How To Use The Science Of High Performance To Become Great At What You Do

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Anyone looking to build and sustain high performance should consider these 5 tips.

1. Routines

The first tip comes from Tony Schwartz, author of The Power of Full Engagement and Be Excellent at Anything. In his contribution to Maximize Your Potential, he recommends harnessing the power of a ritual.

Willpower and discipline are overrated.

In his book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Roy Baumeister contends that the most successful people don't make better decisions because of their willpower. Rather, they develop routines.

These routines reduce the number of decisions we need to make (and also reduce stress). Thus it becomes easier to use your limited resources of self-control to avoid, rather than solve, crises.

Developing these routines are key. In Michael Lewis' profile of President Obama, he writes:

If we spend energy making too many little decisions, we'll have less to make the more important decisions. Some companies are cluing into this.

"I think that the leadership at Google has an intuitive understanding of human nature and the way attention is a limited resource," says David Rock author of Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long.

Google organizes its environment to allow employees to make fewer decisions.

2. Focus

Your routines should be geared towards helping you focus.

In Your Brain at Work, David Rock writes:

Combining routine and focus is the sweet spot. Here are two examples you can put into practice today.

First, Mark McGuinness argues in Manage Your Day-to-Day that you should put your most important work first. It's much easier to deal with less taxing things, like email, later.

Another way to think of this is to pay yourself first: you are your own most valuable client. That's what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger do.

Another useful routine is to deal with email in batches, say from 10-11 and 3-4 each day. The rest of the day, turn the email client off so you're not constantly interrupted with "new mail." (How to deal with email.)

Consider the wise counsel of Herbert Simon:

3. Practice

Experience doesn't always make you better.

In Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin writes:

Wait. What? That doesn't make sense.

We typically operate in the OK Plateau.

Bestselling author of Moonwalking with Einstein and USA Memory Champion in 2005, Joshua Foer explains:

If we want to perform better beyond some basic competence researchers say we must engage in deliberate practice. These are designed, mindful efforts, to master even the smallest detail of success. To get better you have to get out of the autonomous stage.

One way to stay out of the autonomous stage is deliberate practice. Expert musicians, for example, focus on the hardest parts and not the easy ones that would allow them to sink into autopilot. The way to get better is to push your limits.

Unfortunately, deliberate practice isn't something that most of us understand, let alone engage in on a daily basis. This helps explain why we can work at something for decades without really improving our performance.

Colvin continues:

Consider a coach.

In his fascinating New Yorker article, Doctor Atul Gawande writes, "In theory, people can do this themselves."

In other words, the coach provides objective feedback and structure.

Commenting on what it's like to have a surgical coach, Gawande offers:

It takes a special person to bring in a coach mid-career and subject themselves to "scrutiny and fault-finding."

Maybe you're thinking, I don't need a coach because "I'm my own worst critic." That may be the case, however it is really hard, but not impossible, to be your own (objective) coach. You need structure and objective feedback.

(I don't want to get into too much nuance, but you also have to think about feedback systems. Part of deliberate practice is immediate and constant feedback. This enables course correction. The time-to-feedback can derail deliberate practice if it's too long.)

4. Exercise

In Brain Rules, John Medina explores the relationship between exercise and mental alertness:

5. Rest

Taking time to rest won't make you a slacker. While the corporate culture of "back-to-back" meetings from 9-5 may seem "cool," it is actually crazy. Rest is a critical component of creating and sustaining excellence.