The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

by Steven Kotler

Optimal performance is about being your best; ultimate performance is about being your best when any mistake could kill.

No one ever has a bad time in a flow state.

The fight-or-flight response—a.k.a. the adrenaline rush—cocktails adrenaline, cortisol (the stress hormone), and norepinephrine. It’s an extreme stress response. The brain switches to reactive survival autopilot. Options are limited to three: fight, flee, or freeze. Flow is the opposite: a creative problem-solving state, options wide open.

To really achieve anything, you have to be able to tolerate and enjoy risk. It has to become a challenge to look forward to. In all fields, to make exceptional discoveries you need risk—you’re just never going to have a breakthrough without it.”

If creating more flow is our aim, then the emphasis falls on “clear” and not “goals.”

The smaller the gap between input and output, the more we know how we’re doing and how to do it better. If we can’t course correct in real time, we start looking for clues to better performance—things we did in the past, things we’ve seen other people do, things that can pull us out of the moment.

If the challenge is too great, fear swamps the system. If the challenge is too easy, we stop paying attention.

if we want to flow from cycle to cycle, we need to take full advantage of recovery to regroup and recharge.

when other people are present, we pay more attention to the present.

In jazz, the group has the ideas, not the individual musicians.”

“When performance peaks in groups,” he says, “this isn’t just about individuals in flow—it’s the group entering the state together, a collective merger of action and awareness, a ‘group flow.’ ”

The lone-wolf maverick is a myth. When it comes to becoming Superman, we really are in this together.

Don’t be fooled by the danger. In action and adventure sports, creativity is always the point.”

“The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage.”