Where we lose energy at work

Or: How you could plan your time in the office even more efficiently

 

 

 

 

A current Chinese-US-American study delivers new insights:

1. It´s the relation between meetings and individual work that counts and not the accurate number of meetings per day which is stealing more and more energy from us. The more we are sitting in meetings the less we are able to load our batteries. And this we actually need to do particularly as white collar people when we have to solve tasks on our own.
2. Having the level of stress in mind helps keeping the balance. The more a meeting is pressing big responsibility onto you the easier and more relaxed any individual work should be on this specific day. And vice versa.

The researchers conclude: all superiors in any branch are much better off if they anticipate more precisely while planning their schedules and if they avoid stressful meetings AND demanding individual work on one single day under all circumstances.

Zhang/Spreitzer/Qiu, “Meetings and Individual Work During the Workday: Examining Their Interdependent Impact on Knowledge Workers’ Energy “, in: Journal of Applied Psychology, 2023, vol. 108, nr. 10, pg. 1640-1661.

From the practice:

This study confirms what is common sense for decades: who hurries constantly from meeting to meeting misses the time to proceed with the agreements, to delegate or to communicate them to the employees affected. And still: managers are cramming and overloading their calendars with meetings – neglecting that their latent mental and also physical fatigue will surface sooner than they wish.

Smart? No. Avoidable? Yes. Certainly you cannot circumvent tough times when you are member of a board or sliding into a crisis. Exhaustion as a permanent state, though, is a damage to everything and everyone involved: to the case, to the acting personell and to the organisation.