Balance of ‘Staminacs’ Leaves Workaholism in the Dust : Personality: ‘Hardy’ people get so much done by feeling committed, challenged and in control, says a UCI professor.

Around the office, they’re the workers nicknamed “Cyclone” or “Tornado.” They are the people who never miss a meeting or a deadline and gladly put in time at the gym, all the while organizing the annual family reunion picnic for 200.

Often, they are begged by weary colleagues and kin: “Please, slow down.”

Who are these boundless bundles of stamina? After all, this is the era of exhaustion. Fatigue is in--and behind 7 million doctor visits a year. The corps of people at the breaking point--from megabuck coaches to working moms and workers on double shifts--is bursting at the seams. High-profile folks are even beginning to yawn in public. Harvard President Neil Rudenstine was recently on the cover of Newsweek, with the headline “Exhausted.”

But not everyone nods off in 3 p.m. meetings, calls in sick to catch up on sleep or complains about having too much to do.

“Staminacs”--the Energizer Bunnies of the world--embrace hectic schedules rather than curse them. Unlike workaholics who work, work, work at the expense of all else, staminacs have found balance. They are organized, enthusiastic and have mastered the skill of using spare moments to increase productivity.

Scientists who study stamina--defined as the strength required to resist fatigue and disease--say “hardiness” helps keep energy levels high. (Only one-third of the population is naturally hardy, though it can be learned.)

Other experts contend that anyone with another quality called “physiological toughness”--which can also be acquired--has stamina.

Scientists are referring to people such as Dana Eggerts of Balboa Island. The 45-year-old mother of two owns a Costa Mesa interior design company, Creative Design Consultants. In addition to managing 67 employees, being on business trips two to three days out of each week and getting up each morning at 5:30 to walk three miles with hand weights, Eggerts serves on the board of directors for Orangewood Children’s Home, reads a book a week, stays up late poring over every conceivable periodical (“I have to keep up on all the trends”) and routinely races up to Los Angeles for films, plays and research sessions at the Pacific Design Center.

“I took up meditation recently, but I just couldn’t seem to find the time to actually meditate,” Eggerts says. “I’d say, ‘I can’t this morning. I have to get moving!’ ”

Then there’s Howard H. Levine. The 42-year-old Newport Beach resident works as many as 15 hours a day as CEO of Chapman General Hospital in Orange, squeezing in an average of six or seven meetings a day, sometimes working until 10 or 11 p.m.

“People tell me I work like I’m double-parked,” he says.

A workaholic? No way, Levine says. He doesn’t have time for that. He’s busy serving time on the board of directors for a food distribution center in Orange. He’s on a professional health advisory committee for the March of Dimes. The California Hospitals Assn. has him pegged as a committee member for patient services. He’s just been asked to be on the board for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation of Orange County. . . .

Tired? Not Levine. He has ballet to attend. Movies to watch. At least a round of golf to play every week. Four mornings a week, Levine works out on a treadmill or stair machine, all while juggling two newspapers and watching the news on a big-screen TV. And when he gets that urge to shop for clothes? Get outta his way.

Levine says he moved from New York to California three years ago. Why? To escape the frenetic pace.

Another textbook example is Sherry Avery of Encino, a 44-year-old divorced mother of two sons, 7 and 9. She puts in 10-hour days as an air-traffic manager based at the Burbank Airport, supervising 125 workers and overseeing the activities of seven local airports. Weekends are spent flying a private plane, skiing with the kids, taking family tennis lessons or ferrying the boys to birthday skating parties, where she often joins in. In between, Avery, a former air-traffic controller, puts in two or three hours a week on her home treadmill and does karate--all the better to stay in shape for the tennis matches she fits in whenever she can.

In 21 years, she has taken sick leave three times: “Two six-week leaves for childbirth,” she says, and a few more days off to recuperate from a car accident.

*

So what’s behind all this energy?

People with high levels of stamina are physically healthy, says Dr. Mack Ruffin, a University of Michigan assistant professor of family practice who has researched fatigue.

“People with stamina also have an adequate support system,” Ruffin adds. “They take time for themselves. That time has to include physical activity, fun and some introspection.”

Richard A. Dienstbier, a professor of psychology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, who has researched the topic, says “physiological toughness” is a factor too.

“People who have been regularly exposing themselves to challenges--both physical and psychological that build their reserves--have stamina,” he says. Regular aerobic exercise is a must to build stamina, he says.

People with stamina usually score high in what psychologists Salvatore Maddi and Suzanne Ouellette term “hardiness.” The two coined the term in 1979.

“Hardy” people display a balance of feeling committed, challenged and in control. Their lifestyle is characterized by those three Cs, says Maddi, a UC Irvine professor of psychology and social behavior. “Their general attitude is to get involved rather than hang back, to try to influence rather than feel overwhelmed and powerless, to try to keep learning and growing.”

These people are so involved in their lives, Maddi adds, that it’s not hard for them to get up early, work extra hours or put in extra effort.

“I define hardiness as a person’s general stance toward who they are and toward what their work is and how they can interact with that world,” says Ouellette, a professor of psychology at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

Commitment is what underlies the energy of Lia Lerner of Burbank. Laid off two years ago as a manager at a travel college, she was angry at first. Then she took action. “I have wanted to be a doctor since I was 18,” says Lerner, 40. She enrolled in premed classes at Cal State Northridge, volunteers at a hospital four hours a week, teaches English classes at the Burbank Adult School four days a week, works at the college bookstore and helps care for a 5-year-old godchild.

The challenge of keeping taxpayers on the straight and narrow fuels Alfonso Martinez, a 55-year-old partner in a Glendale tax preparation service who logs 90-hour weeks from January to April--a habit he began in 1980.

“You have to like what you’re doing,” Martinez says. Then there’s the joy, he says, of building a business and providing a nice income for his family.

True hardiness, Ouellette says, includes commitment across different life areas, not just work.

Howard Lewin is a good example of the work-hard, play-hard philosophy. He puts in about 70 hours a week, commuting from his home in Manhattan Beach to his Hawthorne studio, where he works as a cabinetmaker and an artist. On Fridays and Saturdays, he’s off to West Covina, where he teaches woodworking in the TriCommunity Adult Education program. But rather than collapse once he’s home, he turns to his other passion--reading into the wee hours and getting by nicely on five or six hours of sleep.

“I don’t get physically tired,” says Lewin, 56. “I’m so charged by what I do that to me it’s not work.”

But sometimes what seems like stamina isn’t. People displaying much energy but accomplishing little are not staminacs, says Harriet Braiker, a Los Angeles psychologist: “Stamina is about learning to pace yourself. It’s about directed and focused energy.”

*

At the Institute for Circadian Physiology in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Claudio Stampi and his colleagues are studying another way to increase stamina: catnaps.

Stampi and others at the private institute are often called in as consultants for space missions, rescue teams and others who need stamina on short notice to get through increased work demands.

“We teach people to maximize the benefits of a catnap to have more energy,” Stampi says. “You can reduce total sleep time by dividing it into a number of short naps. You can get by on less sleep, at least for a few months.”

But some people are just natural staminacs.

Meet Sheila Cluff, 58. She is often asked, “Do you always have this much energy?” She does.

“I think it’s because I have so much passion for what I do,” says Cluff, who owns two Southern California spas. Besides running the businesses--one in Ojai, the other in Palm Springs--she also leads six or more exercise classes and hikes each week. She flies out of the country, on average, 10 days a month to lead a fitness cruise, fulfill a speaking engagement or do consulting work. On Saturdays, she relaxes by tending to her garden at her Ojai home for four hours or more and taking a run with her husband.

Her waste-no-time mentality is best demonstrated by her habit of stowing 10-pound hand weights by the bathroom sink. While the water heats up, she works out.

Barbie Ludovise contributed to this story.