Every person has the desire to be successful. Many people dream of performing at their peak but don’t really know how to do it. Still others think they are performing at their peak when they have so much more potential.
So, what does performing at your peak mean to you? When you think about it, you may come up with ‘doing my best’ or ‘meeting a deadline’. However, ‘doing your best’ might not be your peak, and probably is not, and ‘meeting a deadline’ might come with unwanted and unhealthy stress.
But if you had certain goals to accomplish, identified the steps you needed to accomplish them, and were willing, able and doing what it took to stay focused on these steps and then set out to supersize those goals or smash those deadlines, then you would be performing at your peak.
To help you become successful at peak performance, it is important to have a routine; not get bogged down by unnecessary tasks that you could otherwise delegate and keep a clear head. To achieve this, there are somethings you could do to set yourself up to perform at your peak all the time without stress, overwhelm or burnout.
1. Take Care of Yourself
Whether it is physical or mental peak performance that you are after, the first thing to do is to take care of yourself by:
- eating well (the less processed the food, the better);
- exercising (if this is not something you look forward to doing, try walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes while watching your favourite TV show); and
- sleeping well (best done by ensuring you are in bed at a set time each night and wake up without hitting that snooze button 5 times).
2. Set Clear Goals
Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in America in the early 1900s said “if you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” A clear goal acts as a motivator and keeps you at peak performance.
The human brain is a goal seeking organism. Whatever goal you set yourself, your sub-conscious mind will work night and day to achieve it. Therefore, have clear goals that are measurable in time and space are very important.
You must be able to say how much by when and it should be easily verifiable by a 3rd party.
Fuzzy goals produce fuzzy results. Also, writing your goals increases your chances of attaining it by 56% according to one study conducted by Dr. Gail Matthews.
3. Set and Commit to Your Schedule
Once you know your goal, identify the steps you need to take to achieve this goal. Break it down to small, simple and easy steps. Then schedule to do at least 5 of these steps each day. Then ensure you do the 5 steps you’ve listed every day, no matter what it takes. This commitment to the small steps makes the achievement of the larger goal so much easier.
4. Visualise Your Success
The mind cannot distinguish between a real event and a vividly imagined event. Use this power of your mind to visualise yourself achieving your goals. Experience in your mind what it would feel like if you have already reached your goal. Act as if you had achieved it.
5. Delegate
You may find yourself wanting to do everything because you feel it is easier to do it yourself than teach someone else, or you can do it better or you simply like to have total control over everything. The problem with this thinking is that you could sometimes end up doing things that are not your strengths. You end up wasting time and energy that is better spent elsewhere. Identify these areas, accept you are human and need help and delegate.
A wise person once said “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.” Ponder this whenever you feel reluctant to delegate. Ask yourself if it really matters that you do it all. After all you want to achieve peak performance not average performance.
6. Stay Focussed; Stop Multi-tasking
It has been proven that we cannot multitask. You may think you do, but really you don’t. Doing many things together takes you far more time to complete anything than it would if you did one thing at a time. So, to perform at your peak stop multi-tasking right now.
If you have many projects to take care of schedule time in your day to focus on each project and during that time, give your entire attention to that project alone. This commitment will lead to clarity of what needs to be done and confidence in your ability to complete your project with ease.
7. Be an Eager Learner
An essential habit to cultivate for peak performance is an eagerness to constantly learn. Reading books and articles; listening to experts; being open to ideas; and requesting feedback will help you perform at your peak at all times.
8. Assess Your Progress and Take Corrective Action
Having smaller steps makes it easier to see your progress towards achieving your goal. Asking for and responding appropriately to feedback is also crucial to your peak performance.
Both of these helps you to stay on track, and be able to measure your progress and help you to develop better ways to achieve your goals. When you achieve your goals in this way you become a peak performer.
Use the above steps as your building blocks to achieving peak performance. I suggest that you use them all as skipping any one and taking short-cuts isn’t going to help you in the long run. Consistently doing this will result in you performing at your peak. Let these steps become a habit, something you do unconsciously and easily.
Then as you find yourself achieving your goals more easily, why not push yourself just a little harder and set stretch goals. Then you will find yourself well on the path to achieving your new levels of peak performance.