How many times during a week must you be on top of your game? Five times, ten times, twenty times? In the old days of repetitive work many people went through the week on ‘cruise control’. Nowadays people are often asked to manage complexity, make decisions and find creative solutions to challenges. They are also frequently ‘on stage’ with others – such as colleagues, customers and managers – judging their contribution. People therefore need to manage their energy so that: a) They can continue to be healthy; b) They can do good work; c) They can rise to the occasion when necessary and deliver great work. Let’s explore how you can make this happen.

1) You can plot the times when you need to deliver peak performance.

Start by choose a time period over which you want to deliver top class work. This can be over the duration of a project, a day, a week, a month, a year or whatever. A world class athlete, for example, will start by drawing a road map that ends with competing in the Olympic Final. They then break this down into years, months, weeks and days for competitions. The competitive days are broken down into hours, minutes and, in some cases, seconds. Going back to their overall map, the athlete enters when they must ‘peak’: such as at specific times in competitions. They then plot their training, resting and competitive schedule. Injuries and other events can cause disruptions. If these occur, they go back to the drawing board to create a new road map. Talent, temperament and technique provide the bedrock: but managing energy plays a role in winning gold medals. You may not be an athlete, but it is useful to plot when you must deliver the goods. Start by choosing a time period that fits your particular profession.

Looking at my own work, I plan around the working week. This week, for example, there are several key events when I must be fully alert. These include: a super teams workshop in the North on Tuesday; four mentoring sessions near London on Wednesday, plus a half-hour introductory mentoring telephone call to Italy; two half-day workshops in London on ‘managing by outcomes’ on Thursday, followed by a mentoring session in the evening; and two mentoring sessions near London on Friday. There will also, of course, be quite a lot of travelling. Looking at these events, it is possible to plot the periods of time when I must be fully alert.

You will have your own approach to clarifying such times, so try tackling the exercise on this theme. First, identify the time period you wish to cover. Second, describe the times when you will need to deliver peak performances. Try completing the following sentences.

The time period I want to consider – such as a week, month
or whatever – when I need to deliver peak performances is:

*

The specific times when I need to deliver
peak performances during this period are:

*

*

*

2) You can chart the times when you can re-energise, reflect and rehearse.

Take another look at your schedule. So far you have marked when it is important to hit the heights. These key times may be, for example, when presenting to customers, participating in certain meetings, running performance management sessions or whatever. You will then aim to achieve 10/10. Most of the rest of the time you must perform at 8+/10; something you probably do by employing your professionalism. You must gather energy before setting-out to scale the heights, however, so you will build in time to do three things.

a) Re-energise.

You can regain physical energy by eating the right food and taking time for rest and recover.

b) Reflect.

You can reflect on the situation, take a helicopter view and consider the various options going forward.

c) Rehearse.

You can rehearse the next step – the next moment, minute, hour or whatever – when you must deliver peak performance.

Try tackling the exercise on this theme. Looking at your overall schedule, do two things. First, chart the times when you may be able to recharge your batteries. Second, describe the specific things you can do then to re-energise, reflect or rehearse. Try completing the following sentences.

The specific times when I
can recharge my batteries are:

*

*

*

The specific things I can do then to
re-energise, reflect or rehearse are:

*

*

*

3) You can manage your energy properly to achieve peak performance.

So how do athletes manage their energy? Elizabeth Quinn passes on some tips in her piece called Peaking Requires Planning. Explaining the background, she says:

“Athletes use the term “peaking” to describe being in the absolute best condition (physical, emotional and mental) at a specific time for an event or race. Peaking is not easy to do, and it requires a lot of experience and planning, but there are things that can make peaking much more likely. Start your planning by getting out a calendar and writing down your one or two goal events and work backward to today.”

Elizabeth then suggests going through four stages. The first three are building a fitness base, building aerobic capacity and building speed. She then advises ‘Tapering before the event’, which she explains as:

“The final phase of race preparation is the taper…The final three days before the event can include some light, aerobic exercise, but remember the goal is to rest so you will have peak potential on race day. Training three days before the race never helps you performance. These last few days are also a good time to focus on the mental aspects of performance and visualising a perfect event…You can only stay at this peak fitness level for a short period of time, and you must rest and recover again before a second event. Trying to hold on to such a peak often leads to injury, burn out and over-training syndrome.”

How can you apply this approach in your work? So far you have outlined your schedule: charting when to peak and when to re-energise. You can now pull everything together into, for example, your plan for a week. If necessary, redraw your whole schedule. Describe how to prepare for each day, rehearse – which is the equivalent of ‘tapering’, even if it is only for 10 minutes! – and then deliver great work. Elizabeth believes there are only so many times you can hit such a high level. So make sure you re-energise before launching into the next week of peak performances.

Try tackling the exercise on this theme. Looking back over the topics we have covered, describe how you can manage your energy to do exceptional work. Try completing the following sentence.

The specific things I can do to manage my energy
properly so that I can deliver peak performances are:

*

*

*

During the last decade many organisations have talked about enabling people to become ‘corporate athletes’. Some have taken it seriously. They are judging people by their results, rather than by hours spent on pointless internal meetings or travelling. Such organisations are reaping the benefits. They recognise that managing energy is one of the keys to delivering great performances.