Are You Fully Charged?: The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life (Tom Rath, 2015)

I've read enough business literature of late (aka "bizlit") that I've been finding titles through author associations and references made in previous works. This one comes from the former, although it was confirmed with a hearty recommendation at a conference last summer.

Tom Rath has been the darling of the bizlit world lately thanks to the popularity of the revived StrengthFinders (rechristened "StrengthsFinder 2.0", naturally), originally conceived by his grandfather, Donald Clifton. In spite of the similar covers this book doesn't deal much with those attributes. Instead, Rath is look at the things all of us need to be engaged in work.

Not being engaged at work sucks. The purpose of everything seems pointless and life degenerates into staring at a computer screen and doing nothing important until the clock strikes five. For Rath if you want to be engaged at work you need a full charge, and that means (1) meaning, (2) interactions, and (3) energy, which are the tenets around which the book is written. The first is pretty straightforward: know the meaning in each thing you are doing. I think this is a challenge to managers to assign work in a smart way. As I pointed out in the aforementioned conference, there's a big difference between tedious and meaningless work. While the first may sometimes be necessary, the second should be avoided at all costs. Interactions, the next principle, is a big challenge for us introverts, but it's so fundamental to what we do to work things out through how they benefit others, and not necessarily ourselves. Finally, there is energy. After reading this book I don't feel the least bad about taking naps. But more than that, it is important to know that rampant sitting is lethal and most of us eat crap. Address the former through exercise and get those 10,000 steps and for the second one, read labels and eat real food like fruits and nuts and not processed garbage (or as I think Michael Pollan says "food-like substances"). I must admit it is easier said than done and while I'm a big fan of movement, I don't get enough sleep (even with the naps) and don't eat right (though not atrociously, thanks be to God).

Speaking of references to other books for ideas of future reading, there were a number of good suggestions in the back of this book, so I'll probably check some of those out at a later time.

I read my copy through the public library, although it isn't as widely held as one might expect, given the connection to StrengthsFinder. In fact, I had to use our local interlibrary loan service to get it, but everything worked out fine. Look it up on Worldcat and see if there is a library near you that has it!