This article contains the essence and actionable advice from the book Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness.
Peak performance, or flow, is a state where you work with high efficiency and effectiveness. It is where you perform at your best and produce the best result or work. And staying in peak performance is not a myth anymore. There are tricks that you can apply in daily life to increase your productivity and drastically improve results in the same or less amount of time.
Stress + Rest = Growth
A few years ago, news about a 21-year-old who worked at an investment bank for 72 hours non-stop and died of fatigue has aroused awareness around the world. We started to question the effectiveness of hard work.
Medical research has shown that consistent stress would cause anxiety and heart diseases. And from 1940–1950, it was considered impossible to run 1 mile in 4 minutes. Some doctors even suggested that this is beyond what a human heart can support.
In 1954, a man named Roger Gilbert took the mission impossible challenge to run 1 mile in 4 minutes. 2 weeks before his challenge, he gave up all the high intensive training. And 3 days before, he fully relaxes and sleeps (except for doing some simple stretches). People thought he was crazy as he should be training as hard as he could.
On 6 May 1954, he ran 1 mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.
When he was interviewed, he contributed a lot to his success to resting.
Rest is a choice. Rest allows us to go further.
Scientifically, when we sleep and rest, our (subconscious) brain is still at work (on default mode network).
In fact, our best creative moments come from when we are at rest (e.g. taking bath, walking randomly at the park, or meditating). The conscious mind thinks in a logical manner which is wonderful at handling data but not necessarily solving problems (which usually require us to think out of the box).
At difficult moments, instead of working harder, we should let our (conscious) brain relax and rest, and let our subconscious mind take charge. Our subconscious mind has access to all our experience (and even universal wisdom) and some truths that we may overlook.
The authors would take at least one day off per week when writing this book. They would not do any writing or study during the off day. Usually, after the off day, they reach peak performance right after.
And here are three actionable tips on how you can implement this scientific-based research in your daily life to stay in peak performance:
implement short break in-between work e.g. taking a short 5–10 minutes coffee breaks every 50–90 minutes
long break after high stress e.g. vacation or meditation week
when you are stuck, go for a walk or take a bath to let the subconscious mind take over (ideas and answers will come more easily)
2. How to be an expert
In 1990, Anders Ericsson started studying the subject of how to become an expert. He found that anyone put in 10,000 hours of effort in anything can become expert.
So, for a long time, we all think that experience equal to expertise.
The authors of this book want to find out if the experience is the only criteria to become an expert. They went to the Global music academy, which is a very famous music school in Germany, to observe the violinists there. There are many world-known violinists graduated from that school.
The authors asked them to keep doing what they are doing, except to keep a journal to record what have they done that day before sleep.
After a week, the authors compare the journals of the top violinists with the others. And discovered that everyone practices around 50 hours, but why the result is different?
They looked deeper into the 50 practice hours. The top violinists spent more time improving specific targets and goals e.g. they will set an hour on specific practice on a certain part of the music. Moreover, they are completely focused on hours of practice.
The study showed that expert becomes an expert not because of experience, but deliberate practice.
One can become an expert in less than 10,000 and not become an expert even if he spent more than 20,000 hours.
The key is what and how you spent the hours. Spending the hours will not promise success, how you spend the time is the key.
So how should we spend the time if we want to develop expertise in any field? Here are three actionable tips:
- find hardly achievable goals (not too hard nor too easy) that are slightly outside your comfort zone
For example, if you’re running 5km currently in your practice, try 6km (not 10km) next time. Little improvement consistently can become huge growth.
- Set specific target
Deliberate practice and focus on what you want to improve rather than just working hard and putting in the hours.
- analysis and feedback
develop a mistake feedback loop (see the article on ‘mistake log’)
3. Avoid multi-tasking
Our time and energy is our most valuable and limited resources.
Every little decisions that we have to make in daily life will drain our brain energy. Is it worth spending our limited energy on thinking what to wear the next day everyday?
We all have limited energy, so we should focus the limited resources on things that are really important and set routine for minor decisions.
Efficiency optimising is not about multi-tasking, but to reduce the number of things we have to decide.
Being able to dedicate and focus 100% is the key to peak performance, but when we have too many things to think about, our brain will multi-task to try to complete everything with the limited time and energy, which means reduced quality of decision and increased working time.
Smartphones also causes lots of distraction.
Dopamine is released in our brain when we expect something to happen. This is necessary for ancient human as we need something to support us through the harsh condition when we spent several days hunting.
However, this has caused us (the modern citizens) to get easily distracted (even addicted to distraction). Email updates and new social media posts are only examples of the things that cause dopamine to release.
The best ways to avoid multi-tasking so that we can focus our limited energy and brainpower on things that really matters would be to:
a. prioritise and analysis which things / decisions in accordance to their importance
b. develop routine for daily little things (e.g. set of clothes to wear throughout the week, food to eat, exercise routine, etc)
c. get distraction out of sight (put away our smartphones when we want to stay in peak performance)
4. Mindset
Carol Dweck studied kids who are easy to give up vs those who are positive motivated. These two types of mindsets result in very different outcomes.
With fixed mindset, one think that everything is uncontrollable. Everything is out of control and one cannot change life for the better. “I don’t have the power to change”, so just give up and avoid challenges.
With growth mindset, one believe that if we try hard and find a way to do so. After two years of tracking, the study team found that even with the same starting point, those kids with growth mindset tried more things, read more books, challenges more often, and learn from mistake.
And yet another important finding is that mindset can be changed.
Those kids with fixed mindset can shift their mindset in as little as 8 weeks by understanding that brain is subject to change and changeable. So that they know their actions can change their life, that they have the power within them.
a. When we focus on solving problem, anxiety disappears and we are less susceptible to stress.
b. look into the science of brain (the more we know about brain, the more we find out how amazing and powerful it can be)
c. develop a growth mindset
5. Meditation practice
Perhaps you’ve heard some benefits of meditation. The biggest advantage is that it helps to increase the grey matters in brain so that we can have deeper thoughts. And we can have more self control and mindfulness rather than acting on instinct. Furthermore, we are more susceptible to stress and more able to focus and keep calm and rational.
In meditation, we are observing our life form a third party’s view. Even for 1 minute a day, our inner reaction would become clearer and by increasing reaction time, we are able to control self and life, and listen and sleep better.
Steps of meditation:
- quite place
2. deep breath
3. focus on breathing
4. if mind wonder off somewhere, bring it back gently
5. set alarm so you don’t have to worry about time
6. consistent practice
6. Create your own ceremony
Many top performers have developed warm-up routines before going up the stage.
Author have their own routine before writing. Athletes have their own routine before competition. Entrepreneurs have their own routine before presenting.
The routine can be as simple as the same breakfast, the same coffee, the same yoga poses for 5 minutes etc. You need to find out your own routine.
The authors of this book have the same time, same cafe, same table, same coffee, same background music, same tool. This deliberate created environment is one of the best causes for peak performance.
Environment and tool can cause peak state.
Once you have that environment linked to the performance, you can get into the flow more easily.
Here are three actionable tips you can implement this to help you stay in the flow:
a. link key activities with same environment (same timing, same location, same task)
b. design it to be executed anywhere
c. be consistent
