The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (Free Press, 2003)
I must send this book back to the library without a proper review, but it deserves a few comments. After hearing a friend's summary, I had to find out more. I'm afraid I was somewhat disappointed, but I think that was more because my friend's summary was so good, causing me to expect more than was there. I almost, though not quite, would have been as well off with just the summary. I also might have appreciated it more if I had not already read so many books by Stephen Covey, of which this book reminds me very much. I think Covey's books are well worthwhile, and this too, but there wasn't as much new as I had expected.
After that buildup, I'm sure you're expecting me to reproduce what my friend said. Alas, I can't do that, but I will try to cover a couple of points that were especially meaningful to me.
First—and this is a point that needs much more exploring than I can do here—is the power of positive rituals in our lives. The authors studied top-notch tennis players to try to find what separated the greatest from the great. Their conclusion was that they were equally skilled at the game; the difference was in how they used the brief moment when they were not actively playing. The really great players, for example, had specific rituals that they went through between points. What that did for them, the authors discovered, was enable them to rest and recover more than their non-ritualistic opponents. Both had the same amount of time, but somehow the ritual enabled the greater player to get into recovery mode much more quickly; thus he recovered more fully. All this in a few seconds between points, but it made a huge difference.
That idea got me thinking about the importance of ritual in general, in a way I hadn't considered before. I've often felt that the increasing loss of ritual and routine in our casual and hurried society is not good, that we suffer for the loss of regular bedtimes and predictable bedtime procedures, consistent family meals, gestures of respect, holiday customs, liturgy in worship, and so much more. Now my eyes have been opened to a possible reason for my gut feeling.
Flexibility is important too, but ritual is a kind of lubricant that makes life work better, and more efficiently. Automating parts of our lives frees energy for more important work. Certain decisions, once made, can be rested upon and not revisited every night, or every year. Perhaps rituals work like the "muscle memory" of a musician, in which the muscle is so well trained that it works independently of the brain, and thus much faster than if the movement required conscious thought.
I haven't thought it all through yet, but it's definitely an idea worth pursuing.
The second powerfu idea in The Power of Full Engagement is that we are not only overstressed, we are also understressed. High performance requires balance in our lives among the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. For each we have "muscles," either literal or metaphoric, and with that analogy it's easy to see the harm in both overuse and underuse. Most of us, the authors found, can reduce stress in some areas by stressing others a little more. For example, people in high-stress jobs tend to neglect themselves physically, which leads to a downward spiral. Even though they feel they can't possibly make time for exercise or good nutrition, when they do, they find they improve their lives in all areas. We speak much about the need to reduce stress in our lives, but paradoxically that may be best achieved by increasing stress in neglected areas.
I'll close with a quote that doesn't fit with either of the above thoughts, but which I love and want to record.
Extrinsic rewards have actually been shown to undermine intrinsic motivation. Researchers Mark R. Lepper and David R. Green spent time watching nursery school children at play in order to assess what they most enjoyed doing. Next, they began giving each child a reward each time he or she engaged in the preferred activity. [I'm fairly certain this is a reference to the work of the University of Rochester's Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.] Across the board, the children's interest in activiies quickly diminished when they were associated with rewards. In a second study, adults doing puzzles were rewarded each time they were successful in completing them. Like the children, their interest in continuing the activity progressively decreased. Plainly, people can be motivated by material gain and by external praise. The point is that we feel more passion for and derive more pleasure from doing what we freely choose and most enjoy.
