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 the 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 a variety of situations - from dancing at an Odessa disco with his “brothers” 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 at the highest 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 difficult issues, both in business and in his 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 biking and skiing (another of his hobbies) make him a better entrepreneur and a better 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 contains the best training methods for world-class athletes and applies them to the lifestyle of a businessman. 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 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 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 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.

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

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Title: Life at Full Power. Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness
Author: Tony Schwartz, Jim Lauer
Year: 2010
Genre: Foreign business literature, Foreign applied and popular science literature, Health, Popular about business

About the book “Life at Full Power. Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness." Tony Schwartz, Jim Lauer

How to achieve greater efficiency and productivity in life? Many are sure that this is almost impossible, especially if you work from morning to night and perform household duties. There is simply no time for rest, not to mention the desire to improve oneself, read books, and play sports. But in fact, there is a way out, you just need to have the right approach to all the things you do every day, and to what you plan to do in the future.

The book “Life at Full Power. Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness." Tony Schwartz, Jim Lauer will tell you how to accumulate the very energy that will help you not only work more productively, but also be able to take care of yourself.

The point is to be able to rest properly. You work, waste your energy, and will no longer be able to do anything else normally. Today, people are distracted by other things thanks to social networks and other entertainment sites. You also waste time and energy on this, although they could be directed in a different direction. That is, you get tired both from work and from being constantly distracted.

You cannot live a full and vibrant life if you are emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted. Strength can and should be accumulated, but this must be done gradually. Tony Schwartz and Jim Lauer will talk about all the stages in their book “Life at Full Power. Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness.”

The authors accurately noted that today people are indeed very tired and exhausted. Unfortunately, such rules are dictated by the modern world with its crazy rhythm. If you want to survive, run forward as quickly as possible. And it is not surprising that many simply cannot reach the heights that they so dream of. I just don't have enough strength. Tony Schwartz and Jim Lauer offer their own methodology for distributing time, dividing it into work and rest, as well as a way to accumulate energy so that later they can spend it on something really important. In addition, the book touches on such an issue as the “comfort zone,” which is also very relevant today.

The book “Life at Full Power. Energy Management is the Key to High Performance, Health and Happiness”, although not large, has the useful information you need to realize that you need to change something in your life. Moreover, you will find here ways to solve your problems, you will be able to manage your time more effectively, relax, enjoy life, do the things you love, and at the same time work more efficiently and productively. And all this is really possible, it is only important to treat your life and yourself correctly.

On our website about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book “Life at Full Power. Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness" by Tony Schwartz, Jim Lauer in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

Quotes from the book “Life at Full Power. Energy management is the key to high performance, health and happiness." Tony Schwartz, Jim Lauer

Simply put, the key muscles for achieving a positive emotional state are self-confidence, self-control, communication skills and empathy. The small, supportive muscles are patience, openness, trust and pleasure.

The key “muscles” that support optimal mental energy are problem-solving, visualization, positive verbalization, time management, and creativity.

Rituals are a tool for effectively managing energy to achieve our mission.
– Rituals are a means to transform our goals and priorities into action in all areas of our lives.
– All outstanding people rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and regulate their behavior.
– The limitations of conscious will and discipline are based on the fact that all actions requiring our self-control appeal to a very limited resource.
– We can compensate for our limited will and discipline by building rituals that quickly become automatic and based on our deepest values.
– The most important rule in creating rituals is to ensure an effective balance between energy expenditure and energy recovery in order to achieve full power.
– The greater the pressure on us and the greater the challenge thrown at us, the more strict the rituals should be.
– Accuracy and specificity are the main characteristics when creating rituals in the initial period of one to two months.
– Trying not to do something quickly depletes our limited reserves of will and discipline.
To make changes that will produce long-term results, we must build “serial rituals”, focusing on only one significant change at a time.

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 placed on ordinary people exceeded 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.

To give a clear example, 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.

1. define a goal
2. face it,
3. 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".
So if a company implements a culture of continuous work and expects employees to “volunteer” to work evenings and weekends, then it 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. Enjoying this activity is not only a reward, but an important part of maintaining long-term performance. 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 came to you?” 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 is to expend and store 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 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.

Current page: 1 (book has 11 pages in total) [available reading passage: 2 pages]

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, you 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, get everything done and fill your Time with Energy!

Gleb Arkhangelsky, General Director of the Time Organization 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 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 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 results published in 2001 by Gallup 1
American Institute of Public Opinion, founded in 1935. Here and further, where not otherwise noted, notes are given by the editor.

Survey, only 25% of employees in US companies are 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?

Living laboratory

The idea of ​​the importance of energy first came to us in the “living laboratory” of professional sports. For thirty years, our organization has worked with world-class athletes to determine what allows some of them to perform at their best over the long term under constant competitive pressure. Our first clients were tennis players - more than eighty of the world's best players such as Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, Arancha Sanchez-Vicario, Sergi Brugueira, Gabriela Sabatini and Monica Seles.

They usually came to us at the moments of the most intense struggle, and our intervention often led to the most serious results. After our work, Arancha Sanchez-Vicario won the U.S. for the first time. Open 2
The US Open, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments.

And she became first in the world rankings - both in singles and doubles. Sabatini won her only U.S. Open. Brugueira rose from world No. 79 to the top ten and won the French Open twice. 3
The French Open, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments.

Then athletes from other sports began to come to us - golfers Mark O'Mira and Ernie Els, hockey players Eric Lindros and Mike Richter, boxer Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, basketball players Nick Anderson and Grant Hill, speed skater Dan Jensen, who won the only his life's Olympic gold medal only after two years of intensive training with us.

What made our method unique was that we did not spend a second studying the technical or tactical skills of our players. The common cliché is that if you find a talented person and teach him the right skills, he will produce the best results. But in practice this happens very rarely. It turns out that energy is the unobvious factor that allows you to “ignite” talent to its full potential. We never wondered how Seles hits the ball on a serve, how Lindros flicks the puck, or how Hill shoots free throws. They were all extremely gifted before they came to us. Instead, we focused on helping them learn to manage their own energy to accomplish whatever task they were faced with.

Athletes have proven to be very demanding experimental subjects. They were not at all satisfied with “uplifting” conversations or sophisticated theories. They were interested in measurable and lasting results - the number of aces 4
In tennis terminology, a point won by one hit. ** Hitting the ball into the opposing team's scoring zone.

From the first serve, percentage of free throws, victories in tournaments. They wanted to be sure they could make the eighteenth hole, make a last-second three-pointer, or score a touchdown in the Super Bowl. Everything else is chatter. If we could not help athletes achieve the results they need, our work in this area would not be measured in decades. We have learned to be responsible for the numbers.

As word of our success in sports began to spread, we began to receive numerous offers to “export” our model to other areas of human activity that require high impact. We worked with FBI hostage teams, marshals, and emergency medical technicians. Nowadays, the bulk of our work is related to business - with CEOs and entrepreneurs, managers and salespeople, and more recently, also with teachers and officials, lawyers and medical students. Our corporate clients include Fortune 500 companies such as PepsiCo, Estee Lauder, Pfizer, Brisol-Myers Squibb, Hyatt Corporation and many others.

As we worked in these new fields, we discovered something completely unexpected: the demands placed on ordinary people doing ordinary jobs far exceeded the demands placed on any professional athlete we had ever worked with. How is this possible?

If you take a closer look, this is not surprising. Professional athletes typically spend 90% of their time training so they can compete the remaining 10% of the time. Their whole life is organized around receiving, retaining and renewing the energy needed for a short period of competition. They build very precise procedures for managing their energy in all areas of life - eating and sleeping, studying and resting, charging and discharging emotions, concentrating and psychologically preparing for the tasks they set for themselves. Ordinary people, not accustomed to spending time on such detailed preparation, must work to the maximum of their capabilities for eight, ten, and sometimes twelve hours a day.

In addition, most professional athletes have a long break between seasons. After months of competing under extreme pressure, a long off season gives athletes the time they need to rest, heal, renew and grow. But for ordinary people, the “off-season” is limited to a few weeks of vacation per year. And even these weeks they rarely manage to fully devote to rest and recovery - most read and respond to email, exchange SMS and think about work.

Finally, the average career of professional athletes lasts between five and fifteen years. If they manage to organize their finances wisely during this time, they will have enough earned money for the rest of their lives. Very few of them are forced to look for a new job. Ordinary people work for forty to fifty years without significant breaks.

Given these facts, what allows you to work at the highest level of productivity - without sacrificing health, happiness and color in life?

You must work at full capacity. The answer to the challenge of peak performance is to effectively manage all of our energies to achieve our goals. There are four key types of energy. They are at the heart of the change process that we will describe in the following pages, and they are critical to creating the ability to live and work effectively, efficiently and to the fullest.

Principle #1

Full power requires tapping into four interconnected sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Man is a complex energy system; To use full power, you need to use all energy sources. You cannot rely on just one of them, and you cannot do without any of them, since they are all deeply connected to each other.

Energy is the common denominator in all aspects of our lives. Physical energy is measured in quantitative terms (high or low), while emotional energy is measured in qualitative terms (positive or negative). These are the two main sources of energy because without enough fuel, no task will be completed. In the diagram we have depicted the change in energy from low to high and from negative to positive. The more “toxic” and unpleasant the energy, the worse it helps to achieve high results - and vice versa.

The importance of full power is most obvious in situations where the consequences of low power can be fatal. Imagine that you are about to have heart surgery. Which of these energy sectors should your surgeon be in? Would you want him to walk into the operating room angry, anxious, and upset? Tired, depressed and exhausted? Or uncollected, complacent and relaxed? Surely you would like him to be energetic, confident and cheerful.

Imagine that every time you get involved in a scandal, do a sloppy job, or can't concentrate on your work, you are putting someone else's life in danger. Very soon you will become more thoughtful about your energy. We must be responsible for how we manage our energy, and this is what we should be rewarded for. And we must learn to manage all types of our energy with equal responsibility: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Principle #2

Since our energy capacity is reduced by both overuse and underuse of energy, we must maintain a balance between energy expenditure and energy storage.

We very rarely think about how much energy we spend, believing that we have endless reserves at our disposal. In fact, if the need for energy grows, then its reserves begin to gradually deplete - especially since the “capacity” of energy sources decreases with age.

By training our ability to manage all types of energy, we can significantly slow down the decline in the physical and mental areas, and even achieve growth in the emotional and spiritual areas. And vice versa - living life “linearly”, that is, spending much more energy than we can store, or storing much more than we can spend, we end up with poor health, chronic fatigue, atrophy, loss of taste for life and even premature death. Unfortunately, the need for restoration is too often seen as a sign of weakness rather than as an important aspect of long-term high performance, and we end up paying little attention to renewing and expanding our energy reserves—both individual and collective.

To maintain a powerful rhythm in our lives, we must learn to expend and renew energy rhythmically. The richest, happiest, most productive lives are characterized by the ability to fully devote ourselves to solving the problems facing us, but at the same time periodically completely disconnect from them and recover. But most of us live our lives as if we were running an endless marathon, pushing ourselves far beyond healthy limits. We maintain a constant level of mental and emotional activity, but we only spend these types of energy without thinking about their restoration. On this path we will face, albeit slow, but inexorable wear and tear.

Think about how many long-distance runners look: tired, exhausted, with dull eyes and sunken cheeks. And what sprinters look like: powerful, agile, impatient - energy literally splashes out of them. The explanation for this is simple. Regardless of how much energy they have to expend, they can already see the finish line from the starting point. We must learn to treat our lives as a series of sprints - giving it our all on the track and completely forgetting about it outside the stadium.

Principle #3

To increase the capacity of our energy reserves, we must go beyond the usual norms of its expenditure, that is, train as systematically as the best athletes do.

Stress is not the enemy of our lives. Paradoxically, it is precisely this that is the basis of growth and development. For example, to increase muscle strength, we must systematically load (that is, actually stress) them beyond their normal capabilities. This leads to microscopic tears in the muscle fiber. By the end of the workout, you should feel tired and your functionality will be exhausted. But give your muscles 24 to 48 hours of rest, and they will become stronger and better prepared to perform exercises you previously couldn't do. This phenomenon is widely used to increase physical strength, but it also applies to the development of any of our other “muscles” that use other types of energy: from empathy and patience to focus and creativity, and further to integrity and commitment. This idea both simplifies and revolutionizes the way we overcome the barriers that stand in our way.

We build reserves of emotional, mental, and spiritual energy just as we build reserves of physical strength. We develop all our qualities by expending the right types of energy outside our normal boundaries, and then recovering. If you train muscles without reaching the point of fatigue, that is, without going beyond their capabilities, they will not develop, and with age they will also lose strength. What limits us in developing any kind of “muscle” is the fact that it is difficult to overcome ourselves and not retreat at the slightest sign of discomfort. To meet growing demands, we need to systematically develop and strengthen the “muscles” in those areas in which our reserves of power are insufficient. Any form of stress that causes discomfort provides an opportunity to increase the capacity of our reserves - physical, mental, emotional or spiritual - provided that the stress is accompanied by adequate recovery. As Nietzsche put it: “What does not kill us makes us stronger.” Since the requirements for “corporate athletes” exceed the requirements for professional athletes, the former must learn to train even more systematically than the latter.

Principle #4

Positive energy rituals—that is, precise energy management procedures—are the key to achieving full power and ongoing high performance.

Change is difficult. We are slaves to our habits. Most of what we do is automatic and not under conscious control. Most likely, today we will do the same as yesterday. All attempts at change run into the impossibility of long-term repetition of conscious efforts. Willpower and discipline are much more limited resources than many realize. If you have to think through an action every time you do it, you probably won't be able to do it for very long. The habitual way of acting has a powerful magnetic effect on us.

A positive ritual is a behavior based on deeply internalized values ​​that becomes habitual over time. We use the word “ritual” for a reason. We want to emphasize the importance of clearly defined, structured behavior. Unlike willpower and discipline, which force you to push yourself towards a certain behavior, ritual itself pulls you. Let's take something simple, like brushing your teeth. Usually you don't even have to remind yourself to brush your teeth. Brushing your teeth itself “attracts” you to itself, because it has a clear and well-known value for your health. You brush your teeth on autopilot, without any conscious effort or intention. The power of rituals is that they ensure minimal use of conscious effort, leaving us free to focus our energy on strategic avenues of creativity and development.

Look at any part of your life in which you are effective. You're sure to discover a few habits that help you achieve this. If you consistently eat healthy, then most likely you are simply used to buying healthy food in stores and ordering healthy dishes at restaurants. If you are in good shape, then you probably have dedicated days and times to go to the gym or stadium. If you have success in sales, it means that you have a well-established ritual of preparing for conversations with clients and have rehearsed the words that you will say to yourself in case of refusal. If you manage your employees effectively, it's likely because you've developed a communication style that makes them feel empowered rather than threatening. If you have good family relationships, it is because you spend time with your spouse or children in accordance with established and mutually acceptable rituals. If you manage to maintain high positive energy levels despite the extreme demands of your job, you almost certainly have proven ways to pause and recharge. The most effective way we have found to manage energy and bring it to its full potential is to create positive rituals.

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

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