Are you Fully Charged? The 3 Keys To Energizing Your Work And Life by Tom Rath, introduces people to new strategies to increase their productivity and overall well-being at work and in their lives.
STRATEGY #1: Find meaning in helping people
Through his research, Tom Rath found that bringing meaning is detrimental to organizations and to self. Deriving meaningfulness from money and power is the fastest way to sabotage yourself, is not sustainable because it opens up door to comparison, damages your well-being and relationships.
In order to create meaningfulness, to strengthen your relationships and increase your performance at work:
- Stop seeking happiness and stop putting your well-being first all the time. Sometimes, put people’s need before your own.
- Create meaningful interactions to protect yourself from negative thoughts, depressions.
- Contribute to a collective good to make a difference.
- Dedicate extra hours to meaningful activities.
- Avoid doing what people expect of you but explore different areas of interests.
- Focus on the impact of your work, on internal motives rather than external motives. Find ways to remind yourself of your internal motivators daily.
- Understand your contribution to your organization, your efforts to work. Your efforts can be attached to a larger purpose afterwards.
- Identify the right work to that it is not only a monetary transaction and that you are emotionally engaged, have better interactions with your colleagues, be more productive. Financial security contribute to happiness.
- Assess your strengths and weaknesses and apply them to the organization, fill a specific need. Work on your talents to grow and be great at something
- Say no to distractions. Being busy is not synonymous to importance or progress.
STRATEGY #2: Create positive interactions
To thrive in the workplace and to better your work performance, it is important to intentionally create positive interactions:
- Assume the best of a situation and of an interaction and learn to convert a negative into a positive.
- In performance review, spend more time discussing strengths than weaknesses.
- Use positive words to build on relationships. Creating strong bonds with coworkers fosters creativity and increase effectiveness at work, takes a year to solidify. When confronting or in a difficult situation, preface with positive words.
- Take small steps and appreciate small wins. For example, make someone smile before making them laugh.
- Pay attention to people so that they don’t assume the worst about you.
- Ask questions to initiate a conversation, to engage a debate, to build influence, to negotiate.
- Share embarrassing moments and mistakes to instill trust and to remain humble.
- Mirror someone else’s behavior to better the conversation.
- Don’t use your phone when spending time with people, show that you value the conversation, their time and openness.
- Create enjoyable experiences with loved ones to create long-lasting positive memories. We tend to forget the purchase of material goods over time even though we felt good while buying it. Create experiences instead and treasure the memory.
- Spend money on people you care about. Seeing them happy will instantly make you happy.
- Plan experiences ahead and share the details with people around you so you can look forward to something and increase your well-being.
- To motivate people to work for you, have them do something for someone else or for the benefit of the team.
- Be sincere, help someone see their potential and develop their self-confidence.
STRATEGY #3: Take care of yourself
Leaders are the first to arrive early at work and leave late, to sleep less hours. they claim they are busy but their lifestyle is unsustainable and will lead to burnout.
- Watch what you eat. Acquiring the right food has nothing to do with calories count but everything with quality. Therefore, eat healthy, avoid fried foods, carbohydrates, sugar and eat more vegetables to boost your energy and to positively influence your mood.
- The human body isn’t built for a sedentary lifestyle. Exercise, avoid sitting down and add as much exercise and movements a day as possible, especially in the morning.
- Sleep 20 minutes through the day and sleep longer at night to increase your ability to think, your productivity, health and well-being. Lack of sleep reduces alertness and awareness.
- Don’t work on a same activity for too long, it will diminish your performance. Take multiple breaks.
- To improve sleep quality, close the light of your electronic devices, cancel out noises with white noise or noise cancelling devices.
- Good lifestyle habits create a buffer against stressful situations and slow down the aging process.
- Take a minute before responding to a negative situation.
- View stressful situations as challenges.
Review
Are you Fully Charged? The 3 Keys To Energizing Your Work And Life, by Tom Rath, is an easy to read self-help book, a practical guide to life and social interactions. It teaches us how to increase our well-being and make the mots of a bad experience.
Tom Rath has been battling an illness his whole life and as a consequence has the ability to put a positive spin on any situation.
Favorite quote(s)
I have discovered that creating meaning is central not just to my existence but to that of every organization in society today. Businesses, schools, governments, families, and faith-based groups are being challenged more than ever to show how they make a meaningful contribution to society. The essential thing people want in a job today is work that will allow them to create meaning for others.
Work should be more than a necessary means to an end.
The best experiences create memories and well-being that last for years to come.
Ratings 3/5
Author
Purchase
Subscribe to Journey To Leadership
Journey To Leadership is the premier source for everything Leadership. It focuses on career advice, leadership and character development. Get the latest here!
- 8 Ways Great Leaders Deal With Disappointment - 18 April 2024
- Quote Of The Week #344 - 15 April 2024
- 12 Things You Will Learn After Using Monday.com - 11 April 2024
First point under strategy #2–is that what you meant, or did you mean negative to a positive?
Yes Indeed! Good looking out!