High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way

by Brendon Burchard

Habits such as clarifying real deadlines are what make me, and every high performer I know, so effective.

A recent survey of 1,100 high performers revealed that their underperforming counterparts get pulled into fake urgencies or deadlines three and a half times more often than they do.

started teaching this practice to my clients because I’ve never met a high performer who didn’t consistently ponder whether they were giving their best—and not just for themselves but for others. They have come to assess their performance at regular intervals.

So right before I started filming, I would say something like this to myself: “Brendon, you’re doing this because it’s important. Remember your students. You can inspire them and help them reach their goals. That’s your purpose. Do good for them. You’re going to love this, and you’re going to help a lot of people.”

“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” —Amy Poehler

This means that the economic gap—and all the negative factors that often accompany lower economic status, such as higher stress, worse schools, poorer nutrition—were largely erased in children who believed they could improve with effort.

“Make a conscious effort to surround yourself with positive, nourishing, and uplifting people—people who believe in you, encourage you to go after your dreams, and applaud your victories.” —Jack Canfield

You can give your time to the drama and conflict of telling people they aren’t what you want or need in life, or you can use that same time to build a new circle. Tear down relationships or build new ones? I’d focus on building.

Very important

You want to be around that spirit of service for your own personal and spiritual development anyway. You also want to be around volunteers because they tend to be more educated and successful people. People with higher levels of education are more likely to volunteer than those with less education.

Seek mentorship. I tell high performers to have one or two lifelong mentors: older, wiser, highly respected, successful people. I want you to call them once per month. I also want you to have one new “domain mentor” every three years. This means someone who has precisely the expertise you need to succeed in your field. You should also call that person every month. These two mentors, one for life and another for specific domain expertise, will give you extraordinary perspective. To find mentors, start again with your friends and family. Ask, “Who do I know who has great wisdom and influence, who I might be able to learn from?” You might find a mentor at your workplace or by doing the actions above—say, volunteering or playing sports. You can also type my name and “how to find a mentor” into YouTube and watch my video for more ideas.

This is brilliant

Work hard. Practice the high performance habits. Never give up, add a tremendous amount of value, and stay on the path to mastery. When you become supremely skilled and successful at what you do, doors will open and you’ll meet more and more extraordinary people.

To be fair, a lot of people do work a lot more than forty hours per week. And in the always-connected culture we live in today, where a response is expected at all hours of the day and night, it can feel as though balance is gone. That’s why I think there’s a better approach to thinking about work-life balance. Instead of trying to balance hours, try to balance happiness or progress in your major life arenas.

You would recognize that your busywork isn’t your life’s work, and that dissonance would cause you mental distress. That’s why it’s important to live in harmony with what you truly desire and to do the activities in the chapter on clarity.

Other times, people are engaged and enjoying their work, but they’re fried from too much stress and too many hours on the job. There’s a fine line between busy and burned out, and when you cross it, no matter how great your life is outside work, you will feel out of balance.

Your brain also needs more downtime than you probably think—to process information, recover, and deal with life so that you can be more productive.18 That’s why, for optimal productivity, you should not only take longer breaks—claim your vacation time!—but also give yourself intermittent breaks throughout the day.

restored and with greater focus.22 If you’re unwilling to move away from the desk, simply standing up intermittently at your desk to work can increase productivity by 45 percent compared to sitting all

Working straight through the day with no breaks makes people unhappy and less productive.

As a reminder from the chapter on energy, a transition meditation means you simply close your eyes, focus on deep breathing, repeat to yourself a mantra such as “release,” and then set an intention for the next activity. If you want extra credit, also ask the desk trigger question from the previous chapter (on necessity): “Who needs me on my A game right now the most?” Notice what’s not included during these breaks: checking e-mail, texts, or social media. Checking in is the exact opposite of our goal here: checking out so we can recharge.

Dont include this in your bteaks

No matter where I’m sitting—on a plane, in a café, at work, in a meeting, on the couch—I get up every fifty minutes. I do a short two-minute physical routine of calisthenics, Qigong, and yoga paired with deep breathing. This fifty-minute rule is something I never break, even when I’m in a meeting with other people. I often make them stand and do an energizer with me, or I excuse myself and go find a place to refresh for two to three minutes. Those short few-minute breaks buy me hours of added focus and effectiveness each day.

Interesting

High performers have mastered the art of prolific quality output (PQO). They produce more high-quality output than their peers over the long term, and that is how they become more effective, better known, more remembered. They aim their attention and consistent efforts toward PQO and minimize any distractions (including opportunities)

that would steal them away from their craft.

Know the big five moves that will take you to your goal, break those moves down into tasks and deadlines, then put them in a calendar. If that’s all you did, and you made sure these moves aligned with your PQO, you’d be ahead of the game.

Brilliant

It’s a simple process that my clients have used over and over again to achieve equally impressive results: Decide what you want. Determine the Five Major Moves that will help you leap toward that goal. Do deep work on each of the major five moves—at least 60 percent of your workweek going to these efforts—until they are complete. Designate all else as distraction, tasks to delegate, or things to do in blocks of time you’ve allocated in the remaining 40 percent of your time.

My goal here is for you to determine the five major skills you need to develop over the next three years to grow into the person you hope to become.

Remember: Everything is trainable.

People don’t grudgingly help you. If they didn’t want to, they’d probably say no. It’s counterintuitive, but if getting people to like you more is the goal, then just ask them to do you a favor.

Finally, when you do ask for what you want in life, don’t just ask once and quit. Research shows that influencers understand the power of repetition, so they try multiple times to get their ideas in front of those they hope to influence.9 The more you ask and share your ideas, the more people become familiar and comfortable with your requests, and the more they start to like the idea.

Give and You Shall Receive In all the asking, don’t forget to give. In just about any area of endeavor, giving to others with no expectation of return increases your overall success.11 And, of course, it increases the likelihood that you’ll get what you want. Researchers have long known that often you can double your ability to influence others by giving before you ask for something.12 High performers have a giving mindset. They enter almost every situation looking for ways to help others. They carefully consider the problems people face, and offer suggestions, resources, and connections. They don’t have to be prodded to do this. They’re proactive in seeking to give something to others, whether in meetings at work or while visiting in someone’s home.

Giving

To gain influence with others, (1) teach them how to think about themselves, others, and the world; (2) challenge them to develop their character, connections, and contributions; and (3) role model the values you wish to see them embody.

We’d walk to school and ask the other kids, “Where did you sleep last night?” When they said in their bedrooms, we’d brag that we were camping out in our living room. My parents made a difficult situation fun. Turning adversity into a good time is one of life’s highest arts, and Mom and Dad were good at it.

“The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.” —Kobe Bryant

Absolutely

This is perhaps one of the more difficult challenges that high performers issue. It’s hard to tell someone, “Hey, your contributions here at work aren’t enough. You can do better.” But high performers don’t shrink from saying this kind of thing.

People often quit marriages and school and jobs and friendships at the first sign of difficulty. If you quit at the first sign of difficulty in your everyday life, what are the odds you’ll persist in the face of real fear or threat?

They knew that it was necessary, because they knew that real challenge and hardship pushed them, extended their capabilities, made them rise. They learned to honor the struggle. They developed a mindset that anticipated the struggle, welcomed the struggle, leveraged the struggle into reasons to give more.

Snuggle w/ the struggle - Codesmith

Indeed, if no one has looked at you sideways lately or, better yet, said, “Who do you think you are? What, are you crazy? Are you sure that’s a good idea?” then maybe you’re not living boldly enough.

The most important thing in connecting authentically with others is to share your true desires with them. They don’t have to approve or help or even brainstorm with you. This isn’t about them. This is about you having the courage to open to others just as the universe remains open to you. Try it. Each day, reveal to others a little bit more of what you’re thinking, feeling, dreaming of. Even if you don’t get the immediate support of the humans in front of you, who knows? Perhaps a distant force is unlocked and the necessary ripples in time and luck and destiny converge and deliver to your door a hint about the next step—a treasure map of sorts, unearthed by your own courage.

Be open

These are simple statements. It’s a simple formula. What do you want to share? Whatever it is, share it. Then take bold action each day to bring it to reality. Performance Prompts Something I really want to do that I haven’t shared with enough people is . . .

This is something to practice

In 2006, I was broke. I had done what I have been trying to inspire you to do: I took action. I had quit my job to be a writer and trainer. I told everyone about my dream. Plenty of people thought I was crazy—including, at times, me.

Ive felt this before

Nor had my habits. I was going to set all these alarms and mental triggers to wake up at precise hours each day and begin writing—after, of course, boiling the perfect cup of green tea, cooking the best omelet, activating the perfect state to write in. I followed the habits, sometimes, and they led to more dirty plates than written pages. Not all good habits lead to impressive results—especially when a key ingredient is missing. And then, a very simple moment changed everything.

found that a common theme was similar to the story I just shared: We will do more for others than for ourselves. And in doing something for others, we find our reason for courage, and our cause for focus and excellence.

This chapter is, in effect, the “antipractices” of high performance. It’s about how people like Don start thinking they are separate from others, better than others, more capable than others, and more important than others—and how those attitudes destroy performance (and careers).

The real traps are internal—negative patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that slowly kill our humanity, zest, and well-being. The traps are superiority, dissatisfaction, and neglect.

Have you recently thought that some of the people you work with are idiots and that your ideas are always better? Yes, that qualifies.

Not asking your team to review your big presentation and find its errors or omissions because you “got this”? Uh-oh.

through it. All isolation is ultimately self-imposed. This is a difficult truth to relay to people who feel that no one can understand them or their situation.

Very true

First, I’ve rarely met a high performer who thinks they’re “at the top.” Most feel like they’re just getting started. They understand they’re still students of life, and no matter how stellar their success, they feel that they’re just a few steps in on the path of mastery. This is a widely held attitude with the top scorers of our assessments whom I interviewed.

Very important

In almost all studies on expert performance, the major thing that made the difference was not a person’s innate talents, but the hours of exposure and deliberate practice.

Superior-minded people are certain they are better, more capable, more deserving.4 And it’s that certainty that closes their minds to learning, connection with others, and, ultimately, growth. The more you absolutely believe anything, the more likely you are to become blinded to new perspectives and opportunities.

Never forget, people can perceive you to be superior minded when you don’t engage with them, even if it’s not your true intent or spirit. That’s just one more way the above suggestions will help you maintain the truth and the perception of being a humble and engaged leader.

This, we know, is incorrect. High performers in general aren’t dissatisfied with themselves, their lives, or their work. Remember just a few findings I’ve shared in this book: High performers are, in fact, happier than most people.