Prepare to Energize

Answer honestly, now: Wouldn't you love to hurt the Energizer Bunny, put that little rodent on the receiving end of a full swing with your nine iron?

I'm calling for this vicious attack on a plush toy not because I'm twisted (much) but because of all that this obnoxious pink marketing tool stands for. Maybe you've never thought about this, but I'm betting that you model your daily work habits after the Energizer Bunny. You think you can keep going and going and going, all day, every day.

You must, in fact, lest your nemeses beat you to the boardroom. More coffee and candy bars! You've gotta work late. More adrenaline, stat!

Guess what: Personal energy doesn't work like that. A man can't stay wired every second of the workday. His energy reserves are not limitless.

He gets tired. He has to rest, recover, renew.

It's easy to see how important rest and recovery are for a tennis player or a middle linebacker. Athletes put so much effort into managing their energy levels- -both physical and mental--because it's critical to their games.

But it's no different for men who lace up work boots or wing tips. "Ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things," says Jim Loehr, Ed.D. "It's a matter of summoning energy systematically."

You may have heard of Jim Loehr--he's a famous sports psychologist. Thirty years ago he began training professional athletes to improve their performance while under intense competitive stress. Working with tennis players at first, he studied their actions on the court. And he had a breakthrough. He discovered that the players who won matches were not necessarily the most skillful or gifted--but they did something different in the 16 to 20 seconds between points in a match. They relaxed. They refocused. They summoned positive thoughts and emotions. They controlled their breathing and posture. And in the process, their heart rates dropped by as many as 20 beats per minute. In effect, they recovered their energy as they walked back to the baseline. Loehr began to see that a player's "up" time was only as good as his downtime.

Eventually Loehr developed a training regimen that sought the right balance of stress and recovery. (Too much of the former and you overtrain; too much of the latter and you undertrain.) More than 200 world-class athletes have been through his center--stars like Chris Evert, Pete Sampras, Monica Seles, Grant Hill, and Jim Harbaugh.

A dozen years ago, Loehr's center, LGE Performance Systems, began taking on its first corporate cases. A typical client was "Roger B." A 42-year-old sales manager, he was on the road every morning by 6:30. He skipped breakfast, ate lunch at his desk, and lived on junk food, coffee, and diet Coke. By 4 p.m., he was irritable and unfocused, so he ate a handful of cookies. He got home late, drank a martini, wolfed down a big dinner, responded to work-related e-mail, and finally went to sleep at around 1 a.m. He never exercised. He was 25 pounds overweight. His blood pressure and cholesterol levels were too high. He suffered from low energy, impatience, and negativity. He lacked passion at work and at home.

Loehr fixed him. He put Roger on the same routines, the same rhythm of stress and recovery, he'd prescribe for any superstar athlete. Then he cowrote a book for people like Roger, called The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time--The Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. It hit bookstores last month.

Roger's story is in the book, along with those of other overworked, unbalanced warriors of the corporate world. Like George, a music executive, who's 50 pounds overweight because he lives on chips and Coke in a desperate attempt to fight fatigue. Or Bruce, who runs marathon 4-hour meetings because he wants to be a "tough boss," even though nobody can stay focused nearly that long.

"It's a horrendous trap to be in," says Loehr. "But that's all they know."

Roger's recovery began with the most fundamental source of fuel: physical strength. He would make time for workouts at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays and at 10 on Saturday mornings. He would eat a high-protein breakfast. He would leave work by 6:30 p.m. He would limit client dinners to two per week. Six months later, he returned to LGE for a checkup; he was 35 percent stronger, he felt more engaged at home and at work, and his cholesterol and body-fat numbers were lower.

Loehr's solutions are no deep, dark secret. Consider the guru's 10 Most Important Physical Energy Management Strategies:

(1) Go to bed early and wake up early.
(2) Go to sleep and wake up consistently at the same times.
(3) Eat five or six small meals daily.
(4) Eat breakfast every day.
(5) Eat a balanced, healthful diet.
(6) Minimize simple sugars.
(7) Drink at least 64 ounces of water a day.
(8) Take breaks every 90 minutes during work.
(9) Get some physical activity daily.
(10) Do at least two cardiovascular interval workouts and two strength-training workouts a week.

While the remedies are simple, it's anything but simple to incorporate them into our daily lives. That's why we have to establish them as routines. "It's the routines of an athlete that define his professionalism," Loehr says. Same with you corporate athletes out there. If it helps, think of routines as "positive energy rituals." Here are three you can plug into your workday immediately.

-Don't begin your day by putting out fires. Address at least one important, long-range challenge before logging on for your e-mail.

-Recover right at your desk, even if it's only by doing a little deep breathing. Breathe in to a count of three, out to a count of six. If deep breathing isn't your thing, read the sports pages. You need to switch to some activity that will turn off the neurons you've been overusing.

-Use air travel to change channels. Make a habit of never working continuously on a plane. Fill flight time with recreational reading--and napping.

To Loehr, energy management will be to the 21st century what time management was to the 20th. You may have all your appointments entered into a BlackBerry--but if you show up lethargic, what good are you?

"What people want from us is our energy," says Loehr. "And yet we don't shepherd it at all. We take it for granted." As a result, most of us are playing the game at half our mental potential.

To see if you're among the underachievers, ask yourself this question every 6 months: Why the hell am I doing this? If you don't know the answer, you're operating without the most significant energy source of all--the energy of the human spirit.