No Limits: The Art and Science of High Performance

by Mukesh Bansal

There are many ways to engage the body into moving. Many things go on when you get your body to move. Every time you use a muscle, it is a signal to that muscle to get stronger. Any effort you put in exerting a muscle leads to burning calories and improving metabolism. If your heart rate goes up, it improves the capacity of your heart and lungs, strengthening these vital organs that are often associated with many diseases. Sweating clears up the pores in the body, letting the skin breathe easily, leaving you with a soft glow that makes you look youthful and radiant. All stretching exercises improve joint strength and flexibility, reducing the chances of an injury. Movement is so integral to our existence that our brain automatically starts releasing feel-good hormones, giving us an amazing feeling at the end of a good workout, which stays with us throughout the day. This not only improves your mental faculties but also leaves you feeling upbeat, making you productive through the day and helping you sleep well at night. Exercise even improves your willpower to say no to tempting but unhealthy food and improves your ability to stay calm in difficult or stressful situations.

Aerobic equipment such as stationary cycles and cross trainers are far better in terms of cardio efficiency and have a lower risk of injury.

And finally, fitness doesn’t need to be limited to a gym routine. One of the most enjoyable ways to stay fit is to play any kind of sport. Each sport requires some strength, aerobics, short bursts of activity, balance and coordination; and often, team camaraderie and a bit of competitive spirit. If you are able to take up any sport and play regularly, it will do wonders for your health, and your body will be thankful for it.

Performance Hack #7: Get Some Sun Think about how you spend the first few hours of your morning. Do you stay in bed and read emails on your phone in a darkened room? Or do you get into an air-conditioned car with tinted windows to keep out the glare of the sun? What you

should be doing instead is getting a little morning sunlight! Studies have shown that getting some sunlight first thing in the morning can stabilise your circadian rhythm, boost your performance and elevate your mood. People who are exposed to sunlight early in the day experience fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression and are less fatigued through the day. So go for a run in your neighbourhood or do some yoga on the terrace every morning, soaking up enough sunshine to keep yourself productive and positive throughout the day.

Performance Hack #8: Eat Mindfully We often speak of mindfulness in meditation, but have you heard of mindful eating? Given that most of us are all about working lunches and Netflix dinners, not to mention skipping breakfast and binge eating when depressed, mindful eating can lead to a healthier lifestyle that can boost your performance journey. Mindful eating is nothing but paying more attention to what you eat, when, how and why. When we eat mindlessly, we don’t pay attention to when we’re full, often eat while we are engaged in a different task, eat randomly at any time, eat alone and eat junk. Mindful eating, on the other hand, involves listening when our body tells us whether it’s hungry or full, focusing completely on eating at regular mealtimes, eating in the company of others and focusing on a nutritious meal while knowing where it came from. These little efforts at paying attention and being thoughtful about the food we eat can truly change our approach to meals and our health.

A healthy body and mind are the foundation on which one can build any serious performance aspirations. If you own a strong and healthy mind and body, you can aim very high and will have the stamina to put in the effort that is needed for any meaningful performance. The right combination of sleep, exercise and a healthy diet improves just about every aspect of your cognitive functioning. It creates a positive impact on your memory, mood and critical thinking, enhances willpower and the ability to stay calm in difficult moments, and helps in maintaining equanimity during the regular ups and downs of daily life. Investing in a healthy body will directly enhance your mental abilities, which is a starting point to aim for excellence in almost any discipline, whether it requires critical or analytical thinking.

Excellence requires perseverance and the willpower to pursue your aspirations. There is plenty of evidence that sleep, food and fitness directly affect your willpower, and the right investments in these can steadily boost your stamina to chase your dreams, and keep you from getting side-tracked by the numerous distractions that are constantly present around us. If you are trying to excel in an area that requires physical effort, such as sport, the need for a healthy body is obvious. But even for a busy professional, a businessperson or a teacher, a healthy body leads to higher productivity. This creates a more meaningful impact during the time invested at work, and this impact adds up over a period of time. Last, but not least, a healthy body will add years and maybe even decades to your productive career, giving you a disproportionate advantage over someone who is slowed down by disease. You can work on multiple careers and keep on renewing yourself if you have a sound body and mind.

If you think about it, our bodies are the only thing that we truly possess. The body and mind are the hardware and software to perform any action. The unlimited potential of the human body is continually put to test by extreme athletes, and their feats should serve as an eye-opener to all of us. By doing something as basic as getting adequate sleep, some movement for thirty to forty minutes a day and eating healthy food on most days of the week, we might be able to create the platform for us from where we can dream big and have the resources to do justice to all those dreams. As important as the body is to long-term performance, a strong mind is arguably even more important. The mind is what determines our motivation levels, commitment, strategies and goals, which it then translates into plans. But compared to what most people know about their bodies, the understanding of the mind is fairly limited. Many of us live with completely avoidable handicaps. What drives our mind and what we can do to sharpen our mental facilities will be the focus of the next chapter. The ancient saying goes, ‘Sound mind in a sound body’. So if you take care of the body, the job is already half done.

PLASTICITY: REWIRE YOUR MIND AT WILL

Performance Hack #9: Train Your Brain To take advantage of the incredible capacity of the mind, it is important to keep it active. Train your mind by doing the

crossword or Sudoku puzzles and use brain training apps like Lumosity and Peak as a workout for your mind. These activities improve one’s memory, logic, verbal skills and more. Challenging your brain in this way can make you more efficient at handling the challenges that you might face on your journey to high performance.

His pursuit led him to the study of mnemonics, a technique that dates back to famous Roman orators. One of the most commonly utilised tools of memory is visualisation. It turns out that while language and numbers are recent developments, humans have been processing images and visual information long before they existed as Homo sapiens on earth. This is why when you meet someone after a long time, you almost always recall their face (‘I have seen you somewhere’ is more than a pick-up line!) but struggle to recall their name. Hence, the parts of the brain dedicated to visual processing are much larger and more sophisticated in comparison to the parts that manage language and numbers. Memory experts exploit this and translate most information into a visual format to remember the details better.

with the right tools, we can boost our memory dramatically. The same goes for almost all cognitive functions like focus, mental math, visualisation and several other skills we often assume to be limited. We can improve almost any of these abilities with the right kind of practice and this is true at all ages, even if the pace of learning might be a bit slow for older adults. The fact that we can boost our brain power almost at will is truly empowering.

As our understanding of the plasticity of the brain grows deeper and more complex, the entire paradigm around ageing and cognitive decline gets challenged. People are starting to become more comfortable about switching careers, learning new skills and staying productive well into their later years. In fact, it turns out that the more engaged we keep our minds, the longer we live.

Performance Hack #10: Take a Nature Walk Nature walks aren’t just for school children. Recent research has found that going for a stroll amidst any sort of greenery can boost your mood, reduce stress and enhance cognitive abilities like thinking and reasoning. Our ancestors spent all of their lives out in the wilderness, and it seems as though there is something in our brains that still responds positively to nature. Even a brief walk through a neighbourhood park or your grandmother’s garden can be truly restorative. Find a green spot near your home and your workplace, and head there for a quick stroll whenever the going gets tough. You can be sure that this will improve your performance.

Our neurons are like clay and can be moulded into any shape, and unlike actual clay, which can’t be moulded further once baked, we can keep reconfiguring ourselves and our brains at will. How cool is that!

fight-or-flight response. When your survival requires an instant decision, your brain skips the conscious brain (i.e. the cortex) altogether and jumps to the limbic system, which immediately releases the adrenaline to get your heart racing and puts you in a position to land a powerful punch or run away as fast as possible in the other direction.

Performance Hack #11: Practise a Mind Dump There is no productivity without a productive system. And just like any other system, you need input data for it to work. Most of us think that we can rely on our minds and our memories, but unfortunately, we are not perfect and often, too busy to keep track of the dozens of thoughts, tasks and ideas in our heads. The best way to deal with all this information is called a mind dump. Simply write down every single thing that’s on your mind on a piece of paper. You can include things to do, things you want to do, the seeds of ideas, and long-term goals. First, set aside some time to just put it all down and then proceed to organise it into lists of things that are actionable or need to be filed away or simply deleted. This method not only helps you organise your thoughts, but also clears the mind and prepares you for a productive day of work.

One of the most common biases is called ‘loss aversion’.

Another common bias is ‘confirmation bias’.

We are familiar with the ‘hindsight bias’.

Another common bias is the ‘belief bias’.

Focus and awareness are two critical elements of performance optimisation, and it turns out that the most effective way to take control of your mind and develop an extraordinarily high level of awareness was discovered in many cultures long before the advent of modern science. This is the ancient practice of meditation,

Meditation is the ancient technique of developing conscious awareness so that we are more mindful of what is going on in our brain and are able to bring our awareness to the present moment, instead of worrying about the past or plotting for the future.

Meditation draws you back to the present, enabling you to channel your attention into what matters instead of wondering about the past or future scenarios without any focus or intent.

We talk about meditation a lot in this book, and while it is a practice of great depth and complexity, in its simplest form, it truly is one of the most effective hacks for productivity and performance. Try an app with a ten-minute guided meditation every morning, or simply chant a single word or sound repeatedly to focus your mind. Make this a habit as science has proven that you will concentrate better, focus for longer periods, feel more positive, control your temper better and overall, just get more work done.

Even though meditation is a simple technique, starting out can be daunting. Most of us are not conditioned to simply sit still and often, the first few minutes can lead to anxiety and even panic. The idea is to start with a short duration. You can start with just thirty seconds of meditation, paying attention to your breath or looking at an object. As your confidence builds up, you can increase the duration. A daily practice of fifteen minutes will go a long way in your overall well-being, as well as in enhancing your performance.

The impact of sleep on the mind is profound.

The hippocampus is highly compromised after a sleep-deprived night and struggles to translate new learning into any permanent skill-building. During the deep phase of sleep, the hippocampus takes memories from short-term memory to long-term memory in the cortex. Once the short-term memory has been cleaned, it is fresh and free to receive new information and hence, the process of learning is a lot more effective after a good night’s rest.

Performance Hack #13: Nap at Noon In an era of sleep deprivation and stress, let’s be honest and admit that we could all use a nap. And naps aren’t just for toddlers and pre-schoolers anymore, as research has proven that afternoon naps can actually boost productivity. Studies have shown that napping can mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation, making one more focused, perceptive and alert when they get back to work. Naps also help in reducing stress and have been proven to boost memory, learning and even creativity. Ideally, naps should last anywhere between thirty to ninety minutes, depending on what your work schedule allows. If you sleep for longer than that, you could suffer from sleep inertia, struggle to overcome the fog of sleep, and end up feeling groggier than before.

As we established earlier, the mind works on pretty much the same principle as the body, i.e. ‘use it or lose it’. This principle can be effectively leveraged to maintain peak brain performance throughout adult life including old age. If we regularly perform mental activities that challenge the mind, they will keep reconfiguring the brain’s circuitry to meet the new challenge. If you challenge yourself with Sudoku puzzles, crosswords or cognitive enhancement games on apps like Lumosity, you are challenging your mind to process new information and build the neural circuits to ace the challenge. Similar effects are at play whenever you read a book as it activates your imagination and brain circuits to process and store the new information. There are many ways to stimulate your brain and most of these tools are readily accessible. If you have a sharp, fine-tuned mind between your ears, there is no limit to how much you can boost your performance. No one has yet come up with a theoretical limit to what our minds are capable of doing. This is a gift that just keeps on giving, provided that you nurture and challenge it the right way.

This is a great story of how cultivating one positive habit and making it a part of your daily routine over several years can lead to the accomplishment of impossible feats—the proverbial overnight success after ten years of hard work. Through such a habit, you keep getting slightly better every day, an improvement that is barely perceptible to the people watching you. The power of small, incremental habits

The world of modern sports is filled with stories of extraordinary performers who stay on the top of their game, year after year, endowed with seemingly superhuman abilities. But behind their immense prowess is the dedication towards habits cultivated over a period of time. These habits keep them in top shape and help in sharpening their skills. Every successful athlete or high-performance executive swears by their rigorous routine—a routine that they wouldn’t compromise on, no matter what. It could be hitting the gym at a set time every day, going to bed on time or not consuming junk food

Both these iconic champions swear by their habits. No matter what the occasion or celebration, both of them politely walk out of any social event by 9 p.m. so that they can sleep on time and be fully recharged for their training in the morning. Similarly, they don’t eat anything unhealthy that isn’t going to help them perform better on the field. You must think that they have some kind of superhuman willpower. But that’s not the case. Not too long ago, their eating habits and lifestyles were not that different from an average person’s habits. But there came a time when they decided to start cultivating habits that were in line with their ambitions, and now these cultivated habits have become second nature. Now these deliberate behaviours happen on autopilot for them, without invoking any particular willpower. As they say, ‘Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.’

Performance Hack #14: Create Your Rituals Why did some of the finest thinkers in history have some of the strangest rituals? Ludwig van Beethoven, for example, would begin his day of work only after a breakfast of coffee made with exactly sixty beans. As weird as it may sound, the significance of rituals like this one lies in the role they play in preparing the body and mind for the day’s performance. When you do the exact same thing every single day, down to the minutest detail, your body and mind respond with the exact same behaviour each time. So, developing little rituals around your work, however quirky or simple, can help you in attending to your tasks with the same focus and intensity every time, bringing out your most productive self.

Habits are the automatic behaviours that the brain develops to save effort. Habits enable us to carry out our essential daily activities—from getting dressed to reversing the car out of the parking lot—without having to think about them, thus freeing up our brain’s resources to reflect upon more complex and important thoughts and feelings. Think of habits as clever time-saving devices provided by evolution so that we can get a lot done without burdening our conscious mind.

Most of our day is determined by our habits, both good and bad. In fact, researchers say that over 40 per cent of what we do is a result of our ingrained habits, and not a result of well thought-out decisions, as we may like to believe. So while we might think that we are quite in control of our day-to-day activities, much of our behaviour is in fact, automatic.

While habits are amazing time-saving devices, they can also act as massive blind spots. The downside of habits is that some of them harm us, and we remain almost oblivious to the very act that may be causing repetitive damage.

Once a habit is acquired, it takes on a life of its own, and without even realising it we end up with a habit for years, decades and even for life. We may very well be no more than the sum of the habits that we acquire over a lifetime,

Performance Hack #15: Aim for Streaks It’s important to build good habits to be able to work productively at whatever you set your mind to. One of the best ways to develop habits is to aim for streaks. In the words of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who marked an ‘x’ on the calendar for every day that he wrote a joke, ‘Don’t break the chain.’ Look at the most important goals in your life currently, and it’s likely that every single one of them relies on consistency. To write your magnum opus, you need to write every single day. To get fit, you need to exercise every day. And you can’t learn a language without practising it, day in and day out. So, work on productivity streaks. However small the commitment, start today and make sure you don’t go a single day without the activity. It might help to have a calendar so your streaks become more visible and motivate you, or download an app that helps you to keep track of your daily activity and overall productivity.

Most of what we may consider as permanent or deep-rooted habits are simply behavioural patterns, which can be broken and completely rewired in a matter of a few weeks or months. Research shows that it takes between four to ten weeks to bring about most behavioural changes, including habits that one may have had for decades. Brain plasticity comes to our rescue after we overcome the initial resistance, and before long, the new habit will be as permanent and essential as any of the old ones.

It usually starts with making a deliberate change known as a ‘keystone habit’. A keystone habit is something that has a ripple effect on everything else. Imagine setting an alarm for 5 a.m. to go out for an early morning run. If you make it to the run on the first day, you feel energised all day, are less tempted to eat unhealthy food, feel tired at night so you sleep early, and wake up again the next morning, fresh and charged up for another run. You repeat this cycle for a few days and weeks, and not only does waking up early become a new habit, but it also ends up changing many other habits along the way, which leads to a complete transformation after a few months.

One can think of habits as tiny computers running on autopilot. Once habits are set, either accidentally or through deliberate choices and efforts, they will keep running the show, day after day. If these happen to be aligned with your long-term goal, you will steadily progress towards it.

This autopilot mechanism is such a powerful part of our lives that it is impossible to work towards outstanding performance without doing a careful inventory of the habits that run our lives, cultivating the ones that are helpful and weeding out the ones that might be damaging to our goals.

There is no doubt that it is hard, but once you understand the mechanism behind habits and use the tools that are most effective for making changes, you will end up with what seems like a magical superpower that can enable you to change one habit at a time. And just by changing a handful of habits, you will be well on your way to putting efforts behind what you really want and value, instead of drifting through life while servicing myriad habits that you acquired through happenstance instead of deliberate choice. Being able to manipulate one’s habits is like having a life-editing tool, which allows you to add what you want, modify what doesn’t work well and strip away what you don’t want in your life. This is nothing short of magical.

Performance Hack #16: Same Task, Same Time, Every Day You might have read about priming the mind, or preparing yourself to perform well every single day. One of the ways to do this is to carve out a specific time to work on a particular task, and then repeat that task at the same time every day. While it seems unlikely that something like this could work, with time, you will discover that you automatically gravitate towards that task at the same time every day. If you workout at 7 a.m. every morning, then you’ll put on your shoes and head out for a run or go to the gym as soon as you wake up, without even thinking about it. Before you know it, your habit will set the tone for your entire morning and skipping the workout will leave you feeling lethargic and disoriented. Or if you want to write that book, sit at the desk at exactly the same time every day. Gradually, this habit will work itself into your daily schedule and you’ll be churning out pages at an amazing pace.

Are all habits created equal? How many habits determine what happens in our daily lives? Well, each of us may have dozens of major habits and hundreds of smaller ones that we may not even be consciously aware of like biting nails or fidgeting with a pen in a meeting. Even though all these habits matter to some extent, and with deliberate focus you can alter almost any habit, what really matters is a keystone habit. Keystone habits are those that have a ripple effect on other habits and pretty much dictate your day. For a college student, a keystone habit might be waking up early in the morning. If they get up late habitually, they end up missing their morning classes, which might lead to feelings of guilt, lower grades and a reduction in self-esteem, reinforcing the self-image of being a bad student, a cycle that keeps repeating each semester. If only this student could get into the habit of waking up an hour before the first class, the entire cycle could be reversed. Another example of a keystone habit is a morning workout. Most people who start their day with a workout or a morning walk feel very positive and upbeat about the day and nothing can bring them down. Not willing to undo the work done in the morning, they are a lot more reluctant about eating anything unhealthy during the day, and each positive choice further strengthens their resolve.

Meditation can be another powerful keystone habit as it anchors your mind in the present and significantly increases your situational awareness.

An example of a bad keystone habit is sitting in front of the television at the end of each day. Before you know it, you might’ve spent many hours in front of the idiot box, mindlessly munching on snacks while watching the drama unfold on screen, which even impacts your emotional state as you echo the emotions of the characters on the screen. By the time you are done, you’ve probably had more junk food than you needed, and are likely to feel guilty about wasting precious hours. You will begin to feel the pressure to complete that assignment that you thought you would finish in the evening, and will end up going to bed feeling stressed and dejected. This will lead to poor sleep quality, and you’ll wake up the next morning feeling low and already under pressure to catch up.