Obstacles and Solutions to High-Performance
THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE CHALLENGE
Achieving and maintaining High-Performance is a consistent objective across our individual and team coaching conversations. Attaining it moves us from simply delivering on commitments (which is often good enough) to achieving unprecedented results via efficiencies, high productivity ratios, and optimised skills.
Sadly, it’s the ‘good enough’ that often stands in the way of high-performance. There is no real or perceived enemy, no existential crisis that will galvanise us into action. We are simply doing OK, and the spark to perform better remains unlit. Procrastination is the challenge here, we will put off things until they are critical. By shaping what high-performance could look like, and what it could mean, we start to have a vision to move towards (and an existing performance level to move away from). Then, by shaping the consequences of not achieving the vision, we create the momentum.
However, attempting to go from satisfactory to outperforming overnight is mostly unrealistic, and we are highly likely to fail by focusing on a goal that is currently way bigger than us. Humans get bored easily too, even with smaller, relatively straight-forward performance activity – think of the gym sessions that tailed off, the research or study that remained unfinished, the New Year’s resolution that lasted until February, the whole foods that returned to processed meals, the reignited friendships that went quiet again. All hugely valuable but that require extra effort, consistency and discipline.
THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE SOLUTION
Small Wins
Focus on small daily wins, your 1%’s. These small wins add up to cumulative success and major accomplishments. Equally, making daily progress on meaningful work that has personal value boosts out intrinsic motivation, helping us to feel more positive about how we are spending our time, which in turn generates new levels of productivity and creativity.
By all means have a view of where you want to get to (humans are, after all, goal-striving animals), as this ensures that we stay on track and notice the deviations. But, if we simply focus on the outcome, the pathway is unclear, it’s long, and it’s littered with distraction. Focus on the effort, the input, and the outcome is comfortably achieved.
The first small win is the decision to make progress, celebrate that first. Then by achieving the next small win, you are already in exclusive company, most well-intentioned people don’t even get to that point.
Consistency
Our bodies and minds respond well to consistency. But we are often tempted to run before we can walk. Performing a new activity just once and then moving on to the next milestone is unlikely to cement a habit or routine. Repeated performance secures a new unconscious level of competence (and it doesn’t necessarily require 10,000 hours, just enough to absorb is as our new normal). It will feel slow, it will feel mundane, but hold onto the fable of the tortoise and the hare. This is the tortoise moment, hares are idiots at this!
High-performance doesn’t appear overnight, we must be ready to embrace the hard work, potential discomfort, and sacrifices required to get there. Remember:
- Reading 10 pages per day is 15 books per year
- Saving £10 per day is £3,650 per year
- Running 1 mile per day is 14 marathons per year
- Progressing by 1% per day equates to being 37x better per year
Micro-Failures
This is about honing the willingness to fail, knowing that the juice is in the learning. Failing can help us leverage drive, as well as cultivate characteristics such as resilience, perseverance, and risk taking.
But failing can feel dangerous. Some of us are intimidated by it, fearing that we might appear incompetent or that we lack the required strengths. This paralyses us to the growth that we seek and aspire to, keeping us stuck.
How about reframing ‘failure’, a word synonymous with negative consequences? ‘Attempts’ suggest that we will continue to try, reflecting on the last ‘attempt’ to inform the next one. And reflecting on failures and learning from them is time well spent when aspiring to high-performance. The phrase ‘It’s not how many times you get knocked down but how many times you get back up’ is hugely unproductive, incomplete at the very least. Spending time understanding how we got ‘knocked down’ ensures that, when we do get back up, we are a stronger and smarter target to knock down again. If all we are doing is proving to people that we can get back up, we’re not really making progress towards high-performance
Aspiring to personal and team High-Performance keeps us agile and learning. We remain humble enough to try, fail, reflect, and try again. We are willing to put the work in, more than once, and are open-minded to alternative solutions. Talk to us about your High-Performance aspirations, it would be a pleasure to help!
