The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz | Book Summary and PDF

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal teaches us how to manage and improve our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energies in order to perform at our optimum best over long periods of time.

In The Power of Full Engagement PDF summary you will learn:

• The most important thing humans have to give to the world
• The no. 1 predictor of success in humans
• The side-effects of multitasking and working too hard
• The 4 kinds of energy and how they impact humans

Background

Along the course of his career as a chief psychologist and executive director of a large community mental health center system in Colorado, author Jim Loehr became associated with Dr. Joe V. Hill, an exercise physiologist who became a legend in track and field.

Joe asked Jim what he could do, as a psychologist, to help his runners perform better in competition.

Even though Jim’s experience was in working with sick people and not in making the really healthy extraordinary, this matter got him interested, intrigued, and challenged, leading him to an extensive research, until he resigned from his job, citing “a vision to pursue.”

He then moved to Denver and set up a private practice specializing in performance problems of athletes.

Jim went to many different places studying all the top players. Eventually, in 1992, he joined forces with Dr. Jack Groppel, who had a PhD in bioengineering. They decided to start a company specializing in human performance under pressure and set up a center in Orlando, Florida.

In 2008, Johnson & Johnson executives became intrigued and soon purchased the Human Performance Institute, now called the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute. They specialize in helping people thrive in high-stress mission specific venues, from military, sport, medicine to executives-in-training. They launched The Power of Full Engagement in 2003.

Key Ideas

1. Manage Energy Instead of Time

In the work Jim has done with professional athletes and others, it turns out we’ve been having a bad model for looking at human performance. We’ve been fixated on time.

The time we spend on something is not the substrate that makes our life work. It’s the energy we bring to the time that we have.

People had been dosed heavily in time management philosophies, thinking that if we really want to be successful, we’ve got to decide the things that really matter to us. And then we’ve got to invest time in those things, people, and causes we care about to spawn order, growth, and harmony.

For Jim it was a statement that was wrong and yet remain unchallenged for many years in the time management industry. He challenged it.

We get back what we invest our energy on.

• You can be 25 years in a marriage and have nothing by way of a return.
• If you want to grow your bicep, you’ve got to put extraordinary energy into it by lifting weights.
• If you want any dimension of your personality to grow kindness, gratefulness, focus or intensity, you have to invest energy in them.

The real thesis that opened the door of the book: We are reservoirs of potential energy.

The more energy we have and the more focused we deliver it consistent with our values, time lights up.

EXAMPLE: Even when you don’t have a lot of time for your kids, spending around 2 minutes in the morning of writing them a little note of love and thoughtfulness can have a huge impact in your relationship with them.

We measure everything in terms of time, but the most important thing we have as human beings to give to the world is our energy. It’s actually what makes our life work.

2. Full Engagement in the Present

Full engagement – an acquired ability to summon the most precious resource we have, which is our energy into this moment, not in the future nor in the past.

A lot of research in the mindfulness space have already confirmed this most important gift that we have, that gives us a sense of peacefulness and fulfillment.

Why we are actually incapable of multitasking

• The whole central nervous system can’t focus on more than one thing at a time. It is an all or none system.
• We are either focused in the moment or we are not.
• If you have 5 balls in the air at any 1 time, 4 of them are in free fall.
• You can’t drive and talk on the cell phone at the same time, particularly if it calls for any new original response. It gives the sense that you’re never where you are.  

Understand that there are all kinds of demands on your energy

• You’d want to have as much energy as possible.
• Be skilled at focusing that energy on the things that get you the return that you want.
• Determine the best investment you can make with the energy that you have.

The more engaged you are in life, the more productive, healthier, and happier you’ll be.

The more scattered you are, the more you’ll feel like you are missing out in life.

3) The 4 Kinds of Energy

1. Physical Energy

Energy in the human system is the same energy that’s in the universe.

All energy systems have physical and emotional energy, which means they have–

• Quantity
• Quality
• Focus
• Intensity

Where human energy comes from

Human energy comes from the physical body in the union of oxygen and glucose in the cells.

The more energy we have, the greater life and impact we can have.

For entrepreneurs, it will be their energy that actually makes or breaks the business.

The following can help us multiply the energy available to us:

• Getting 6-7 hours of sleep at night
• Eating often and eating light, which stabilizes blood glucose
• Moving throughout the day (fitness) as opposed to staying in one place for endless hours, which compromises our ability to produce energy because oxygen transport is limited and compromised

The supply of physical energy is something that we have a lot of control over. Just like what corporate athletes are doing, they are trained to maximize their energy reserves.

If we don’t have a lot to withdraw from, fatigue starts coming up quickly and we’re in trouble.

Fatigue is the enemy. The amount of demands on entrepreneurs requires them to have endless energy determination and a fierce competitive spirit.

2. Emotional Energy

The emotional side is determined by the valence of energy that one has, whether it’s survival-based or positive/opportunistically-based.

Human beings function much better when they’re seeing the world through positive, optimistic, encouraging, inspirational eyes.

It’s a learned response, considering that —

• It’s easy to become cynical, sarcastic, and jaded.
• We easily see risk everywhere.
• Getting afraid is a tendency.

Having good clarity is important, but at the same time we need to be operating from essentially a positive mindset. This was an important part of the formula the authors put together for high performers.

3. Mental Energy

The focus of energy comes mentally. This is simply an awareness of where our energy is flowing at any moment of consciousness.

In order to have this awareness —

• Try your best to align your energy with what’s really important.
• Be present as much as possible.

The authors do a lot of work mentally to help people create habits that make them catch themselves when they start veering off the path.

4. Spiritual Energy

Intensity (or force) comes from what we call the spiritual dimension. It comes from:

• our values
• sense of mission or purpose in life

Perhaps the most important dimension in human beings is when we ask:

• Why am I here?
• What is this all about?
• How come I am working so hard?

The more we understand our purpose and how that really connects to everything else, the more it creates our sense of intensity and passion.

A Big Awakening

It really isn’t about you — it’s what you can do for others. The authors spent a lot of time to help people decipher that and come to it on their own terms, but that physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy is the basis of full engagement. And you have to have all of those present to be fully engaged.

4) The No. 1 Predictor of Success in Human Beings

The top predictor is drive, sometimes referred to in the scientific community as grit.

Grit is a scientific word that means persistence.

How badly do you want it?

If you have a purpose that doesn’t connect to you very well, or if you just kind of want to make money, it doesn’t really go deep into your soul. You’re going to end up wandering around because it’s hard to continue to manufacture artificial purpose.

We all need to have a sense of purpose that’s strong enough to drive us through storms, failures, and all kinds of tough times.

Every entrepreneur suffers setbacks and a lot of hardships. Not having that kind of purpose or reason makes the suffering almost unbearable. Therefore, drive is a very important part of being successful in any kind of business.

5) 5 Ways for Energy Replenishment and Renewal

1. Oscillation

Every bio potential in the human physiology is oscillatory. Nothing is a straight line except death. If all you do is work and push, you’re going to end up in serious trouble.

Take time off

When you work hard, take time off and recover. When you go to the gym to work on your bicep or triceps, allow 24 hours for them to heal. Then the adaptations will expand their capacity to exert and resist force.

Oscillation is how we were built

As human beings we need to understand that we were not built to work endless hours, mentally, physically, emotionally or spiritually.

We need to work very much like a sprinter: he sprints then takes a break, recalculates, renews the resources, and is then off again on another sprint.

Examples of when to sprint:

• During important meetings
• When you’re with with your family
• In times you’re trying to do important tasks

A great practice to get moving and get more oxygen into the system

You can’t sprint all the time. You have to find times when you can turn off the big engine and, let’s say, do some exercising or be with your family at home. It turns off the emotions and the mental activity.

It could actually be a spiritual practice because you’re trying to have more energy for these things.

This form of oscillation cuts across all 4 dimensions. While you need to do a lot of work and sprinting, that kind of system alone does not do well. It leads into a low-energy state where you just keep grinding it out. There’s no creativity, no genius, no love and joy for what you’re doing and soon you’re actually covering the same ground.

2. Rituals

Sometimes we get our most profound insights in the shower, or when we’re on a run or exercising.

With that, the authors developed a notion of rituals, as this is how athletes develop the ability to manage extraordinary demands in their life.

The notion is that we need to have rituals around the following:

• Eating
• Exercising
• Taking breaks
• Getting up and moving every hour to 1.5 hours  to not more than 2 hours
• Activities that connect us to our respective families such as:
  • Phone calls
  • Making sure we’re home for dinner at a certain time
  • Gratefulness exercise at the dinner table
  • Bedtime stories with the kids

If you don’t ensure that these things are being done every day and if you don’t bring your full engagement to that space —

• Your life gets completely out of whack, because all you do is work, work, work.
• You start losing energy and hope.
• Health-wise, you start making mistakes that soon you’re in serious trouble.
• Mentally, you’re not nearly as focused.
• Emotionally, you’re very fragile.
• Spiritually, you have no idea why you’re doing this.

3. Awareness of Your Energy Level

You have to have some kind of an awareness, whether it’s a timer or a little something that notifies you that you’ve been going for a certain period of time without a break.

EXAMPLE: Oscillate up and down and replenish

If you’re in an office building with a stairway, go up the stairs at a pretty good pace and then go very slowly down, then go back up and come down again. You may do that for 5-10 minutes. When you oscillate up and down, the whole physiology gets refreshed.

During that time, you may hydrate. Take some water and make sure the system is fully hydrated. Otherwise, that compromises energy production very quickly.

An energy bar or a piece of fruit will also help you get energy and stabilize the blood glucose in your body.

The brain cells and neurons are gluttons for glucose. As soon as your glucose level starts to get low, your brain does not function as well. It’s like your brain goes into a fog.

For example, you’re not sure why you’re not thinking clearly that you have to read an e-mail (which you wrote) 3 or 4 times.

This feels like being  in the Window of Circadian Vulnerability, which is between 2 and 4 in the afternoon.

The species was really designed to take some concentrated rest. In some cultures they have decided not to fight it, that’s why they have a siesta.

You can go through that by exercising by making sure you’re moving around a lot and by having your walking meetings for example.

If you constantly violate the system, it’s going to come back to bite you

You’re going to end up paying quite a penalty unintentionally for not recognizing the abuse that you’re giving your body.

EXAMPLE: Sitting all day long behind a computer terminal and never moving. For thousands of years, our ancestors moved between 10 and 15 miles every single day, and that’s how they survived.

The muscles need to be moving.

Even our immune competency is related to movement, so all hormonal systems are related to the oscillatory patterns and movement.

When you cease to move places, the cancer cells migrating around that could be dangerous. Just getting the oxygen to the cells, particularly to the neurons, is hard when you’re sitting on your biggest muscle, so it’s a challenge.

4. A Negative-to-Positive Mindset

When you’re in a lot of stress, pressure, or any negative stuff going on, you’ve got to do something that makes you very positive in order to recover. Options include:

• Humor
• Being around people who lift your spirits
• Changing your mindset

Mentally, the way you get recovery is by turning off those neurons that have been active. By doing this, anything that changes what you were thinking and doing can be a form of relief. Perhaps a crossword puzzle might give you relief from all the stressful stuff you had been doing.

The more you use a different part of your brain, the more you use the creative side of it. It gives the analytic part of your brain a rest. You’ll realize all the more that the brain works so much better when it’s not in the “on” position all the time.

The brain works best when it’s in full ON and then full OFF. It works based on the capacity it has.

5. Reconnecting to Purpose

Spiritual energy is renewed by reconnecting to the values, the people, and the purpose that really drives you.

Here are some of the ways to reconnect:

• If you’re a religious person, it could be a prayer or just any reason why you’re here on this planet.
• Calling a loved one, spending a few minutes with them, and reconnecting to them. This gives you a whole new sense of perspective and renewal.
• You may have passages, poetry, or books that have really helped you. Go to back to read those.
• Talking to your children

You will then realize why you’re working so hard. You basically reconnect to whatever it is that makes your life worth living.

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz is indeed a great book about how to manage your energy in order to make your life work. It’s absolutely loaded with wisdom.

Takeaways

• The most important thing we have as human beings to give to the world is our energy.
• Manage energy instead of time.
• The more engaged you are in life, the happier, healthier, and more productive you’ll be. The more scattered you are and all over the place, you don’t get much return and you’ll feel like you missed out in life.
• The brain works best when it’s in full ON and then full OFF.
• It is your energy that makes or breaks your business and your life.

Related Readings

1. The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin
2. Mini Habits by Stephen Guise
3. The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz