Imagine the powerful results you and your team could achieve if you could dial up your energy on a daily basis.

You could…

• accomplish more
• make better decisions
• serve your clients better
• motivate your teammates to achieve more
• find more creative solutions to challenges
• deal with stress more effectively

3 ways to ramp up your energy (3 ways to get more done)

Keep an energy log. For the next two weeks, keep a log of how you’re spending your time. List specific activities, like “quarter-end client update meetings,” “company research visits,” and “compliance review of marketing materials.” For each activity, decide whether it gives you energy (gainer) or decreases your energy (drainer). Then calculate how much time you spend in each type of activity. The gold standard is to spend at least 75% of your time in energy gainers, and no more than 25% in energy drainers.

Commit to energy gainers. Be intentional about how you spend your time, and make a commitment to yourself that you will maximize your energy gainers. Research shows that workers who enjoy 75% or more of their work are three times as likely to be successful. So gainers are good for the bottom line, as well as for your energy.

Deal with your energy drainers. A CFA attendee once commented to us that energy drainers are the greens fees you pay to play the game you love. That’s true, of course, but there’s also no reason to pay too much. Three reliable ways to deal with drainers are:

• Drop the activity (find out if it’s actually still needed. You might be surprised…)
• Delegate it
• Do it differently (different location, different time of day, different process)

Managers: Keep in mind that one person’s drainers might be another person’s gainers. Don’t assume that because you don’t like an activity, that no one else will, either. Trading responsibilities across teams is a no-cost, high payoff strategy to improve energy and performance.

Emotional intelligence is a greater predictor of success than IQ, job experience or education. Dan Goleman, author of the best-selling book “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” defines EQ as self-awareness, social awareness, regulation and managing relationships.

Practice self-regulation to improve performance In a recent blog post, Goleman explained that “when we’re under stress, the brain secretes hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that in the best scenario mobilize us to handle a short-term emergency, but in the worst scenario create an ongoing hazard for performance. In that case:

• Attention narrows to focus on the cause of the stress, not the task at hand.
• Our memory reshuffles to promote thoughts most relevant to what’s stressing us and…
• We fall back on negative learned habits. The brain’s executive centers – our neural circuitry for paying attention, comprehending, and learning – are hijacked by our networks for handling stress.

Self-regulation is a key ability of emotional intelligence. People who can manage their emotions well are able to recover more quickly from stress arousal. This means, at the neural level, quieting the amygdala and other stress circuits, which frees up the capacities of the executive centers. Attention becomes nimble and focused again, the mind flexible, the body relaxed. And a state of relaxed alertness is optimal for performance.