Remember, you have only one ride through life so give it all you got and enjoy the ride.

—Jon Gordon, author of The Energy Bus

Everything around us is made of energy: light, heat, machines, electricity, sound, and life. Even an object that appears to be solid and still has energy. For the sake of reading this chapter, you don’t have to understand quantum physics or know the difference between joules and watts, but you should appreciate that energy is all around us and is a big part of our existence. Essentially, energy is the capacity of a physical system to do work.

So, when it comes to human performance or the productivity of an organization, the energy of your people is a big deal. Energy is not only something for the individual; it can take a group of people places they never thought possible. But how do you measure human energy? What is the metric to know if you are operating at your full energy potential? Currently there is no scientific universally accepted way to measure a person’s energy level. The only way to measure your energy or the energy of your people is through a subjective view or a personal point of view, for example, “Please rate on a scale of 1–10 . . .” You may be thinking, “My smart watch can!” If this is the case you may want to return your item, because someone sold you a scam.

There is a great saying: “If you don’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” Another management quote from Peter Drucker is “What gets measured gets managed.” Both statements are for the most part true, but they fail with respect to human energy. We can’t really measure it objectively and because of this we do a very poor job managing it, but human energy exists nonetheless. When was the last time you had a company meeting and the leadership or management said, “For the next fiscal year our number one KPI is human energy?” You may be laughing or thinking “Yeah, right,” but what if human energy was the number one KPI? Heck, it sounds like everything else runs on it.

We don’t have the answer to the technology or unit of measure to track human energy, but we will guide you on why it is imperative for the future and how you can manage, sustain, and share it.

For the past five years, we have been working with a health-care company of approximately 11,000 employees. We help improve talent and increase performance through our training platform. They understand that to develop a great culture, you must teach your people how to feel their best. We tackle behavior change, help people find their why, and give the foundational methodology to health and performance. During a recent follow-up course, a woman raised her hand and wanted to share a testimonial to the group. She said,

When I started this training, there was a lot of talk about increasing energy, or feeling better. At the time, I thought I had plenty of energy and was not sure what that meant. After a couple years of incrementally changing habits, I can honestly say I have way more energy than I have ever had and a type of energy I never knew was possible. . . . I truly believe most people don’t know they could have more energy or what that would look or feel like because I was in that same boat.

This was a great example of what such elusive energy can do, but also why it is so mismanaged. Nobody can really see it, most aren’t tracking it, but it is something we all can feel and notice. Over the next several pages, we want you to imagine if you had more energy potential or if your team or company had more energy potential, what would be possible? If people knew what their true human energy was and what their potential could be, we believe more people would do everything they could to tap into this resource.

Manufactured Energy

There is no denying that we are a society that struggles with energy and yet simultaneously craves it. All you have to do is walk through the airport or a gas station. Everywhere you turn, people are trying to manufacture their energy—energy drinks, coffee, soda pop, sugar, motivational quotes, and stimulants. If you don’t feel you have the energy you want or the energy you could have, what are you doing about it? If your organization is not on fire with energy, how are you activating it inside your culture?

Why do we try to manufacture energy, when energy is something that we can naturally harvest for ourselves and our people? How do you create a plan for energy that fuels your passions and desires to live how life is meant to be?

Imagine you have been up all night finalizing the details of the big sales pitch you have tomorrow with Reed, Dune & Associates. You maybe got three good hours of sleep before you awoke to an ear-piercing alarm followed by a bucket of coffee and two pastries from the office lobby. You are greeted by the two partners you are pitching and your team of engineers. It is the biggest pitch of your career; your next promotion relies on it. The positive self-talk is getting old, because you know how fake it is. And even though you prepared like crazy, you still question your internal confidence; you feel energized, but is it real or is it manufactured?

If you rewind the tape, the last four weeks may not have been what you call peak performance. You have caught a cold twice, and you were just told by your doctor that your blood pressure is too high and that you should start your prescription for acid reflux right away. Your sleep apnea is getting worse and you have an appointment with the specialist next week. At work, you are 20 percent behind from projections and you have a customer care issue with a new top customer. You have gained 15 pounds since October of last year, and you don’t feel like you can get ahead.

This is normal, right?

As we have spent our time consulting, speaking, and training people within many industries and many demographics, we find this false sense of energy. What is true energy? What does it feel like and how do you sustain it?

We explained that it is difficult to measure energy, but we have subjectively labeled it. Let’s look at the different energy levels that we see (Figure 6.1)

Energy Levels (1–10 Scale)

• Cooked (0–2). This level of energy is when you just quit; you have nothing more. This is the breaking point. You do not want to get to this point, because this is where nervous breakdowns and severe health issues occur. At this point you physically and mentally cannot go any farther.
• Lethargic (2–5). At this level you have chronic fatigue. Most organizations have many people operating at this level of energy. This is the level that doesn’t happen overnight, but only gets better if you get off the train that brought you here.
• Caffeinated (5–7). There isn’t much description needed; we have all run into these people and are not sure if they are machines that are short circuiting or people who needed one less cappuccino. Caffeinated energy is how many people try to manufacture their energy. When they are not on an upper, they are most likely on snooze.
• Dynamic (7–8.5). Now we are getting places. These are the folks who have control over their energy. They don’t rely on outside factors or influences to produce energy; they have a basic understanding of protecting and building their commodity of energy. They get the job done with enthusiasm and happiness. The only limiting factor is they don’t always sustain it.
• On Fire (8.5–10). We all have been here, but most don’t know how to stay or get back here. This isn’t the external energy that many of us think about; this is the internal energy that fuels us to do everything necessary. When we are on fire and people know it, they feel it, and the work speaks for itself. You have it and have a true understanding of how to repeat it. At this point energy isn’t something that you even have to worry about and you can tap into it when needed—your energy capacity is large.

Energy fuels the performance of your organization, and the great news is it is contagious. The bad news is lack of energy or the wrong energy is contagious as well. The difference between sustained energy and manufactured energy is so drastic that once you develop the sustained on-fire energy you will never want to let it go. Let us show you how to protect your people’s energy and give you tips to enhance it.

Three Tips for Protecting Energy inside Your Organization

Five Keys to Building Your Energy

Bonus: Recharge, Recover, and Reward

The bonus for building energy is something we call white space. In Chapter 8 you will read more about all the ideas for white space, like meditation, massage, listening to soft music. Think of white space as your personal strategy to recharge, recover, and reward yourself. The critical part for maximizing whitespace is finding something that works for you and something that can become a ritual. This bonus is not only a key for building energy, but if you implement white space in your life you will start to see a competitive advantage.

Keep the Juice Flowing

When you think of commodities, what do you think about? Crude oil, coffee, cotton, corn, cattle, natural gas, gold, silver, and sugar? These are currently some of the top traded commodities in the world. Commodities are raw materials or products that are considered the same no matter who produces them. Some people now consider insurance to be a commodity, due to the basic coverage being the same across many different companies and the only thing that differs is the price. We all know that when it comes to commodities, you want to buy low and sell high; nobody likes paying more for something if they don’t have to. The one truth is that all commodities are considered either useful or valuable. The value of these commodities goes up as the demands get higher and supply gets smaller.

Throughout this book, we have made the point that human demands are increasing and human capacity is shrinking. This is the basic equation for a commodity value increase. But when it comes to humans, what are our commodities? What do we produce that is useful and valuable, and how do we pay for it? What are the costs? It’s fun to look at the most expensive commodities by weight. White truffles cost close to $2,000/pound, gold is $1,300/ounce, and diamonds are $13,000/carat. In the 1630s, there was such a demand for tulips that it created tulip mania in the Netherlands. Tulips ended up costing more than houses for a short period of time, but shortly after this boom they had an epic fall that caused a financial crash. It’s fascinating to watch goods that we consider to be useful and valuable, and how over the years their usefulness and value goes up and down.

When it comes to humans, energy is the commodity that is now trading higher and higher and will only continue to get more valuable. Now some might say, time is our most precious commodity. We agree; time is something that all of us have a limited supply of. But when it comes to time, it comes down to two factors: (1) you only get so much time, and (2) your time is more valuable when you have more energy. So, in terms of what you should protect and value, first it is your energy, because when you have this, you end up making better use of your time. The cost of energy is priceless. Everyone has the same amount of time, but not everyone has the same amount of energy. There is a finite amount of time, there isn’t a finite amount of energy. It is not about spending more time doing things; it is the energy you put in to those things.

Energy fuels performance and your life!