The Joy of Leadership

Chapter 5Health: Injecting Energy into Life and Work

“Managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance and personal renewal.”

—Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

Most of us would be happy to have accomplished in a lifetime what Donal Skehan had achieved by the age of 30. Years ago, as a young vocalist whose band had recorded a couple of number one hits in Ireland, he began to leverage his stardom to build a career focused on his first love: cooking. He started his own blog, Good Mood Food, in 2007; made guest appearances on culinary television shows; gave live cooking demonstrations; and finally launched his own weekly show, Kitchen Hero, in 2011.

By 2015, Donal had published five books, launched his own YouTube channel—which has since grown to more than 500,000 subscribers—and begun a new show for Food Network UK, Follow Donal, which began with a four‐part series chronicling Donal's explorations of the culture and food of Vietnam.

It was all going really, really well—until, in Vietnam, it suddenly wasn't. “I was doing my dream job of TV presenting,” Donal said, “and going to all these amazing places, doing these great things. We were having great success. But I'd come to a point of just absolute exhaustion. We were pretty much working all the time. I hadn't had a weekend off for about six months. It was just insane. I knew something had to give.”

If you've seen Donal on TV or the Internet, you know he's unusually telegenic—good‐natured, spirited and fun to watch. But ...