are imposed on us. When a ritual feels empty, it loses touch with our values.

When intentions are formulated in a negative form—“I won’t get angry”—they deplete willpower. Not doing requires constant self-control.

Jim Lauer, Tony Schwartz

Life at full capacity. Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness

Preface

Cure for downshifting

Many have been waiting for this book for a long time. They waited, not yet suspecting its existence, title or authors. They waited, leaving the office with a greenish face, drinking liters of coffee in the morning, not finding the strength to take on the next priority task, struggling with depression and despondency.

And finally they waited. There were specialists who gave a convincing, detailed and practical answer to the question of how to manage the level of personal energy. Moreover, in various aspects - physical, intellectual, spiritual... What is especially valuable are practitioners who have trained leading American athletes, FBI special forces and top managers of Fortune 500 companies.

Admit it, reader, when you came across another article about downshifting, the thought probably crossed your mind: “Maybe I should give up everything and go somewhere to Goa or a hut in the Siberian taiga?..” The desire to give up everything and send everyone to any of the short and succinct Russian words is a sure sign of lack of energy.

The problem of energy management is one of the key ones in self-management. One of the participants in the Russian Time Management community once came up with the formula “T1ME” management - from the words “time, information, money, energy”: “time, information, money, energy.” Each of these four resources is critical to personal effectiveness, success and development. And if there is quite a lot of literature on time, money and information management, then in the field of energy management there was a clear gap. Which is finally starting to fill up.

In many ways, of course, one can argue with the authors. Undoubtedly, they, like many Western specialists, tend to absolutize their approach and strictly oppose it to the “old paradigms” (for which it is in fact not a negation at all, but an organic continuation and development). But this in no way detracts from the main advantages of the book - relevance, simplicity, technology.

Read, do everything and fill your Time with Energy!

Gleb Arkhangelsky, CEO"Organization of Time" company, creator of the Russian Time Management community www.improvement.ru

Part one

Full Power Driving Forces

1. At full power

The most precious resource is energy, not time

We have surrounded ourselves with diaries and task lists, handhelds and smartphones, instant messaging systems and “reminders” on computers. We believe this should help us manage our time better. We pride ourselves on our ability to multitask, and we demonstrate our willingness to work from dawn to dusk everywhere, like a medal for bravery. The term “24/7” describes a world where work never ends. We use the words “obsession” and “madness” not to describe madness, but to talk about the past working day. Feeling that there will never be enough time, we try to pack as many things as possible into each day. But even the most effective time management does not guarantee that we will have enough energy to get everything done.

Are you familiar with such situations?

– You are in an important four-hour meeting where not a second is wasted. But the last two hours you spend the rest of your energy only on fruitless attempts to concentrate;

– You carefully planned all 12 hours of the upcoming working day, but by the middle of it you completely lost energy and became impatient and irritable;

– You are going to spend the evening with the children, but are so distracted by thoughts about work that you cannot understand what they want from you;

– You, of course, remember about your wedding anniversary (the computer reminded you of this this afternoon), but you forgot to buy a bouquet, and you no longer have the strength to leave the house to celebrate.

Energy, not time, is the main currency of high efficiency. This idea revolutionized our understanding of what drives high performance over time. She led our clients to reconsider the principles of managing their own lives - both personal and professional. Everything we do, from walking with our children to communicating with colleagues and making important decisions, requires energy. This seems obvious, but it is what we most often forget. Without the right quantity, quality and focus of energy, we endanger any task we undertake.

Each of our thoughts or emotions has energetic consequences - for worse or for better. The final assessment of our lives is not based on the amount of time we spend on this planet, but on the basis of the energy we invest in that time. The main idea of this book is quite simple: effectiveness, health and happiness are based on skillful energy management.

Of course, there are bad bosses, toxic work environments, difficult relationships, and life crises. However, we can control our energy much more completely and deeply than we imagine. The number of hours in a day is constant, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us depends on us. And this is our most valuable resource. The more responsibility we take for the energy we bring into the world, the stronger and more effective we become. And the more we blame other people and circumstances, the more our energy becomes negative and destructive.

If you could wake up tomorrow with more positive and focused energy that you could invest in your work and family, would that improve your life? If you are a leader or manager, would your positive energy change the work environment around you? If your employees could rely on more of your energy, would the relationships between them change and would this have an impact on the quality of your own services?

Leaders are the conductors of organizational energy—in their companies and families. They inspire or demoralize those around them—first by how effectively they manage their own energy, and then by how they mobilize, focus, invest, and renew the collective energy of their employees. Skillful management of energy, individual and collective, makes possible what we call the achievement of full power.

To be fully energized, we must be physically energized, emotionally engaged, mentally focused, and united in spirit to achieve goals that lie beyond our selfish interests. Working at full capacity begins with a desire to start work earlier in the morning, an equal desire to return home in the evening, and drawing a clear line between work and home. It means the ability to immerse yourself in your mission, whether it's solving a creative problem, leading a group of employees, spending time with the people you love, or having fun. Working at full capacity requires a fundamental lifestyle change.

According to a Gallup poll published in 2001, only 25% of employees American companies working at full capacity. About 55% work at half capacity. The remaining 20% are “actively opposed” to work, meaning they are not only unhappy in their professional lives, but also constantly share this feeling with their colleagues. The cost of their presence at work is estimated at trillions of dollars. What's even worse is that the longer people work in an organization, the less energy they devote to it. After the first six months of work, only 38% are working at full capacity, according to Gallup. After three years, this figure drops to 22%. Look at your life from this point of view. How fully are you involved in your work? What about your colleagues?