Are You Having an Energy Crisis? How Leaders Can Avoid Burnout | #11

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Welcome to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others, the podcast about inspiring leadership.

With me today, as usual, is Rich Horton.

Hi, Rich.

Hi, Dave and Rich.

We've got a really interesting topic today.

Energy management.

How is your energy level right this minute?

It's not too bad.

I slept quite well last night.

I'm feeling okay.

Up for this.

So I got a question for you.

Have you ever felt like there's just not enough hours in the day?

Yeah.

Well, I remember a number of cases being a leader, feeling overwhelmed by emails.

Yeah, I remember there's one role I was in.

I can't remember how many emails I was receiving.

Sometimes it was like 100 or more, maybe more a day.

And that feeling of overwhelm and just thinking, how am I going to get all this done?

Got work to do.

And then it feels like emails are coming in with more tasks to do and feeling completely overwhelmed.

And what's the impact of all of that overwhelm?

So it feels energy draining.

Yeah.

So I feel tired, lethargic, and demotivated.

So what I'd like to explore today, I think there's a really good point about is how it makes you feel, because I think there's a.

Traditionally, people have said, let's talk about time management.

We all need to manage our time better.

The problem with that is there's 24 hours in a day and we can't change that.

What if I told you maybe the problem isn't time management?

Maybe the problem is how we manage our energy.

Yeah, I would certainly agree with that.

Okay, so.

And I would also contend that our energy levels and how well we manage that really determines how effective we are as leaders.

Yes.

So I'd like to explore that with you.

How can we manage our energy levels to sustain optimal levels of performance?

Yeah.

You won't perform at your best every day.

That's just not.

That's not going to happen.

But how do we get optimal performance on a sustained level?

And I think we can look at this in four key dimensions, which you and I have discussed many times before.

So we'll explore the four dimensions of energy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll also look at why traditional time management strategies might be limited.

This shift from managing time to managing energy.

What's the benefits of doing that?

And then some takeaways for people listening.

They can understand the four dimensions of energy they can give themselves a little audit.

Where am I doing well or am I not doing so well?

And then some simple and practical tips and tools to help people just do this a little bit better.

Yeah.

How's that sound for sounds good?

Let's go for it.

So I've got a question for you then.

The myth of time management.

Okay.

Why do you think time management is not the silver bullet that people think it is?

Because often people say, if I could just manage my time better, I'd be so more effective.

Well, I think one reason for that could be every human being in the world only has 24 hours in the day.

Even the President of the United states only has 24 hours in the day.

So trying to cram more into a limited period of time ultimately becomes counterproductive because we've talked about the overwhelm.

And when human beings feel overwhelmed, feel overstretched, that impacts our resilience and that impacts our energy and hence our motivation.

And those things then affect performance.

If you feel demotivated or low energy, that's going to have an impact on performance.

I don't know about you.

I remember back in my days when I was in professional sales and I didn't have a sales support function, so I would be out all day meeting clients, doing what I was doing, and then come home and have to do all the back office stuff as well.

I mean, it's different these days.

The industry's moved on.

But I do remember, and I was a much younger man then, but I do remember working very long hours because I wanted to be productive, I wanted to be successful.

But you're right, if I look back now with the benefit of hindsight, a lot of what I was doing was very counterproductive.

It was demotivating.

And ultimately, even though I was a younger man, it was actually pretty tiring.

Yeah.

And if you study the neuroscience of how as human beings, we can remain focused and remain productive, that wanes.

So in a period of 24 hours, we have a limited amount of energy.

Imagine human being as a battery.

We have a limited amount of energy, so that energy depletes through the day.

And there comes a point at which the laws of diminishing returns come into play.

So, you know, you could be working at 8:00 at night, but you're going to be working on probably very low battery levels.

Now, every human being, their battery size and their battery capacity is different.

Your energy capacity is different from mine.

Yeah.

So some people have more capacity, more capability to work longer hours than others.

But Fundamentally, we all have a limited battery.

I think it also changes over time.

And certainly as you get older, you know, your battery isn't the same as it was, you know, 20 years ago.

Certainly not.

I'm 60 this year.

Year.

And my energy levels are not what they were in my 40s.

No.

And that's natural.

That's going to happen.

So this myth, then, that working longer hours equals better performance, it's actually not true, is it?

No, it's not true.

And I just want to make something very clear at the outset of this podcast.

So what we're not doing is necessarily challenging.

Working long hours.

No, because if people want to work long hours, that's a choice.

But what we're trying to say is to bring conscious choice to those decisions.

So your decisions around where you align your time are aligned to your values, your sense of purpose.

Because if we're working long hours on stuff that doesn't really energise us, that's essentially going to wear us out.

Well, I also think, and we've probably had this in the last 10 years working together, is that you'll have times when you've got a big project on and you just need to put those extra hours in.

So sometimes you might work some late nights, you might work a weekend, you know, whatever it might be.

Because you've got to get stuff done, and that's fine.

Everyone has the prerogative to do that if that's what they want to do.

I think what you're talking about is permanent long hours where it's just a habit that you never break away from, where it becomes damaging.

Yeah.

And the other thing to bear in mind as well is when we're in a state of flow or we're doing something that's innately enjoyable to us, our energy levels naturally increase, and we have more capacity and capability to work longer hours.

So there's two sides to this coin.

Okay, so let's move the conversation on then.

I alluded at the beginning of this podcast that we were going to explore four dimensions of energy management.

Yeah.

So I think we've sort of positioned why we think managing energy is probably more important than managing a time.

So there's four key dimensions.

There's your physical energy, which is kind of your foundational.

Yes.

That's the body.

That's the body.

You have your emotional energy.

Yeah.

That's the emotions.

You have your mental energy, which is how you focus your focus.

Yeah.

And then you have.

And this is the one, maybe, that some people find hard to get Their head around your spiritual energy, which is all about working with meaning and purpose.

Yeah.

And it's connecting what you do to something beyond yourself.

Yeah.

So let's dive into the first one, which is physical energy.

Okay.

So the first one is physical energy, the foundation, as we called it just now.

So, Rich, a question for you.

How does our physical energy impact performance at work?

Now, that might sound like an obvious question, but I'd just like to explore what that means.

So as leaders, we encourage people to think about the whole person.

Yes, we do.

So there is a danger when people think about who they bring to work.

They think there's like a work self that they bring and their home self or their other self is something that they leave behind.

But actually you don't just bring your intellect and your skills and your capacity and capability into work.

You bring your entire person.

Yeah.

So our physiology is intimately linked to our energy and our motivation.

So our physical energy has a direct impact on our performance.

It were.

So this is what's really interesting.

You know this.

Some of the people listening might not know this, but I decided for a load of reasons to adopt fasting, intermittent fasting, as a permanent habit in my life 18 months ago.

One of the real benefits I've noticed of doing that, and there's been a multitude of benefits, but one of the real benefits I've noticed is I have got more energy.

It's allowed me to be more focused, it's allowed me to be more productive.

And that's interesting, isn't it?

Because that's a change in how I manage my physical energy.

Yeah.

So things like sleep, nutrition, exercise, recovery breaks, all of those are the physiological aspects of managing performance.

So nutrition, for example.

I don't personally engage in fasting.

No.

And there's good evidence for fasting.

There's some counter evidences as well.

So people need to make their own choices around that.

But I do think very carefully about when I eat what I eat and the impact of what I eat on my energy levels.

Yeah.

And I think you make a good point there.

We're not preaching here.

We're not saying to people we do this, so you should do this.

That's not what this is about.

Yeah.

Sleep, nutrition, exercise.

There obviously are some sort of best practice guidelines and advice out there, and people probably should follow that best practice.

But there's also, I have to say, a lot of conflicting information.

When I was researching fasting and some related topics, there's a lot of confusing, conflicting information.

Need to do their research.

Yes.

Yeah.

Do your research, but also tune into your body.

I think one of the key messages around this is tune in to the impact of your sleep, your what we call sleep hygiene patterns.

So in other words, what are the habits that you put in place?

Go to sleep and when you're asleep and when you wake up.

So research those and reflect on the impact those sleep hygiene habits have on you personally and tailor then your sleep regime to you.

Same with nutrition.

So I was thinking the other day, I'm sure there's some food that's having an impact on me in a certain way.

So what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks is trying to sort of keep an informal food diary.

Okay.

To try to check what particular food is causing this particular physiological impact on me.

So we're not advocating a particular approach.

What we're saying is be attuned to your body and then building habits and practices to reflect on the impact those things have on your physiology.

And hence we're talking about this in the context of organizations then your performance.

And I think that approach is backed up by really well respected doctors that say, you know, actually healthcare in the UK or around the world, but particularly in the UK now we need to take a much more person centered approach because every human being is different.

That's a really important point here.

We're definitely not preaching to anybody.

Find out what works for you.

I think that's really important.

So let's talk about some practical tips in terms of managing your physical energy.

Are there any sort of top tips you think that we should adopt?

So I've already talked about thinking about sleep, nutrition and exercise and thinking about what's going to work for you.

Using reflective practice to think about the impact.

Those three things which are really core to managing your physical energy, think about the impact they have on you.

The fourth thing I would add to this is this idea of recovery breaks.

I think what I'd like to challenge, and I don't get too preachy with this, but I do want to challenge the oars on myth in the context of how organizations drive their people and also how people drive themselves.

Themselves.

Yeah, because I think there's a myth out there that actually we just need to keep going and if I work through my lunch break and soldier through, I'll get more done.

But the research is very clear that as human beings, in order for the battery, if you think about that analogy of a battery, again, think about your mobile phone.

You know your mobile phone, when it's being used, uses up energy and you Know, to stop using it and then plug it back into the recharging socket, you know, is an important part of managing your battery health.

And that's true for your phone and it's true for us as human beings.

So for example, sports people who perform at a very high level, they consciously build in recovery rhythms and recovery breaks into their training regime.

So they don't feel guilty about taking a recovery break.

Recovery breaks are a foundational part of maintaining high performance.

So I'm not suggesting that every hour you take a half an hour break and you litter your day with, you know, infinite number of tea breaks because, you know, that could have a negative impact.

But to think about what sort of things you can do on a small scale that build in recovery in your day.

And again, I don't want to get preachy about this.

And that's different for every organization, different for every role.

But if you're always on, you're going from one teams meeting to the next, teams meeting, one meeting to the next to the next.

Never taking a break, never taking a time to reflect, you're going to exhaust yourself.

There is some science behind this, I think.

I think it's known as ultradian rhythms.

Where your body can peak and trough throughout the day.

Exactly.

We want to maximize when our body's peak and then maybe rest it when it's at a trough.

Again, I guess those rhythms might be different from every human being.

I don't know.

Well, yes, they definitely will.

And it goes back to my point about tuning into the body.

So when we talk about emotional intelligence, we talk about self awareness and self management and we often think about that just in relation to our cognitive and emotional aspects.

But an emotionally intelligent person will also be tuned into their body.

Absolutely, they will.

Absolutely.

So building times where you're consciously tuned in to your body's rhythms and energy levels and match what you do to match those rhythms as best you can.

Sometimes, you know, the way the working day goes, it means you have to work on something where your energy levels, you know, don't match.

But ideally what you want to do is to match your best time of day with the work that requires the most focus and the most creativity and the most energy.

Okay, Rich, so just to summarize the first point, physical energy, we need to look at our sleep, we need to look at our nutrition, our exercise, and particularly how we build in recovery breaks.

So that's the foundation.

Let's move on to emotional energy, which is the fuel, the fuel for our optimal performance.

So here's a Question for you.

How do your emotions.

How do human emotions influence energy levels?

So again, I'd like to make the connection that we're whole human beings, we don't bring parts of us to work.

So our emotional life, our mood impacts performance.

Yeah, bound to, isn't it?

Yeah, it's bound to.

So if you come into work thinking, I can't be arsed today, that that emotion, that mood, is going to impact your performance.

And I think, going back to your point about emotional intelligence, because I think we can try and convince ourselves that actually I can park my mood when I come through the door to work, but if I think back, and I've probably talked about this before, you know, 18 months, two years ago, when I was going through some really challenging family situations and it was, you know, it was affecting my mood because there was a lot of negative to deal with.

Hand on heart, you cannot keep that out of your working life.

It was too difficult to park.

Yes.

So I think it's very easy to convince ourselves, oh, I just park that stuff at the door and I get it when I go back out again.

I don't think it's as easy as that.

No.

So the important thing to say here is you can manage mood and you can manage emotions, but it's a process and you need to build in ways to manage those things in a healthy way that's proportionate to the impact those emotions are having on you.

So, for example, if you've had grief in the family, the mood you'll feel and the emotions you'll feel will be difficult and time consuming to process and they will have a natural impact on your performance.

Yeah.

So we have a tendency as human beings sometimes is to get caught up in our fight flight freeze response to our environment around us.

And the problem comes is when our emotional response becomes disproportionate to the actual risk, actual stressor that's impacting us.

That's a good point because obviously the example I was talking about was about.

Of grief.

Yes.

Yeah.

But actually, just everyday stressors.

Yes.

Yes.

It's the same thing, isn't it?

It's just everyday stressors.

Yes.

Have the same impact on you.

So what I'm saying is it's perfectly normal for say a grief in a family to have a profound effect on your mood and performance and that takes time and energy to manage.

The danger is when an email flashes into our inbox and that triggers a fight flight freeze response and we tend to overlay over that, say catastrophic thinking.

We think the worst or you know, we get that email from that person, you think, oh, here we go again.

We immediately think the worst.

It's what we call distorted thinking.

So an emotionally intelligent person will recognize when their emotional response is disproportionate to the stress they're actually feeling.

So that fight, flight or freeze, because we all have that, we're all inherently wired to spot danger, things that might impact us in a negative way.

How do we manage that more effectively in the context of stress and emotions?

Manage that more effectively.

So there are a couple of things to say here, and some of them requires a much deeper level response that we can perhaps cover off in a future podcast.

But it's to become aware of the negative self talk that's going on and to be aware, is that negative self talk or is that self talk actually proportionate to what's happening?

Am I processing those emotions in a healthy way that's proportionate to the situation I'm in?

So that's the first thing to do, an awareness around negative self talk.

So in the same way as you said, chewing into your body and listen to your body tune into your mind, listen to the stories and the narratives and everything that's going around your head.

And develop a healthy relationship with your emotions.

Your emotions are simply just signals that sometimes give us a helpful indication of what's happening.

And sometimes our emotional response is essentially an irrational response to what's going on around us.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it's been tuned into that.

And to be aware, these are just warning signals and not to get caught up in the emotional drama of our mind.

We talk about becoming a connected leader.

We've explained in a previous podcast what that concept is about.

But one of the things about being a connected leader is to find balance.

Yes.

It's not being at the extremes all the time.

So surely in this context about managing your energy levels, you need to also tap into positive emotions.

Because if you want to be more resilient, if you want to make better decisions, surely spending some time managing the negative stuff is important, but you need to also balance it with.

Let's tap into some of the positive stuff that's going on around us.

I think that can get clouded out when we're stressed and we're de energized.

Yes, it can do.

And I think our friend and colleague Andy Flack talks about, about sometimes we take notice of the loudest emotion or the loudest thought in our mind and we get caught up with that.

So a connected leader is a person who has the ability to almost, like, stand back, not get caught up in the emotional drama of the mind, and to process those in a healthy way.

So a quick couple of practical tips then, for managing this before we go on to the next dimension.

What would you say are some really useful, effective ways of managing this?

Okay, so we talked about reflective practice.

So reflective practice helps us to think in this particular situation.

These negative thoughts or this negative mood is being triggered.

So then what can I do about it?

So reflective practice is one.

The other thing I would suggest is think about what I would call buying time techniques.

So often, what happens in the context of a highly stressful situation.

Imagine you're in a meeting, somebody's voice is raised, or they're challenging you in a way that you feel threatened by.

Often we get caught up then in our emotional response, response to that.

So a couple of very simple techniques can give us, if you like, buy in time and stop us immediately getting caught up in the emotional drama of the moment.

So, for example, it's very simply deep breathing, square breathing, which we've covered on a previous podcast.

So go back to those podcasts where you simply slow your breathing down, you count.

So you slow your breathing down, you hold your breath, you breathe out, etc.

Etc.

That rebalances the parasympathetic nervous system.

It puts oxygen in your brain, doesn't it?

It puts oxygen in your brain and it gives you space.

Yes.

So the idea of this is to put a gap between stimulus and response.

And I guess another way of doing it is also to reframe the stress as well.

Yes.

So whatever it is that's going through your head, that's negative, is there a way you can reframe that?

Yes.

So, for example, if you think about anxiety and excitement as an emotion, anxiety and excitement as, you know, the emotional event inside your body, they're very similar.

Yeah.

You know, in terms of our physiological response to anxiety and excitement, they feel almost the same.

Same.

So if you're feeling anxious, what you can do is to.

Is to not try to push away the anxiety.

So imagine maybe you're thinking you're a bit anxious about a presentation that you've got to give.

You can reframe that.

To say, actually, this is challenging, but I'm really excited by the challenge that this poses to me.

So you're reframing the emotion into something that's more positive, that reframing has a profound impact on then, your attitude and your mood towards that event.

Yeah, I think that's a really good example because obviously people do sometimes get anxious about speaking in public?

Yes, and that's natural.

But if you're.

I mean, again, a connected leader is somebody who wants to push themselves out their comfort zone and challenge themselves to be the best they can be.

So that's a good reframe.

This is an opportunity now to step out my side, my comfort zone, and help me become the person that I aspire to be.

I'm not saying it's easy, but it's reframing that negative thought process.

It's reframing the negative thought process, but not dismissing or trying to push away the emotion.

So it's still acknowledging and honoring the fact, actually there's that feeling and it's reframing that.

It's how we interpret the emotions that impact, that have the impact on us.

So if we frame the anxiety as a bad thing, that's going to create a negative mood which is going to impact our performance.

If we frame it into excitement or a challenge, it's the same emotion.

You're honoring that you're acknowledging that you're not pushing it away.

So you're processing it in a more positive, healthy way.

Great.

So we've talked about physical energy and how to manage that as the foundation.

We've talked now about emotional energy as the fuel and how to manage that.

Let's move on to mental energy.

How do we focus ourselves?

So here's another question for you, Rich.

How does multitasking kill productivity?

Assuming that it does.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I know you've got some strong views on this, but.

Yeah, I do.

Because if you think about all the stimuli that hit us as human beings in our contemporary world, contemporary society, the way we operate, when you think about our engagement with technology like mobile phones or our laptops, with notifications pinged in Facebook, sort of notifications and scrolling through, and then going from Facebook then to the BBC website to something else.

And so, you know, we're constantly switch tasking and it takes time for when we go from one task to another, it takes at least a couple of seconds, I think.

I can't remember the exact figure.

Something like five seconds for our brain to go from one activity to another.

So actually we can't consciously multitask.

And I use those words very carefully.

We can't consciously multitask.

So what we can do.

Think about driving.

When you think about what we do when we drive, drive, we do a lot of activities simultaneously.

Yeah.

But what we've done is we've trained our brain to do some of those things like changing gear Steering, you know, putting the indicator down.

Those become programmed into our unconscious, if you like.

Yeah.

What we haven't done is trained our brain to do some texting on the phone while we're driving there, have we?

Well, that's true.

So the moment we try to layer conscious activity over the top of each other.

So, for example, let's take your example, example, texting on the phone or talking on the phone, that requires conscious engagement.

Yeah.

So in other words, it's not the unconscious activity like changing gear, which we can just do automatically.

Yeah.

Okay.

In autopilot, if you're trying to focus on the road and trying to text at the same time, your brain can't do the two things together.

What it does, it does what we call switch tasking.

It'll flip between the two.

It'll flit between the two.

So that's.

That's the way we multitask in a roticomp.

People might say, well, I think I can flip between the two.

But the point here is about.

Yeah, and we can.

Yeah, let's be clear.

We can.

But we're talking about performing at an optimal, sustainable level, aren't we?

Yes.

Yeah.

That's not how you achieve optimal performance.

No.

So we can switch tasks, but it takes energy because we're moving from one task to another and our brain has to readjust and our ability to respond quickly and to perform that activity at its highest quality gets compromised.

So you mentioned earlier on Rich, the concept of flow.

Let's just quickly pick that up because I think, and for anybody who's listening to this, doesn't know what we mean by flow.

We mean getting into a state where you do your best work.

Time seems to just fly by.

You just get loads of stuff done.

You really enjoy it.

Yes.

So.

And obviously we would all like to be in that state as often as we can be.

It's not realistic to be in that state all the time.

But actually, if we can achieve that on a fairly regular basis, we will probably reach optimal performance.

So to get into the state of flow, which I know you call deep work, you can't keep switch tasking.

No.

Because the flow state inherently means actually we're deeply focused on something.

The activity stretches us and we're fully immersed.

It's almost like time seems to pass us by.

We're fully immersed in that activity.

So if you like, it's the polar opposite of switch tasking, and I think too much work activity.

If you think about how we operate at work sometimes is we do an email and at the same time a message comes in on our phone.

We'll look at the message on the phone and go back to the email and then practice.

Perhaps someone has mentioned you over here.

Someone has mentioned something about something in the news.

So we flip over to the BBC website and we flip back.

That surely cannot be the best way to manage our energy and to manage our performance because we're switching activities all the time and it's going to be wearing as well.

So the other thing the research suggests is when we switch tasks on a regular basis, it's energy draining.

I'm just thinking back to last year when we were planning this podcast, you know, just to launch the podcast and planning the series and how we were going to do it.

Some of the research work that I did, I purposely wanted to be in a headspace where that's the only thing for maybe a two hour period that I am going to focus on.

So I blocked everything else out.

You close all your apps down, you turn your phone off or, you know, put it away because actually when you do that, you can really get into that topic, whatever task it is you're trying to do.

And you get much better quality thinking.

You probably actually go through that quicker because you're not keeping, as you said, not disconnecting all the time.

And I guess you must have a similar experience where, when you get into deep work and what tips do you use to get yourself into that deep work state?

So a couple of practical, if you like, rituals that I've personally used as best I can.

I've switched off virtually every notification on my laptop.

So no notifications come through on my laptop from emails and stuff like that.

And the same with my phone.

The only notifications I have switched on my phone are WhatsApp in case people need to, you know, contact me in an emergency.

I'll bear that in mind then.

That's why I can never get rid of you anymore.

I have conscious times during the day where I'll go and check my emails and go and check my WhatsApp messages or whatever.

Okay.

So I think we should be intentionally in charge of our technology.

I think too often our technology is in charge of us.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

So think about our notifications.

If we're not careful drive our focus and activity rather than we being intentionally in charge of our focus, focus and activity.

So that's one thing is to be in charge of your notifications.

And the notifications you receive, you choose what they are.

Okay.

And that will be different for every person depending on the role you're in.

If you're in a role where you're on call, you'll need notifications on to receive the call.

Yeah.

So it's different for everyone.

Well, I think this is about habit, isn't it?

So if we want to adopt positive habits, we need to do it intentionally.

It's conscious choice.

And we need to do it over a protracted period because it's not going to be easy to break something which is, let's be honest, mobile phones are addictive.

Yes.

But they are built to be addictive.

So to break that habit is not going to be easy.

We need to sort of persevere.

Yes.

So the other just two practical things very quickly, I would say time block your diary.

It's what I call watertight time zones.

So in other words, think about what your priorities are.

So that would be the other practical tip, is to think at the beginning of each day intentionally.

What are my priorities for the day?

What are my rocks for the day?

If you like, what the important things I need to focus on.

And then plan your best times of day to focus on those things.

It goes back to some of the points we were talking earlier about our ultradian rhythms.

Our ultradian rhythms.

Yeah.

So we've talked about how to focus our energy.

Let's get onto the one that some people might find getting their head around this one could be quite challenging.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What we call spiritual energy.

And this is all tied into working in line with a sense of purpose and meaning and also your core values, your personality, personal core values.

So, rich question for you here.

How does meaning and purpose impact energy?

I just want to make an important caveat here.

We're not talking when we're talking spiritual, we're not talking religious here.

No.

We're talking about being connected to something beyond yourself.

So I think I told a story in one of the previous podcasts and I'll just tell it very quickly again about a study that Daniel Pink quoted about doctors in the US working 80 hours a week.

And as part of that research, they split the groups into two control group and a test group.

And they asked the test group to focus their 80 hour a week working schedule and to take one day and to focus that one day on something that was meaningful to them.

So in other words, if you think about that meaningful to them, it means aligned to their sense of purpose or their values.

Yeah.

What happened?

So after three months, they reviewed the burnout level of the two groups, and what was interesting is the burnout level of the test group.

In other words, those that were given the opportunity to focus on something that was meaningful and purposeful for them, the burnout rate reduced by half.

So if you think about when you're engaged in an activity that's personally aligned to something that's important to you, your core sense of values, or it's connected to an output that you feel excited by, that's going to be energizing and motivating.

I remember I was in a workshop last week and this person who manages production staff on a production line.

So in other words, activity that is quite routine and difficult to think about, how is that going to be motivational for somebody?

He said he'd been in the organization two years and then he was then taken to be shown the finished article of the product that part of their production line was involved in making.

It was a medical device.

Right.

And he said when he saw the output, the final output, this medical device, and he understood the impact that had on the.

The wider community, he said he found that really motivating because he could connect what he was doing to something beyond himself.

Yeah.

And that's quite simple, isn't it?

I mean, yes.

I think people think sometimes that to have a sense of purpose is some highfaluting.

It's not.

It can be actually quite simple things.

Yeah.

And it's what a friend of mine called.

So he was a senior manager in IT up in Scotland as part of the NHS up in Scotland.

And one of the things that he did during COVID when he was managing a team making changes to systems in response to Covid was he talked about what he called the golden thread in his team.

So he regularly reminded his team about the piece of code they were working on and what that was connected to in terms of its final output.

And as a result, the.

The motivation and the energy level of the team was maintained through what was quite a stressful period where they were working lots of hours.

So thinking about the golden thread that runs through the work you do, your team does, and connect that to what the organisation does, and if you can connect it to beyond the organization.

But it can be quite simple.

It's about connecting people, it's about creating context for the activities they're doing and making the activities they're doing inherently meaningful and contextual.

So maybe, I mean, we could do a whole podcast on just finding purpose.

And I think we will.

Yeah.

And that's not really the remit for today, but it might be worth people who are listening to us thinking, okay, yeah, I get where you Two are coming from with this.

How do I start to find purpose?

Maybe just go back through your diary, you know, for the last three months and look at the things that you've done in a work context and just try and get a sense of which of these things that I did was most energizing, which gave me the most level of satisfaction, where was I more motivated?

Because that'll start to point you in the direction direction of where your purpose lies.

And also I think it's a simple mindset shift, but often we focus on what we do and that's important.

So we tick off the tasks that we do.

But in addition to that is to think about the why.

In other words, what's the context and how is what I'm doing right now connected to the outcomes and the outputs that's related to the team or the organization you're working for.

Yeah.

And you probably remember our recent interview with Rhianne where she talked about actually being resilient but using her sense of purpose to get through really tough times.

And we all have to do that.

And I think that's a good point actually is that if you have energy aligned to a sense of purpose, that's really helpful when times are tough.

Yeah, really helpful.

So can we start to wrap up?

Rich?

We've talked about the four dimensions of energy.

Physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, spiritual energy.

We've shared some examples of how this works in practice.

We've also talked about the problem and I think there is a problem in terms of the energy crisis that's going on in leadership.

So I think you talked about there's default to overworking instead of recharging.

That's definitely happening.

Yeah, we need to sort of move past that.

So how do we shift from our life being an energy drain to shifting our life to be an energy gain situation.

How do we do that, Rich?

So just a couple of very simple tips.

First, there's a mindset shift is to think time is finite.

Can do nothing about the fact we've got 24 hours in a day, but energy is renewable.

So shift the focus of how you manage yourself creates more intentional rituals.

So we talked about about body, mind, emotions, all those things become tuned into those, so reflect, become tuned into those and put in place habits then that build energy as opposed to drain energy.

It's about basically developing awareness and then putting in place habits and rituals to create energy as opposed to that drain energy.

So we've talked today about a number of different things and you can't change everything overnight.

Can you.

So maybe a good takeaway from today for anyone listening is do a mini energy audit.

Think about four dimensions that we've talked about.

Maybe pick the one that you think that's the one I need to work on most of all.

Because don't try and do it all at once.

What is it about that pillar that you selected that you can do differently tomorrow, the day after next week and just put some little steps in place.

Do one thing at a time.

Yeah.

And very simply turn off your notifications and block time that is aligned to the best times of day and do your most creative work in those times.

Cool.

So key takeaways Just to recap our conversation today, time is finite, Energy is renewable.

Energy management will always beat time management.

I think most importantly, small intentional rituals create sustainable energy.

Agreed.

So anybody listening to this, here's our call to action for you.

Try one small energy management shift today.

What's that mental shift that Rich was talking about that you're going to make and what's the practical thing you're going to do?

Engage with us on our various platforms, the website, on LinkedIn, on social, other social media.

What have you tried?

What's working for you?

Let us know.

Yeah, we'd love to know what works for you.

So I hope that's been really useful for everybody listening today.

We will be back with another topic next week, but in the meantime, go out and manage that energy well, focus it and enjoy yourself.

So Rich, thanks for your, as ever, your wise words today.

Thank you.

I hope people have found that really, really thought provoking and useful.

See you next week.

See you next week.

Bye.