magazine issue 12 2006 / Issue 1

Engagement: A Source of Value, Quality of Life, or Both?

• written by Janina Marguc

So, the first core principle established by the authors is that managing energy rather than time is the key to high performance. For instance, rather than cramming as much as possible into our daily schedule, we should pay attention to the quality of the time we spend on things. Trivial as it sounds, people often ignore this principle, putting efficiency at risk. The second principle contests that full engagement requires drawing energy from four dimensions of resources: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Thus, one should take care of building up strong capacities on each of those dimensions to become fully engaged instead of tripping over the slightest obstacle, becoming sick, depressed, stressed out, or left without a sense of why one is doing what one does. Third, energy capacity is assumed to decrease with overuse and under-use, so it’s not only those who never rest will trade off abilities to focus and invest effort in their personal goals or relationships, but also those who rest too much. They will become inactive and lose drive. The fourth principle is that capacities can be built up by pushing beyond one’s limits in a systematic way, similar to a muscle that can be trained by straining it systematically. And last but not least, the key to full engagement and sustained performance is the use of so called “positive energy rituals”, which are very specific routines implemented in daily life, helping to renew one’s energy periodically and then being able to expend it again. For instance, going for a five to ten-minute walk after an exhausting meeting helps to refresh one’s mind before going back to one’s desk and work more efficiently on the next task. Without such a break, it is difficult to switch to the next task and sustain concentration, because of depletion (see also Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice, 2000).

Easy and simple as this seems, many people don’t actually make use of such rituals, because they think they have too little time to lose or don’t know what they could do during breaks. Even calling a close friend or your grandma for a few minutes takes your mind off work and at the same time shows the person that you care for him or her. In fact, implementing positive rituals is an intriguingly useful thing to do, because after a while they become habits one does not have to think about anymore and that therefore do not require conscious effort anymore. Moreover, the idea of building up capacities by positive rituals goes in line with the assumption from positive psychology that a sound and solid basis of positive feelings, habits, and ways of thinking buffers against negative events and adds to the perceived quality of life. In practice, the training usually starts by assessing a person’s current behavioral patterns, physical health, personal strengths, deepest values and goals, as well as asking him or her about their most disturbing performance barriers at work, like lack of focus, negative thinking, little passion, or dissatisfying personal relationships. Then, the person together with the trainer comes up with a few positive rituals targeted to remove these barriers and build up the appropriate “muscle” to deal with them in a more effective way, as well as a concrete timeframe for when to implement each ritual. Again, making intentions specific or even framing them in an “if…then…” sentence increases the likelihood of actually performing a behavior (Gollwitzer, 1999). Overall, for people who are thinking about changing something in their daily lives because they don’t feel energized or dull, or those who want to make better use of their time, this book might be a fun and motivating companion with plenty of suggestions that are easy to try out. However, it should be noted that the authors use a rather Western approach that might make little sense to people from other cultures, and their claims are based on a mixture of years of practical experience and some scientific findings. For those with a preference for scientifically established “facts”, findings seem to suggest that in terms of improving the quality of life through engagement, the following things are important: First, you need to find things you value, let yourself become immersed in them, and you will value them even more. Second, make sure that you don’t completely neglect aspects of life that are highly important to you, like social relationships or activities you enjoy for intrinsic reasons. And third, allow yourself to renew energy capacities, for example with physical activity or rest.

Ultimately, a lot of empirical work is still necessary not only to reconcile the applied perspective with scientific views, but also to find out what engagement really is, what exactly it does to us, when engagement is useful and when it is necessary to disengage. How people are able to do that is yet another question to address, for if positive things become more valuable to us the more we engage in them, how would we ever try out something new? One thing is for sure: No matter how people arrive at feeling engaged and absorbed – either in their lives or in a specific activity – it is certainly not a bad thing at all.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (2000). Ego depletion: A resource model of volition, self-regulation, and controlled processing. Social Cognition, 18, 130–150.