The thesis is that managing energy is more important than managing time.

Decades ago I had an audio cassette series: Mental Toughness Training by Jim Loehr, and another author, which my wife and I found quite instructive. Therefore, I read this book with great interest.

The following are some extracts from the book:

Chapter 1
… the casual choices that we make each day, often without thinking much about them, can slowly lead to compromised energy, diminished performance and a progressively disengaged life.
BEAR IN MIND
• Managing energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. Performance is grounded in the skillful management of energy.
• Great leaders are stewards of organizational energy. They begin by effectively managing their own energy. As leaders, they must mobilize, focus, invest, channel, renew and expand the energy of others.
• Full engagement is the energy state that best serves performance.

The Power of Full Engagement
• Principle 1: Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual
• Principle 2: Because energy diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.
• Principle 3: To build capacity we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.
• Principle 4: Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.
• Making change that lasts requires a three-step process: Define Purpose, Face the Truth and Take Action.

Chapter 2
BEAR IN MIND
• Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and recover energy. We call this oscillation.
• The opposite of oscillation is linearity: too much energy expenditure without recovery or too much recovery without sufficient energy expenditure.
• Balancing stress and recovery is critical to high performance both individually and organizationally.
• We must sustain healthy oscillatory rhythms at all four levels of what we term the "performance pyramid": physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
• We build emotional, mental and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity. We must systematically expose ourselves to stress beyond our normal limits, followed by adequate recovery.
• Expanding capacity requires a willingness to endure short-term discomfort in the service of long-term reward.

Chapter 3
BEAR IN MIND
• Physical energy is the fundamental source of fuel in life.
• Physical energy is derived from the interaction between oxygen and glucose.
• The two most important regulators of physical energy are breathing and eating.
• Eating five to six low-calorie, highly nutritious meals a day ensures a steady resupply of glucose and essential nutrients.
• Drinking sixty-four ounces of water daily is a key factor in the effective management of physical energy.
• Most human beings require seven to eight hours of sleep per night to function optimally.
• Going to bed early and waking up early help to optimize performance.
• Interval training is more effective than steady-state exercise in building physical capacity and in teaching people how to re- cover more efficiently.
• To sustain full engagement, we must take a recovery break every 90 to 120 minutes.

Chapter 4
BEAR IN MIND
• In order to perform at our best, we must access pleasant and positive emotions: the experience of enjoyment, challenge, ad- venture and opportunity.
• The key muscles fueling positive emotional energy are self- confidence, self-control, interpersonal effectiveness and empathy.
• Negative emotions serve survival but they are very costly and energy inefficient in the context of performance.
• The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership.
• Access to the emotional muscles that serve performance depends on creating a balance between exercising them regularly and intermittently seeking recovery.

The Dynamics of Full Engagement
• Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling and affirming serves as a source of emotional renewal and recovery.
• Emotional muscles such as patience, empathy and confidence can be strengthened in the same way that we strengthen a bicep or a tricep: pushing past our current limits followed by recovery.

Chapter 5
BEAR IN MIND
• Mental capacity is what we use to organize our lives and focus our attention.
• The mental energy that best serves full engagement is realistic optimism—seeing the world as it is, but always working positively towards a desired outcome or solution.
• The key supportive mental muscles include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk, effective time management and creativity.
• Changing channels mentally permits different parts of the brain to be activated and facilitates creativity.
• Physical exercise stimulates cognitive capacity.
• Maximum mental capacity is derived from a balance between expending and recovering mental energy.
• When we lack the mental muscles we need to perform at our best, we must systematically build capacity by pushing past our comfort zone and then recovering.
• Continuing to challenge the brain serves as a protection against age-related mental decline.

Chapter 6 The Dynamics of Full Engagement
BEAR IN MIND
• Spiritual energy provides the force for action in all dimensions of our lives. It fuels passion, perseverance and commitment.
• Spiritual energy is derived from a connection to deeply held values and a purpose beyond our self-interest.
• Character—the courage and conviction to live by our deepest values—is the key muscle that serves spiritual energy.
• The key supportive spiritual muscles are passion, commitment, integrity and honesty.
• Spiritual energy expenditure and energy renewal are deeply interconnected.
• Spiritual energy is sustained by balancing a commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves with adequate self-care.
• Spiritual work can be demanding and renewing at the same time.
• Expanding spiritual capacity involves pushing past our comfort zone in precisely the same way that expanding physical capacity does.
• The energy of the human spirit can override even severe limitations of physical energy.

Chapter 7 The Training System
DEEPEST VALUES CHECKLIST
Authenticity
Balance
Commitment
Compassion
Concern for others
Courage
Creativity
Empathy
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Family
Freedom
Friendship
Generosity
Genuineness
Happiness
Harmony
Health
Honesty
Humor
Integrity
Kindness
Knowledge
Loyalty
Openness
Perseverance
Respect for others
Responsibility
Security
Serenity
Service to others

BEAR IN MIND
• The search for meaning is among the most powerful and enduring themes in every culture since the origin of recorded history.
• The "hero's journey" is grounded in mobilizing, nurturing and regularly renewing our most precious resource—energy—in the service of what matters most.
• When we lack a strong sense of purpose we are easily buffeted by life's inevitable storms.
• Purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when its source moves from negative to positive, external to internal and self to others.
• A negative source of purpose is defensive and deficit-based.
• Intrinsic motivation grows out of the desire to engage in an activity because we value it for the inherent satisfaction it provides.
• Values fuel the energy on which purpose is built. They hold us to a different standard for managing our energy.
• A virtue is a value in action.
• A vision statement, grounded in values that are meaningful and compelling, creates a blueprint for how to invest our energy.


At this point, my notes are confused - I might have misidentified the chapters from here on out.

Chapter 9 Face the Truth: How Are You Managing Your Energy Now?

The maverick psychiatrist R. D. Laing captured this cleverly in a short poem:

The range of what we think and do
Is limited by what we fail to notice
And because we fail to notice
That we fail to notice
There is little we can do
To change
Until we notice
How failing to notice
Shapes our thoughts and deeds

GATHERING THE FACTS
Facing the truth requires making yourself the object of inquiry—conducting an audit of your life and holding yourself accountable for the energy consequences of your behaviors. To get a quick overview, take out a piece of paper and a pen and set aside at least thirty quiet minutes to answer this series of questions:
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how fully engaged are you in your work? What is standing in your way?
• How closely does your everyday behavior match your values and serve your mission? Where are the disconnects?
• How fully are you embodying your values and vision for your- self at work? At home? In your community? Where you are falling short?
• How effectively are the choices that you are making physically— your habits of nutrition, exercise, sleep and the balance of stress and recovery—serving your key values?
• How consistent with your values is your emotional response in any given situation? Is it different at work than it is at home, and if so, how?
• To what degree do you establish clear priorities and sustain attention to tasks? How consistent are those priorities with what you say is most important to you?

Now take this inquiry one step further, and make it more open- ended. If energy is your most precious resource, let's look at how well you manage it relative to what you say matters most.
• How do your habits of sleeping, eating and exercising affect your available energy?
• How much negative energy do you invest in defense spending— frustration, anger, fear, resentment, envy—as opposed to positive energy utilized in the service of growth and productivity?
• How much energy do you invest in yourself, and how much in others, and how comfortable are you with that balance? How do those closest to you feel about the balance you've struck?
• How much energy do you spend worrying about, feeling frustrated by and trying to influence events beyond your control?
• Finally, how wisely and productively are you investing your energy?

To focus more specifically on how your energy management choices are affecting your performance, the chart that follows lists the most common performance barriers that we encounter with our clients. We call them barriers to full engagement because they impede the optimal flow of energy. Whether it is impatience, or lack of empathy, or poor time management, they are problematic …
The Training System (Page 157 )

BEAR IN MIND
• Facing the truth frees up energy and is the second stage, after defining purpose, in becoming more fully engaged.
• Avoiding the truth consumes great effort and energy.
• At the most basic level, we deceive ourselves in order to protect our self-esteem.
• Some truths are too unbearable to be absorbed all at once. Emotions such as grief are best metabolized in waves.
• Truth without compassion is cruelty—to others and to ourselves.
• What we fail to acknowledge about ourselves we often continue to act out unconsciously.
• A common form of self-deception is assuming that our view represents the truth, when it is really just a lens through which we choose to view the world.
• Facing the truth requires that we retain an ongoing openness to the possibility that we may not be seeing ourselves—or others— accurately.
• It is both a danger and a delusion when we become too identified with any singular view of ourselves. We are all a blend of light and shadow, virtues and vices.
• Accepting our limitations reduces our defensiveness and in- creases the amount of positive energy available to us.
(Page 164)

Chapter 10 The Power of Full Engagement

The bigger the storm,
the more inclined we are
to revert to our survival habits,
and the more important
positive rituals become.

BEAR IN MIND
• Rituals serve as tools through which we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on.
• Rituals create a means by which to translate our values and priorities into action in all dimensions of our life.
• All great performers rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and regulate their behavior.
The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in the fact that every demand on our self control draws on the same limited resource.
• We can offset our limited will and discipline by building rituals that become automatic as quickly as possible, fueled by our deepest values.
• The most important role of rituals is to insure effective balance between energy expenditure and energy renewal in the service of full engagement.
• The more exacting the challenge and the greater the pressure, the more rigorous our rituals need to be.
• Precision and specificity are critical dimensions of building rituals during the thirty- to sixty-day acquisition period.
• Trying not to do something rapidly depletes our limited stores of will and discipline.
• To make lasting change, we must build serial rituals, focusing on one significant change at a time.
(Page 182) ( )

This is an OK book with some great ideas. I think the book could sum up its points into a blog post.

Good book for a skim through.

( )

Much better than expected! ( )

My mind was rather rigid(no more!) and personally, I couldnt tell the difference between emotional, mental and spiritual mindset. I also always thought that tapping into the spiritual means you get more involved with religion but this book taught me otherwise.

The book also contains many other advices which I feel is useful to me because I tend to view life as a marathon, which is not necessarily the right way to think.

I like the various real life examples in the book. ( )

My mind was rather rigid(no more!) and personally, I couldnt tell the difference between emotional, mental and spiritual mindset. I also always thought that tapping into the spiritual means you get more involved with religion but this book taught me otherwise.

The book also contains many other advices which I feel is useful to me because I tend to view life as a marathon, which is not necessarily the right way to think.

I like the various real life examples in the book. ( )