Dr. Briffa - A Great Day at the Office - 10 Simple Strategies for Maximizing Your Energy and Getting the Best Out of Yourself and Your Day

This sort of underperformance saps an organization’s productivity, which inevitably knocks on to revenues and profitability. This can eat into the bottom line, as will the increased costs relating to staff turnover: many organizations have considerable people ‘churn’, and substantial sums can be spent recruiting and training replacements. Healthcare costs associated with wellness issues can be a significant financial drain, too.

All organizations need to justify the resources they put into learning and development. It’s clear, though, that whatever is spent on making tangible improvements to the wellness, effectiveness and sustainability of its people pales into insignificance compared to the cost of not making this investment.

Another major unseen cost of impaired performance and ‘ un wellness’ relates to missed opportunities. When vitality is depleted, fewer calls are made and emails sent, and less creative thinking and planning may go into, say, product development or service improvement. The acquisition and retention of clients and customers can be similarly neglected.

If you pitch for business, not being fully on top of your game or appearing ‘spent’ will do little to inspire confidence in your prospective customers. The inability to be mentally agile and spontaneous in your thinking won’t help matters, either. The winning or losing of work can sometimes come down to very small margins, and if a client does not have complete confidence in those doing the selling, it can cost you (and your business) dearly.

Also, if you are in a position of some seniority, then it’s inevitable that some will look to you as a role model. If you appear ‘bent out of shape’ to your junior colleagues, what sort of message might they take from that? I’ve worked with human resource professionals who tell me they have serious sustainability issues in their organization because increasing numbers of staff look at the sort of lives senior colleagues lead and decide it’s just not for them.

Of course, in the age of the internet, word is out about the organizations that are best avoided if one wants to enjoy a rewarding career and a decent quality of life. If an organization gains a reputation for driving its people ever harder, without giving much back, this can make recruiting top talent that more challenging (and costly).

Of course, the reverse is also true, and I have worked with organizations that use the fact that they provide wellness and performance programmes for their people as a major selling point in the recruiting process. Some organizations even ‘advertise’ these initiatives to their clients. After all, the fact that an organization takes steps to support its people in meaningful ways only helps to convince clients that this is a company with whom they should do business.

Occasionally, some will go a step further and invite existing or prospective clients onto wellness programmes they sponsor. This endeavour provides value and meaning to people in a way that eclipses traditional corporate hospitality and the finest of dining.

One such delegate was the CEO of an international public company, who came as the guest of one of my corporate clients. The usual stresses and strains of running a sprawling, shareholder-owned company, coupled with an insane travel schedule, had led to some fatigue and wellbeing issues, as well as an ever-expanding waistline.

Inspired by what he learned on the programme, he changed some behaviours and found his lost energy was quickly restored. As an added bonus, he shed over 35 pounds in weight without any additional exercise or cutting back at all on business lunches or dinners. In a few short months, his diminishing proportions had required him to twice renew his wardrobe. While costly, he did not begrudge a penny of this additional expense. So changed was he by the experience that he sponsored a wellness programme for his own executive board.

This particular CEO’s experience is not by any means extraordinary, either – it’s typical . Again, all that is usually required to make a tangible difference to someone’s wellbeing and how they feel and function is some small but targeted changes in key areas. Many of the strategies in this book are simple and easy to apply, yet they pack considerable punch.

It was actually some significant personal benefits gained from some simple self-applied strategies that inspired me to shift my focus from conventional medicine to approaches that can transform wellbeing and health.

When I was a young hospital doctor, I had a pressing problem with fatigue. Some sleep deprivation no doubt contributed to this, but even when I snoozed my sleep debt away I felt I lacked the zip someone in his mid-twenties should have. In particular, I would find my energy levels were highly variable, and I was prone to catastrophic ‘energy crises’ at certain times. A major danger time for me was the mid to late afternoon: often at around 4 p.m., I would feel the life drain out of me. Sometimes, I would even struggle to stay awake.

It’s perhaps easy to imagine that these symptoms were the inevitable consequence of the often hectic schedule I worked back then. But, in truth, my unreliable energy and afternoon slumps started many years before I ever set foot on a hospital ward in a professional capacity. When I look back, I remember regularly ‘zoning out’ during lectures and tutorials while at medical school. However, it was when I started work as a doctor that my deflating energy became much more evident and inconvenient.

Seeing a long list of people in an outpatients’ clinic can be challenging at the best of times, but it was made infinitely harder when my overriding desire was to lie down on the examination couch in the corner of the room and go to sleep. Even in the operating theatre, I remember occasionally having to press hard with the heel of one foot on the toes of the other just to spark some life into my wilting body.

One morning, I was doing the necessary checks on an elderly man who was due to have a minor operation later that day. I was struck by the fact that he had an energy and vitality considerably greater than my own, despite being almost fifty years my senior. My curiosity was piqued enough for me to remark: ‘Whatever you’re on, I’d like some of it.’ He responded by telling me that he set great store by eating healthily, as well as regular cycling and keeping up his interests through reading and listening to the radio.

As a junior doctor, I did not feel in need of any more mental stimulation, and lack of activity was not my problem either (I was a keen runner back then), but it did occur to me that maybe my diet might be a bit of a blind spot. In my six years of study at medical school, I recalled not one single lecture on nutrition, and what I knew about this subject would have fitted comfortably on the back of a postage stamp.

Later that evening while out shopping, I found myself drawn to a carousel of books I had spied from outside a health food store. I bought a book on nutrition and read it over the next couple of days. Getting through the book quite quickly was a breeze because what I was reading appeared to make perfect sense to me. I became convinced that although I had previously thought my diet to be perfectly sound, conventional nutritional ‘wisdom’ had led me off in the wrong direction. I resolved to make some immediate changes to my diet.

And I was very glad I did, because the impact this had on me was profound. My sense of wellbeing improved quickly and steadily to the extent that, within two weeks, I felt I had more energy than ever before in my adult life. However, the benefits did not end there, because just a few days into adopting my new diet, the itchy, red rash under my arms and on my torso that had plagued me on and off for many years disappeared (never to return).