Back to business: how to maintain energy when returning to work
September has something of January about it. We return from the holidays with the feeling that a new cycle is beginning. We review priorities, make plans, resume projects and, for a few days, believe that this time it will be different. The problem is that meetings, emails, urgent matters, overloaded schedules and that strange ability organisations have to turn renewed energy into accumulated tiredness quickly return.
That is why, perhaps the most important question in this back to business is not how to return to work, but how to return without immediately going back to the routines that exhausted us before the holidays.
Energy has become one of the most critical resources in contemporary organisations. And I am not referring only to physical energy. I am referring to the ability to maintain attention, clarity, motivation and emotional availability over time. The data helps us understand the problem. According to Gallup, only 20% of employees worldwide are truly engaged in their work and 40% said they had experienced significant levels of stress the previous day. The World Health Organization, in turn, points out that excessive workloads, low control over work and inadequate work environments are risk factors for mental health.
In other words, holidays can help people recover, but they are unlikely to correct dysfunctional work systems.
Image: skillfine
Do not waste the energy you have recovered
One of the most common mistakes when returning is trying to recover, in one week, everything that was put on hold for three or four. The schedule fills up, meetings multiply and we return to the familiar culture of urgency. It is precisely here that leaders and professionals should do the opposite: start by choosing, rather than simply executing. Ask: what is really a priority until the end of the year? What can we stop doing? Which meetings no longer add value? Which tasks can be simplified, automated or delegated?
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index showed a particularly revealing reality: during working hours, many professionals are interrupted, on average, every two minutes by meetings, emails or messages. Microsoft itself describes the phenomenon as a kind of capacity gap**: demands are increasing faster than the time and energy available to respond to them**. We do not necessarily need to work more. We need to reduce the noise in order to work better.
Managing energy, not just time
For decades, we have been taught to manage time. But two hours of work do not necessarily have the same value. There are moments when we have greater cognitive capacity, others when we are more creative, and others when we simply need to recover. Modern performance management should therefore combine time, energy and attention. Protecting periods of deep concentration, introducing short breaks, avoiding consecutive meetings for hours, limiting notifications and setting aside space to think are apparently small decisions that can make major differences. Sustainable productivity does not come from being permanently busy. It comes from the ability to focus energy on what truly creates value.
Reconnect people with purpose
There is also a dimension that is often forgotten when returning to work: why do we return? I am not referring to salary or functional responsibilities. I am referring to the meaning we are able to find in what we do. Simon Sinek popularised the idea of starting with the Why. And perhaps September is precisely a good time for leaders to explain that Why again: to recall priorities, contextualise decisions and show teams how their work contributes to something greater. People are unlikely to maintain their energy for long when they are simply given tasks. They maintain it when they perceive meaning, autonomy and impact. This is also why leadership has a decisive role here. It is not enough to ask “how were your holidays?” in the first September meeting and, five minutes later, return to the usual pressure. The real challenge is to create conditions so that renewed energy can be preserved.
Creating a new rhythm
Perhaps we should stop looking at September as the time to “return to full speed”. An engine does not go from zero to maximum speed without consequences. People do not either. The first few weeks should be used to regain rhythm, reorganise priorities and eliminate some of the inefficiencies we have accumulated. It is a good time for each professional to carry out a small audit of their own way of working: What do I want to continue doing? What should I start doing? And, perhaps more importantly, what do I need to stop doing? This last question is probably the most difficult. Because improving does not only mean adding new habits. It often means eliminating behaviours, meetings, processes and commitments that no longer make sense.
Image: imagekit
From “back to business” to “back to better”
Returning to work should not simply be a return to where we left off. It can be an opportunity to return better: with greater awareness of how we use our time, protect our energy and define priorities. Holidays remind us of something that the professional pace often makes us forget: we are more productive when we are able to recover, think and live beyond work.
The real challenge begins now. Because resting for a few weeks is relatively easy. Building a way of working that does not force us to spend the rest of the year waiting for the next holidays is much more difficult. And perhaps that is precisely one of the great responsibilities of contemporary leadership: creating organisations capable of achieving results without consuming, along the way, the energy of the people who make them possible.
Back to business? Without a doubt. But, if possible, back to better.
Article by Sérgio Almeida, in partnership with Vida Económica.
