When was the last time you competed on ‘busyness’? ‘I’m so busy’ has become a symbol of status that threatens our leisure. These days, work-life balance can seem like an impossible feat. Technology makes workers accessible around the clock and fears of job loss incentivise longer hours.

More time means more productivity only up to a point, and then people become tired and feel drained or burnt out. Their ability to innovate goes down, resilience suffers, they produce less, and they make more mistakes. Energy capacity diminishes with overuse so we must balance energy expenditure with energy renewal. As all our energy resources are depleted at work, we are often left with no energy for our home life.

Under normal circumstances, recovery should occur once no longer exposed to work demands. However, in today’s ‘always on’ culture, this is rare and mentally disengaging from work can be difficult. Without adequate recovery, fatigue and low mood may develop into chronic conditions such as depression and burnout.

Taking care of ourselves takes time. To do this, we need to shift our paradigms and our mindsets about how we switch off from work and prioritise taking care of ourselves. ‘Leisure time recovery’ looks at the role of restorative experiences on our recovery from work and how this impacts health and job performance. We will examine the four key areas for recovery that manage your energy systems most tactically.

Join us to become an expert at managing your energy systems, gaining new resources and making a plan of action to restore and recover so you strike the right balance, perform your best, and enjoy life.

Key learnings:

1. Learn how effective leisure time enables workers to recover more readily from work-related stress and depletion
2. Understand how effective recovery improves job performance, higher creativity, engagement, team working (pro-organisational citizenship behaviours) and loyalty to the organisation