High Performance Habits Book Summary
High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard examines six habits for high performance using stats and data from a large study conducted on the routines and workflows of high performers.
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High Performance Habits Summary Notes
• The highest performers in life aren’t born that way, it’s not usually due to personality either.
• Boiled down they all share a set of similar habits and daily patterns.
• The author examined people who were considered to be high performers from over 190 different countries. From this he was able to see trends and patterns emerge.
• The habits described were often taken on deliberately by the subjects and required consistent daily effort to maintain and to reap the benefits.
• A final common trait was confidence. The confidence typically came along with deliberate practice of a skill.
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Self Awareness And A Clear Purpose
• The habit of seeking clarity is one that high performers practice consistently.
• The vast majority of us never stop to think what we would like to be remembered for or have done with our lives.
• Using questions like those to focus our attention on what we should be doing each day is a powerful process and can help keep us pushing towards our goals.
• Direction, purpose and focus all stem from these simple questions.
• Clarity can be spread into 4 different areas:
• Self; knowing what kind of person you would like to become.
• Social; being intentional with your friendships and other social interactions.
• Field of skills; working on and developing the correct talents.
• Service; a way to give back.
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Physical And Mental Fitness
• Although the author calls the second habit generating energy it’s really correlated to fitness.
• Many top performers are that way not only because they can schedule time efficiently, they also benefit from higher energy levels and many other benefits that exercise offers.
• Regular exercise as many positive impacts on the brain, such as increasing your ability to generate new neurons, enhance mood and decrease stress.
• Many of the best benefits of exercise are only achieved with consistent daily practice however, so don’t expect to change your life over night.
• Being in and staying in a positive mood can also be a huge boon for high performers. Taking time to cultivate happy disposition is essential to help boost things like dopamine. Research also shows that the happiness we experience leading up to events we’re looking forward to sometimes account for up to half of total joy experienced by the event.
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Manage Your Expectations
• Raising the stakes of an event will often improve your performance.
• High performers often have a greater sense of urgency for the tasks that they need to complete.
• Don’t settle for easily attainable goals, set goals you need to stretch yourself to complete.
• Another option for rising the stakes of a goal is simply to involve other people by telling them what your doing and when the deadline will be.
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Avoid Distractions And Set Smart Deadlines
• If there’s a large difference between your energy output and your accomplished results, then something needs to be reassessed.
• The fourth habit is that of increasing your productivity. Learn to spend your energy where it produces the greatest results instead of unimportant ‘busy’ work or other items that would be better off delegated.
• One of the easiest wins for most people is to cut out the time dedicated to email. Unsubscribe to everything that you can and if your frequently being asked the same questions consider adding a link to an FAQ to your email signature.
• Make sure to set yourself strictly enforced deadlines on projects as well to avoid falling into a common productivity problem.
• Having a finite deadline ahead of you will help to maintain focus, keep you distraction free and keep up your energy. Studies have indicated that someone with a strict deadline will often outperform someone without one.
• Another strategy for larger projects is to break them into multiple parts and give each a smaller deadline to help you keep on track.
