Tag: empowerment

Peak performance

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The message of Peak Performance, by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, is as simple to understand as it is difficult to apply in practice.

Stress + rest = growth

That is to say, if you alternate periods of intense work, work that takes you a little beyond your limits, yet not too much, with periods of relax and rest, your potential will increase. And this is true both for athletes and knowledge workers.

The illusion of “always busy“, then, is not only bad for your narrative and your relationships, but also for your possibility to deliver your best work and to incrementally and progressively increase what “best” is to you.

If you think at all the times you came up with a solution to your problems, or a new idea, or a different approach to a tricky situation during moments of break (in the shower, during a walk outside, while playing with your kids), the message should easily resonate with you. On the other hand, think about how often you have managed to overcome a difficult situation by continuing to work relentlessly. Never, right?

And yet, we often fall in that trap. Sometimes because of peer pressure, sometimes because we feel guilty, more often simply because we are not sure what we are doing is good work, and we try to compensate by doing a lot. We end up being over-stressed, and this is never a very good idea.

Stress can be positive, triggering desirable adaptations in the body; or stress can be negative, causing grave damage and harm. The effects of stress depend almost entirely on the dose.

The book is full of examples of high performers, in different areas, and all seem to respect the growth equation that is the foundation of Peak Performance. And on top of that, they have pretty rigid and established routines.

Routines help keeping you focused on what you are doing in different moments of the day. They leave little space for excuses and resistance, they force you to show up and to be present with body and mind.

There’s a pretty good example on how to apply this principle for day-to-day work: the authors suggest to split your days in chunks of 50 to 90 minutes (depending on the type of work), followed by 7 to 20 minutes of rest.

In the words of the writer James Clear, “The single greatest skill in any endeavor is doing the work. Not doing the work that is easy for you. Not doing the work that makes you look good. Not doing the work when you feel inspired. Just doing the work.”

The final part of the book is dedicated to a very important part of performance: purpose. There’s quite a lot of evidence that having a purpose that “transcends ourselves”, that goes beyond the immediate, short-term gains, makes us bring out the best work we could possibly do. And more than that, it increases our capability to accept stress, widening the growth leaps in the equation.

In situations that feel scary or overwhelming, our brain—our central governor, our ego, our “self”—automatically tries to protect us from failure. It shuts us down and tells us to turn in the other direction. Even if failure doesn’t mean physical injury, our ego doesn’t like emotional injury, either—it doesn’t want to risk getting embarrassed, so it ushers us down the safe route. It’s only when we transcend our “self” that we can break through our self-imposed limits.

 

Leadership is not

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Leadership is not a title. A leader might have a title, and yet not having a title does not mean you cannot act as a leader. Seeing something that others do not see yet, and taking them with you on the path to discovery.

Leadership is not telling others what to do. On that path, the leader might actually benefit much more from listening and observing rather than telling. Each path is different, so applying other path’s rules and frameworks might often prove to be only limiting.

Leadership is not getting things your way. A leader treats the rare occasions in which this happens as mere coincidences, as they know discovery can only really occur when different perspective meet to shape not only the path, but the destination itself.

Leadership is not being better and faster. If a leader happens to be so, they will have to slow down and make sure everybody is there and has everything needed to carry on. Getting somewhere sooner and in a better shape is a Pyrrhic victory, as very few, if any, will have shared the path.

And most importantly, as should be clear by now, leadership is not the point of arrival. Many end up seeing, and yet only few manage to make others see as well, while taking them along on the path to an improvement for the whole group.

Great communicators

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There’s a general belief that a great talker is also a great communicator. That might be true, and yet I find that most often it is not.

The way I see it, there are three core qualities of a great communicator (that a great talker not necessarily has).

First, great communicators craft their messages carefully. I mean this in the broadest possible way. A good framework to look at it through is Grice’s maxims: quality (a message that is true), quantity (a message that is no more than what required), relevance (a message that is pertinent to the discussion) and manner (a message that is orderly, polite and clear).

Then, great communicators are consistent in their messages. They are not afraid of repeating, as they are aware that different people absorb information at different paces. Furthermore, having the message well-crafted allows them to experiment with channels and formats in ways that benefit the spreading of the message in the long term.

Finally, great communicators have profound understanding of their audience. This is also true in a broad way: they know who they are communicating with before the communication actually happens; they are awake and aware to signals from the audience while the communication is undergoing; and they are capable of redesigning (without losing consistency), learning from feedback and sentiment they perceive after the communication is over.

If you want to be a great communicator, talking a lot and well is not enough. Establishing a relationship aimed at some type of change is much more important. And much more complicated.

Top of mind

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If a blurry beverage cup appears by mistake in the most popular TV series ever, clearly out of place, and everybody thinks it belongs to your brand, you have won the lottery.

Better put, you are reaping the benefits of decades of hard work making the association between take-away (hot) drinks and your brand immediate. Top-of-mind.

Every company, every person can have the same.

What do people think about when they think of you? Or, what kind of things make people think of you? How do you position yourself? It is a long and winding road, one that is built on a foundation of awareness and purpose. But boy, it is worth it.

You can easily be a guy from marketing, or you can work your way to being the guy we call every time we have to write incredibly effective copy. You can quickly become part of the team, or you can make the effort to be the one who spots and (most importantly) solves difficult problems before others even notice them. You are certainly part of our community, or you can go out of your way to go collect the trash that someone has left on the path that many kids walk everyday to daycare.

Branding and positioning is great for companies, and even greater for individuals. The great news is that the circle that acknowledges your traits needs not be greater than your family or your closest friends.

There’s a time for everything

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In the past, we used to go the office from 9 to 5. Most had very little responsibilities, as they were told what to do. Our professional life was figured out at graduation (for some, even earlier), and the personal life was fairly standard for the majority of people. We were closely in touch with our colleagues, friends and family, and the number of acquaintances was quite low. The most we got into an argument was probably once a year, perhaps at Christmas over some sport-related topic.

Today our lives are infinitely more fluid. Personal and professional are mixed. We answer work emails while we sit on the sofa close to our dear one, watching the latest episode of True Detective. At the same time we have an ongoing conversation on Instagram with a friend we have not met since high school, and we are arguing on Twitter on who is the best Democratic candidate for 2020. We are acquainted to many more people than we are closely in touch with, and we are constantly asked to make decisions, take responsibilities, change who we are and the context in which we live.

In this scenario, we have to be careful to pick only the battles that make sense for us in a specific period, as we cannot deplete our mental and physical energy on many different fronts simultaneously. Chances are that if you are going through a divorce, or having a kid, or moving to a new town, you will not be able to give your best at work or to come up with the ultimate idea for your next novel. The opposite is true as well.

The bad news is, there’s not time for everything.

The good news is, there’s a time for everything.

Despite what the sense of urgency that is imposed on us for any little unimportant thing, if we can discern what really matters and give it our attention to the highest possible level, we’ll eventually get it done and be able to pass on to what’s next. And of course, we need to be able to say a whole lot of “no, thanks”. Some things are simply not for us. It is ok to be able to say it out loud.