Manage Your Energy Not Your Time

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MANAGING YOURSELF The science of stamina has advanced to the point where individuals, teams, and whole organizations can, with some straightforward interventions, significantly increase their capacity to get things done.

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy

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Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article: 1 Article Summary The Idea in Brief—the core idea The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work 2 Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time 10 Further Reading A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

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MANAGING YOURSELF

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

The Idea in Brief

Organizations are demanding ever-higher performance from their workforces. People are trying to comply, but the usual method—putting in longer hours—has backfired. They’re getting exhausted, disengaged, and sick. And they’re defecting to healthier job environments. Longer days at the office don’t work because time is a limited resource. But personal energy is renewable, say Schwartz and McCarthy. By fostering deceptively simple rituals that help employees regularly replenish their energy, organizations build workers’ physical, emotional, and mental resilience. These rituals include taking brief breaks at specific intervals, expressing appreciation to others, reducing interruptions, and spending more time on activities people do best and enjoy most. Help your employees systematically rejuvenate their personal energy, and the benefits go straight to your bottom line. Take Wachovia Bank: Participants in an energy renewal program produced 13 percentage points greater year-over-year in revenues from loans than a control group did. And they...