A short talk (YouTube video transcript) about the importance of balancing high-engagement “sprints” with intentional recovery to avoid burnout and live sustainably. The speaker cites Tony Schwartz’s sprint-and-recover idea, describes multiple rhythms (hourly, yearly) and shares personal routines and an upcoming long rest period at a cottage.
Leaders who don't know the power of rest and renewal are not living a sustainable life. One of our favorite authors, Tony Schwartz and the Power of Full Engagement, introduced us to the idea of sprint and recover. And we think it's a great way to live and work. Sprint means I'm engaged. I'm on fully in the game. Recover means I stop, I pause. I honor my natural rhythm for rest and renewal. You see, in our experience, all of us have a natural rhythm. And if we don't honor that, if we push over it, if we fight through it, eventually it leads to burnout in ourselves, it leads to exhaustion. In our teams, it leads to unsustainable work balances in the workplace for our organizations. So what's your rhythm of rest and renewal? I know what mine is. Every hour, I'm wired to work for 45 to 50 minutes. I like to get engaged, to focus, to create, to produce. And then I like to rest. I like to renew my energy. And that takes 10 to 15 minutes. I want to go for a walk. I want to listen to music. I want to just get up and move my body stretch. I want to have a different kind of a conversation with a different person or just sit silently. I also know that in a given year, I have a rest and renewal cycle. I like to go hard, really hard, for about 40 weeks out of the year. And for the other 12 weeks out of the year, I want to shut it down. I want to take time and space to really change up my entire way of being in the world. So in just a few days, I'm going to start one of my favorite pilgrimages of the year. I'm going to get in my car, say goodbye to Chicago, transition through Michigan, all the way up to our cottage in northern Michigan. I'm going to to smell pine trees, feel sand in my toes. I'm going to walk into the deep, scented, wooded smell of our cottage, and I'm going to shut it down. I'll be there with Debbie, my life partner, and for a month and a half, we will simply enjoy the moment. We'll sit, we'll read, we'll play golf, we'll talk with friends. I will rest and I will renew so that when the starting gun goes off again in just a few months, I'll come back out of the chute, ready to go, ready to give my gift to the world. All of us have a sprint and recovery rhythm in an hour, in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year, in a decade. Smart leaders not only know their sprint and recovery, rest and renewal pattern. They honor it. If you don't, you're dangerously close to living a life that isn't sustainable.
