What to Do

1. Eat Whole Foods
In a 2011 report, it was found that the average adult in the United States consumes 2,000lbs of food every year, exceeding 150,000lbs of food in an average lifetime [1]. Considering that food is a source of fuel for all functions of the body and brain, eating healthy food should be the top priority for everyone, high performer or not.

What you can do:
  • Eat whole foods
  • Potatoes, not French fries; chicken breast, not chicken nuggets, whole fruits, not fruit juice, etc.
  • Eliminate processed sugars
  • Eliminate processed vegetable oils
  • Instead, use olive, avocado, and coconut oils
  • Follow the perimeter shopping rule: Most of your shopping should be on the perimeter of the store, which mostly contains fresh foods such as fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy. Foods at the center of the store have the longest shelf-life because they are the most highly processed
  • Read ingredient labels: If you can’t pronounce the ingredients, you probably shouldn’t eat it
  • 6-ingredient Rule: Typically, if there are more than six ingredients listed, you probably should not eat it

2. Exercise Regularly
The benefits of exercise are remarkable, ranging from hormone regulation and enhanced learning capability, all the way to improved immune systems [2-4] . Even just 150 minutes of weekly exercise is enough to promote drastic improvements in overall health. Sweat-inducing exercise stresses the system enough to take it out of the hormesis, encouraging natural processes to occur that encourage health, growth, and longevity. Studies on the benefits of exercise are abundant, with an overwhelming consensus that regular exercise is one of the easiest and most influential habits to promote optimized health, happiness, and performance.

The alternative, a sedentary lifestyle, has life-threatening consequences. The American Cancer Society referenced a study that suggested that prolonged periods of sitting may negatively impact hormones and alter the immune system’s normal functionality [5]. The study discovered that “prolonged leisure time spent sitting for more than 6 hours per day was associated with a 19% higher all-cause death rate when compared with sitting less than 3 hours per day” [6]. This may be attributed to the lymphatic system, which is a major circulatory system responsible for transporting immune cells and cellular debris for removal [7]. Without a heart to pump, the lymph fluids require movement of muscles and joints to flow properly. Therefore, being sedentary for long periods of time can lead to immunosuppression.

What you can do:
  • Perform 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise three times per week
  • Go for a 15-30 minute walk every day
  • Get up and move around every hour
  • Jumping jacks, squats, push-ups, and stretching are easier ways to do this anywhere

3. Make sleep a priority
For most high performers, sleep is an area of life that is an easy compromise to accommodate more work. However, increasing research demonstrates that poor sleep has more far more consequences than the benefits of the extra hours of the day. In fact, the sleep triggers neural growth and repair for improved brain health and performance while producing critical hormones for physical recovery, including testosterone and growth hormone [7-9]. Perhaps more of an incentive for quality sleep, almost every negative health outcome can be linked to sleep in one way or another [10-12].

To maximize sleep, take your sleep hygiene seriously. Below are a few suggestions to maximize the quality and quantity of your sleep. For more information and tips, check out Episode 005 and Episode 013 (coming soon!).

What you can do:
  • Prioritize sleep/wake consistency: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day
  • Avoid blue light at least one hour before bed
  • Reduce screen time
  • Adjust blue-light levels on screens
  • Wear blue-light blocking glasses
  • Expose yourself to natural sunlight, especially sunrise and sunset
  • Eliminate distractions
  • Remove sounds, lights, and other stimulants
  • Turn phone onto airplane mode or leave in another room
  • Develop a pre-sleep routine:
  • Meditate, read, journal, or find other activities to unwind and prime your brain and body for sleep

4. Drink more water
Very few people hydrate sufficiently. Water is essential for almost all processes in the human body, including essential roles in the blood, brain, heart, and digestive organs [13]. Without water, life on Earth would cease to exist. However, despite common knowledge and acceptance of the importance of water, many people still are not drinking enough [14].

What you can do:
  • Always keep a water body with you
  • Drink a cup of water first thing in the morning and right before bed
  • Aim for 3L or 100oz daily

5. Allow yourself to be hungry
After 25 years of researching aging, Harvard’s Dr. David Sinclair’s best piece of advice to stay healthy longer, is to eat less often [15]. Not eat less, just eat less often. He explains that caloric restriction activates the survival circuit engaging sirtuins, which are cellular enzymes that maintain physiological homeostasis, assisting with DNA repair, insulin sensitivity, neurogenesis (which is the development of new brain cells), inflammation management, and delayed aging, among other cellular processes [16, 17].

In a fasted state, the body switches mTOR (cell proliferation and growth) to autophagy (cellular cleansing). While in a state of autophagy, dead and senescent cells throughout the brain and body are recycled and removed [7, 15]. In addition to the cellular cleansing that promotes longevity and lowers risk of disease, fasting-induced ketosis has been linked to improved brain function in numerous studies [18-20]. Refer to Episode 006 for more information!

What you can do:
  • Occasionally skip a meal, breakfast or dinner
  • Experiment initially with a 12-hour eating window daily
  • Try compressing your feeding window to 10, 8, or 6 hours
  • Occasionally implement a 24-hour fast (dinner to dinner)

6. Breathing, Meditation, and Mindfulness
Significant scientific evidence shows that we have the ability to control hormone and neurochemical levels through breathing alone, with deep diaphragmatic breathing being able to drastically reduce stress hormones and activate the parasympathetic nervous system [21, 22]. Further, through mindfulness and meditation, and active shift in our conscious thoughts, we have the ability to change the structure and function of the brain [23, 24]. Check out Episode 008 for more information!

What you can do:
  • Practice deep, diaphragmatic breathing for 5 minutes every day
  • Meditate daily
  • YouTube, Headspace, Calm, and Smiling Mind are all great sources of guided meditations
  • Attempt an unguided meditation, focused solely on your breath and body
  • Practice mindfulness throughout the day. Pay close attention to:
        • Smells
        • Tastes
        • Sounds
        • Your heartbeat
        • Your breathing
        • Your emotions
        • Your thoughts
  • Spend time in nature
  • Practice gratitude

7. Do something uncomfortable everyday
To grow, as seen in Carol Dweck’s Mindset, we must be uncomfortable; we must be willing to fail [25]. By pushing beyond our comfort level, exposing us to new experiences and challenges, we enable to the potential to grow. Just as muscles need to be stressed in order to grow stronger, our brains and souls must be tested. Leaving your comfort zone regularly is crucial to grow.

In the concept of hormesis, this also applies to cellular functions and health, as seen with many important stressors that in moderate quantities, promote enhanced health and performance. These include fasting, exercise, cold exposure, hot exposure, and sunlight.

What you can do:
  • Have a tough but necessary conversation with someone
  • Take a cold shower
  • Intense exercise
  • For fun, Tim Ferriss recommends going out in public and ask for strangers’ phone numbers [26]

8. Probability Assessment
Special thank you to Diego Giurleo of Lumina Fund Management, LLC for this lesson. To achieve high performance, assess your current situation. Ask yourself three questions.

  1. What do I want to achieve
  2. What is the realistic probability of success?
  3. What can I do today to increase my probability of success?

Once you know what you can do today – and only today – do that. Everything else (past and future) is irrelevant. You do not need to get significantly closer to your goal in one day, but you must get closer every day. Increments of 1% and even 0.1% are enough to achieve massive, long-term goals. Remember the magic of compound interest.

What you can do:
  • Answer those three questions
  • Do something today to increase your probability of attaining your goal
  • Repeat every day

9. Evaluate and streamline your life
Reflect on your life: career, relationships, goals, passions, hobbies, health, finance, and everything in between. Taken from Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week, apply the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) and ask yourself the following two questions [26]:

  1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
  2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?

Focus on eliminating the 20% that creates problems and unhappiness and invest additional time and energy into the 20% that gives you the most happiness and success. By prioritizing and streamlining your efforts, you can make drastic improvements to your life.

What you can do:
  • Reflect on your life, goals, and make necessary adjustments
  • Ask yourself the following questions:
        • What are you doing that is enabling to you to achieve your goals?
        • What are you doing that is preventing you from achieving your goals?
        • What aspects of my life are most important?
        • What aspects of my life are not important?
        • What is good for my health, happiness, and performance
        • What is bad for my health, happiness, and performance
        • What am I missing?
        • What can I get rid of?