Shifting to a Model of Sustainable Performance

Are you constantly in high-performance mode? You probably heard the term hustle and grind, where you just keep working, get as much done as you can, and cram it all in, and sleep when you die. All these things that people say. Well, I did that for years, and I burnt out physically and emotionally twice. Now, you might think straightaway, "Well, what are we going to listen to you for?

You clearly don't know what you're talking about." But let me tell you, it's exactly the opposite of that. I'm able to help you with this because I've lived it. It's lived experience, it's not theory that I'm going to take you through. And in working with people in professional services all around the world, I find still that the two major problems are attraction and retention of great people and burnout.

And working in high-performance environments continually, without doing it in a way that allows you to continue to do that for a long period of time without affecting your health, is the reason that people are burning out. So if that's you, if you're feeling like you'd like to be able to still get all that stuff done but in a way that's not going to be detrimental to you, then you want to listen in right now.

I'm going to take you through some basic understandings of what it is that we need to know and do so that we can shift to a model of sustainable performance. I love the word sustainable. You know, sustainability is used all the time in the context of climate change and energy and those sort of things.

However, when we come to ourselves, we invest more thinking in keeping our phone charged so that we can use it for longer than we do in looking after ourselves. And the reason stems way back in those identity areas that we've talked about. But we're not going to talk about those today. I want to just give you some practical steps that you can take.

Some things to think about, some mindsets to shift firstly, and then some things that you need to do differently so that you can continue to have all the energy that you need to be who you need to be in every area of your life There's three things that I like to talk about in my model of optimizing performance, and they are clarity, capacity, and agility. Clarity in who you are and what your purpose is.

Going back to intention, as we talked about last month. You know, what do you value? What's your vision? What are your priorities? And getting clear around how your career fits in with those. Clarity around expectations. Clarity around the expectations you put on yourself and what you're going to get from others, and what you're going to accept.

Clarity around your boundaries. Clarity around what it is that you need to do, and who you need to do it for. When you have clarity about anything, it clears away the cobwebs and all the noise, and you're able to focus on what's important. And what we're talking about here is sustaining your performance.

You know, people say, "We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time." And in the context of our careers, they take up a pretty big chunk of our life. So we want to be able to sustain that for a longer period of time. So the second thing we need to talk about is capacity. You and I, just like your phone battery, has a limited capacity.

If you're scrolling and scrolling and talking on your phone all day, it's going to run out of battery, and you're no different. And the human brain and body, and the way it works is an amazing thing. However, unless we treat it right, it's not going to give us that optimal performance. So the first thing we need to do is have an understanding that you do have a limited capacity.

It's not a never-ending thing. You've got to be able to turn off, you've got to be able to rest, you've got to be able to recharge. You know, I wear this band on my wrist that tells me whether or not I'm optimizing my health. And you know, it's not the be all and end all, it doesn't tell me everything, but it reminds me whether or not I'm on the track to remain in an area that's sustainable, that's going to help me with my health.

And the third area we wanna talk about is agility. Now, we're not talking about agile leadership and those terms that we talked about a few years ago. We're talking about being able to be flexible, to be able to handle the speed of change. Which by the way, is not getting any slower. It continually gets faster every single year, in my experience.

Being able to navigate through those changes without it taking you out. Being able to think differently, to realize that there's more than one way to do things. Being able to shift and adjust, not multitask, in a strategic way so that we still get the output that we want, not using the old methods that were just high performance and were taking from your health.

So putting those three things together, you are able to optimize your performance. However, to do that, you need to reconcile where you are in a number of areas in your life. And the first one is sleep I have so many people that tell me, "Oh, Grant, sleep's overrated." Well, no, it's not. Your sleep, and in particular, your deep sleep, is regenerative, so the cognitive and physical strain that you put on yourself during the day needs to be recharged, just like your phone battery.

So sleep is important, and sleep hygiene, and being able to go to bed at the same time, you know, pretty well every single night and get a good quality of sleep and making sure that your room's dark and all those things. And you can just Google sleep hygiene or ask your LLM to tell you about sleep hygiene, and it'll tell you steps that you can do.

However, what I want you to realize firstly is that's not a negotiable. Sleep is the reason. The reason I talk about it first, it's the main thing that took me out, or lack of that sleep anyway. The second thing is movement. Now, I'm not going to use that E word because that's not a word that a lot of people like.

However, whatever it is that you enjoy doing that means you're moving your body is really important. They say that sitting is the new smoking, and in fact, standing like I am at my standup desk can even be overused. So having a balance between sitting and standing and moving and making sure that you orchestrate your day so that you're able to do that is really, really important.

The next one is nutrition. What are you putting in? Garbage in, garbage out. You've heard that before. And in particular, your hydration. Your brain needs and uses about 90%, I believe, of all the water that goes into your body gets used up by your brain. And I know for me this is a big challenge, particularly in the colder weather, to remember to continue to put that water in.

The next one is calm. Having some calm in your life. If you're on the go all the time and there's things happening and it's crisis to crisis, then you're not going to be able to regenerate. So what is it that you do to calm down, to relax? What is it that energizes you and brings you back on a level playing field ready to go again?

The next one is connection, and I'm not just talking about connection with people within your career. Who are you connected with at a deeper level outside of your career and outside of your family at home? Having quality connections with people who lift you up is a critical part of sustainable performance

The next one is challenge. What is it that challenges you, that makes you think? And I know a lot of people in professional services go and do another degree. It might be a master's or a PhD, and that's great. However, what is something that you can do that challenges you outside of what it is that you do for a living?

You know, for me, at the moment, it's AI. I love to learn things about AI and, you know, whether it's conversational AI or generative AI, and particularly now agentic AI. I've been challenging myself to learn more about it and to take steps to grow in that area, and that challenge keeps my energy up and gives me something else to focus on.

And the final one is belief. What do you believe in? And in particular, what's your belief in yourself? You know, having a belief that you've got everything within you and around you to get ahead and be able to do the things that you need to do is a critical element of being able to stay up and sustain your performance.

So there's just some things to think about, to shift from high performance alone to a more sustainable model, where you're going to be able to do it more efficiently over a longer period of time and have enough energy to be who you need to be in every area of your life, not just at work. So join the conversation.

Let me know whether or not something in this has triggered for you. What is one thing that you could do differently this month so that you move closer from a high performance towards that sustainable performance? I'm going to post some other things and keep you going deeper on some of these areas over the months to come.

But love you to join in and be a part of it so it's not just a one-way conversation. I'll see you then.