You Are A High Performance Athlete

We are all high performance athletes. That’s nature’s design. We were not built for sedentary office life, long shifts, or constant stress fueled by an endless supply of low quality processed food.

Evolution built us to live like lions. Professional athletes’ lives most closely mirror this natural routine.

Athletes usually train with clear challenging goals for 4-5 hours per day. The remainder of their days are focused on true recovery and sleep. They compete for a season, or at select events through the year.

The average worker bee spends 8-12 hours per day sitting a desk in a stressed, task-switching cognitively draining routine. Competition is daily. This is followed by poor recovery and poor sleep because their minds are still at work. Or, worse yet, emails and texts continue to roll in.

Most of us don’t have the luxury of stepping out of our day jobs into the NFL or X-Games, however understanding our lives are out of sync with nature is the starting point for change.

We can still optimize our lives to get our biology working for us. A life in flow will be the net result. Downstream lies effortless action, health and a calm mind.

This week’s action

Find 3 hours for undisturbed work. AM hours are best.

Close your office door. Turn off all notifications and, if possible, keep your smartphone out of the room.

Communicate this to your boss and team members.

Pay attention to the discomfort. Don’t worry. Guilt, FOMO and missed validation will wear off. Over time, you’ll develop an aversion to all the distraction.