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Are you a machine? The way we work these days, most of us seem to think we are (or should be). We act as if we can switch ourselves on at the start of the day (with a strong coffee), and proceed to multi-task like a computer until it's time to go home, late, for some snatched conversations on the margins of life.
But the way we're working isn't working. At least, not according to the leadership expert Tony Schwartz, in his recently published book with that title. Schwartz argues that we should remember how - and who - we were created to be. We are 'oscillatory' beings, he says, not linear: we work in waves, rhythms, seasons and cycles. None of us can simply keep going.
As such, we must manage energy, not time, he says, by becoming aware of two things: the way we spend our personal energy, and the way we renew it (and by energy, he means 'our capacity to work'). It's a profoundly simple way of charting a course through each day. (He then divides 'energy' into four: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.)
Intriguingly, we have 'awake cycles', just like 'sleep cycles', which last for about 90 minutes. So Schwartz has created rituals for himself, to focus his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy into 'sprints'; after which, he switches focus entirely, in order to restore his energies by going for a walk or a run, or meditating, or shutting his computer off and reading, or by having a proper meal.
In this way, he argues, he oscillates naturally and positively between the 'active' and 'passive' parts of his day, creating a virtuous circle through which he achieves more, by doing less. It's the opposite of what many of us do, which is to keep going no matter what: remaining 'active' by trying, artificially, to stimulate ourselves with caffeine, pills or adrenaline...
After spending too long in a negatively 'active' state, we descend into a passive state of burnout - which is surely not how we'd like to live our lives, nor how we should lead by example, as Christians.
'Take my yoke upon you,' said Jesus. 'For ... my burden is light.' Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it, 'Walk with me, work with me... And learn from me the unforced rhythms of grace.'
How much we have to learn.
By Brian Draper; taken from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity's Connecting with Culture email
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Comments
We must be proactive in our search for "down" time...time to reflect etc.
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