Tony Schwartz on The Way We're Working Isn't Working

The way we're working isn't working. More than 75 percent of employees around the world feel disengaged at work every day. We're in a new kind of energy crisis - and this one is personal

A new book by author Tony Schwartz (founder of The Energy Project), due out later this year will highlight what so many of us already feel in our daily working lives: that we are working very hard but just not getting everything we need to get done.

 

However the good news, according to Schwartz, is it isn’t our fault. He argues employers and employees alike share an unspoken assumption that human beings are capable of operating in the same way computers do: continuously, at ever higher speeds, running multiple programs at the same time.

 

In fact, we're designed to pulse. We're more productive and more satisfied when we move rhythmically between spending and renewing energy to meet our four key needs: physical (sustainability); emotional (security); mental (self-expression) and spiritual (significance).

 

So how can we put this in to practice in our own lives? Is it possible re-think our working - and playing - habits to find a better way of working and a more deeply satisfying way of life. Schwartz thinks we can, and indeed we must.

 

Come along to our 'How To Balance Work with Life' on Wednesday 30 June to find out more. 'The Way We're Working Isn't Working' is published by Simon & Schuster and out on the 8 July 2010.

Comments

[Quentin Magos]

More work done faster, better, more efficiently for less pay equals the economically positive fact that at least someone's profiting from it somewhere...so someone’s the happier for it at least.