Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success

by Brad Stulberg

•When you are working on a strenuous mental task and hit an impasse, stop working.

•Step away from whatever it is you are doing for at least 5 minutes.

Going on a short walk

Doing the dishes

relative to his normal routine, Bannister was resting.

Roger Bannister had broken one of the greatest barriers in human history. And it was in no small part due to his courage to rest.

triathletes, perhaps more than any other type of athlete, suffer from overtraining syndrome and burnout.

“They are giving their bodies time and space to adapt to the training stress.”

By framing rest as something that supports growth and adaption, Dixon’s athletes stop viewing rest as passive, as “not training.”

They win major races not because they train harder than their competitors, but because they rest harder than their competitors.

Rest isn’t lazily slothing around; it’s an active process in which physical and psychological growth occurs.

something behavioral scientists call the commission bias, or our innate preference for action over inaction.

the benefits of athletics-style interval training in pursuits far beyond athletics.

our output begins to suffer after 2 consecutive hours of hard work.

we do our best work in cycles of intense effort followe...

the practice of mindfulness, and discussed the value of stepping away from our work so as to engage the creative...

Browsing social media, for example, isn’t nearly as effectiv...

Many of the best writers and thinkers have sworn by their walking breaks.

When Brad was working on complicated financial models at McKinsey & Company, he’d take walks throughout the day, especially when he felt stuck.

Stepping away from your work takes a lot of guts,

The good news is that even short walks can provide big benefits.

Although walking outdoors yielded the most pronounced benefits, those who walked indoors still generated about 40 percent more creative ideas than those who didn’t walk at all.

taking a few laps around the office or hopping on a treadmill is still highly beneficial.

it appears that the benefits might also stem from the interplay between walking and attention.

walking requires just enough coordination to occupy the part of our brain responsible for effortful thinking, it ever so slightly distracts our conscious mind.

Walking occupies us just enough to help us stop thinking about whatever it is we were working on, but not too much as to prevent mind-wandering.

Long, uninterrupted bouts of sitting are awful for your health, and sitting can even undo gains from exercise. Fortunately, the latest science shows that taking just a 2-minute walk every hour is protective against many of sitting’s ill effects.

Plato and his contemporaries didn’t separate physical from intellectual education and development.

University of Michigan psychologist named Marc Berman,

students who took a break in a natural setting outperformed those who took their break in an urban setting.

simply looking at pictures of nature can help.

The students who viewed pictures of nature significantly outperformed their urban-viewing counterparts.

Johnsons 30 seconds of zen on facebook

nature inherently makes us feel good and improves our mood, thereby hastening our transition from the stress of hard work to a more restful state and promoting mind-wandering and subsequent creativity.

According to a study published in the journal Emotion, more than any other positive feeling, awe, an emotion commonly brought about by nature, is linked to lower levels of IL-6.

Jennifer Stellar, PhD,

Stellar told us that “experiencing awe makes us feel more connected to the universe and more humble.

“probably help to ‘switch off’ our stress response, in turn lessening inflammation.”

when you are feeling down, “Put yourself in the way of beauty.”

Mindfulness meditation strengthens the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that lets you choose how to respond to stress.

unplanned, on-the-spot meditation can also be valuable during short breaks from physically or mentally taxing work.

The feeling of being wound up is the physiological manifestation of the mind bracing for a threat, and it enters into stress mode.

Sit down in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and take 10 deep breaths, in and out through your nose.

Focus on only the sensation of your breath.

In open-monitoring meditation, though you continue to breathe rhythmically, you shift your focus from your breath to various parts of your body.

Start at your feet and work your way up.

Studies show that just 7 to 10 minutes of open-monitoring meditation aids in both physiological recovery and creativity.

this ratio was higher in athletes who went through their post-game analysis in a social environment with friends than in athletes who went through it in a neutral environment with strangers.

the group in the social environment actually performed better in competition a week later.

Christian Cook, PhD, professor of physiology and elite performance at Bangor University, told us that “a friendly post-exercise setting—particularly being able to talk, joke, and debrief with other athlet...

Kelly McGonig...