#350： Peak Performance — Elevate Your Game and Avoid Burnout
Episode Stats
Summary
Brad Stolberg and Steve magnus are the co-authors of the new book, Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with a New Science of Success. In this episode, they share how their backgrounds in elite running and business consulting helped them understand the importance of rest and recovery from brain work, and how you can start incorporating recovery periods into your intellectual life that will allow your psyche to get stronger and more resilient.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast when you train
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your body you actually don't get stronger while you're lifting weights you get stronger after
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your training session is over and during your recovery period for your muscles to fully adapt
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and recover during this recovery period you need plenty of food and get plenty of sleep so to get
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really strong you need to take your recovery as serious as you take your training here's the thing
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what's true for the body is true for the mind as well at least that's what my guests today argue
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the names are brad stolberg and steve magnus and they're the co-authors of the book peak performance
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elevate your game avoid burnout and thrive with a new science of success today on the show brad and
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steve share how the respective backgrounds and elite running and business consulting top them the
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importance of rest and recovery from brain work we begin our discussion on how the american ethos
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of 24 7 grind and hustle actually hindered performance in school and work we then dig
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into the science of burnout what it is how it feels and why it happens and then brad and steve share how
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you can start incorporating recovery periods into your intellectual life that will allow your psyche
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to get stronger and more resilient if you've been feeling burnt out from work or school or if you
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simply want to perform better this episode is for you after the show's over check out the show notes
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all right brad stolberg steve magnus welcome to the show great to be on it thanks for having us
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so you guys just published a book together peak performance elevate your game avoid burnout and
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thrive with a new science of success uh before we get into this because it's about uh workplace how to
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how to avoid work burnout in the workforce uh you guys have some interesting backgrounds uh one of
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you is a is a coach for distance runners um the other one who writes about human performance so you
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guys keep brad start off maybe with you your background and then steve and then how you two
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got together to write this book sure so right out of undergraduate school i went to work for the large
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international consulting firm mckinsey and company and i absolutely loved it i was a total pusher
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type a personality really quite ambitious probably a slightly fragile ego too which is a dangerous
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combination to turn someone into a workaholic so um i threw myself into the work and and very
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quickly ramped up and started working 80 to 90 hour weeks and it wasn't really the fault of mckinsey
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and company i mean granted they push people but i was diving in well beyond what i had to and it was
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great for about a year i was completely dialed into my work really thriving felt on top of the world
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was advising ceos of fortune 500 companies at like the age of 22 so i thought i was in a pretty
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good spot but about a year into that into that experience i just started to feel really burnt out
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so emotionally kind of losing motivation and a little bit apathetic asking myself what am i doing
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with my life and then also physically so struggling to sleep even in the six to seven hours i was
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formally sleeping struggling with sleep cold hands and feet so really just kind of this this culmination
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of physical and emotional symptoms made me step back and realize something's wrong like this isn't
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sustainable and the irony is most of my projects at mckinsey and company were in the health care
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industry so here i am advising health care companies on what to do and i'm not very healthy myself
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so um that led me to make a good realization i guess at that point in my life that this just this path
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was not sustainable as it was um so i decided to uh to go back to graduate school and of all things
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study public health and it was in graduate school while studying public health that i became really
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interested not just in the prevention of disease but what it means to thrive and in particularly
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what it means to perform at a really high level kind of like i was doing for that first year but how
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can someone do that and sustain it so then ever since public health school about five six years ago
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um i've been writing about health and the science of human performance and that's where i am today
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awesome and steve yeah it's funny our stories are actually kind of similar pretty similar but in
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completely different domains so i grew up as you said i i coached distance running now and but i grew
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up as a runner myself i uh was a really good runner in high school almost like phenom status so my senior
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year of high school i was the number one ranked miler in the country for high schoolers number like
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three or four in the world for under 20 year olds i ran a mile in four minutes and one second which is
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right off that like magical mystical uh four minute barrier that lives in our sport and um i was running
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and competing at the highest level so i was running professional track mates as a high school senior
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and at that point like my world was running like that's all that mattered i was obsessed with it
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i went to school but i couldn't tell you how i did on grades or anything like that like it didn't matter
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so my my future um plan was okay i'm gonna go to college i'm gonna compete in the ncaa i'm gonna
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improve i'm gonna try and win national titles and then clear in my vision was like olympics and let's go
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for it and given my performances up to that time they were all realistic goals so i did what any
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athlete who had a desire to run or to compete professionally did and i chose my college university
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i mean only almost solely based on running so i was obsessed runner performing at a really high level
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but what happened was i was putting so much into it that i eventually just burned out physically
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emotionally psychologically i was done i mean the fastest mile i've ever run even after you know six
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seven years of trying to run faster is as an 18 year old kid in high school which should not happen
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like no one hits their physical maturity peak as a 18 year old but what got in my what i realized was
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that i got in my own way and that that drive to succeed that um that motivation that internal
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motivation to be great was also the thing that eventually led to my downfall because what what hurt me
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as a athlete and as a person is similar to brad is i was a extreme pusher if i was going to do something
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like it was going to be 110 it was going to be okay this is the work i need to do i'm going to do more
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than that and what i we i quickly realized after uh becoming burnout is is that's not sustainable right
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and you asked about us getting together and i think to write this book and i think that our stories um
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kind of led us to this connection where we both had performed at a very high level um nationally
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internationally but we both had this question as we kind of went through our our second phases of life
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is can you reach that level without having the risk of burnout the drawbacks the mental
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psychological fatigue um can you do it in a healthy sustainable way so it's kind of funny when
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when this book project came about um brad sent me an email who i'd gotten to know through his writing
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uh he sent me an email saying hey i've got this idea of a book book project what do you think
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and i sent an email back like two minutes later and said oh my gosh man like i'm thinking about
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the same thing i went through the same thing and here's like 40 pages of notes that i've been
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keeping in anticipation of doing something on this topic so it was kind of like one of those weird
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life uh happenstances where it was like all right it's meant to be like let's delve into this thing
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yeah what i love about the book is you guys take stuff from sports science and you know the stress
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recovery adaptation cycle we'll get into that a little bit but apply it to the world of you know
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business or your work life you know brad i'm curious you worked for a pretty high performance
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consulting firm why do you think it's so important for people in today's economy to learn how to perform
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at their peak but not just at their peak for you know a short period of time but for the long game
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so i think it's two things i think the first is around just technology and and in the last 15 years
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there's been the emergence of all of these technologies i mean just think about like the
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the growth of smartphones both in their prevalence and what they can do over the last 10-15 years
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so we're always connected and as a result there's always a temptation to do more work and the irony is
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all of these devices they were supposed to make it easier to have some work-life balance right like
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more flexibility but what it really means is that you can just always be working so i think it's more
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important than ever to to understand the importance of kind of reining yourself in and not consistently
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working because if you do consistently work it's just a matter of time you're going to end up like
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i did like steve did um pretty burnt out and if not burnt out then your performance will suffer
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yet at the same time it's a more competitive economy than ever right the same devices that
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allow us to work all the time have really kind of opened things up to a global talent pool so it used
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to be i'm just competing with the people in my community then i'm competing with the people in
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my state then i'm competing in the people with my country in my country excuse me now almost every
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industry is international so there's increased competition there are devices that allow us to work
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all the time so you combine that pressure with the ability to work all the time and the result is a
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lot of people are feeling burnt out um the literature says that it's something between 40 or 50 percent of
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people right now are experiencing burnout what is i mean is burnout an actual thing like it's like a
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psychological diagnosis or is it uh just a way do we describe fatigue what what exactly is burnout
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because we hear it all the time but is it is an act is it an actual thing yeah so it's a good question
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so it is an actual thing and it's i i describe it as kind of the tipping point of fatigue so anyone
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that pushes and works really hard is going to feel fatigue and maybe we'll get into this later but it's
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actually not a bad thing it's a pretty good thing you can't really grow unless you get fatigued and you
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push yourself but when you keep on pushing yourself and you don't respect your your mind and your body's
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need to step back then fatigue spills over into burnout and burnout is more than just feeling tired
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it's really like a loss of excuse me a complete loss of motivation so there's a big difference
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between fatigue and apathy i think burnout is almost closer to depression than fatigue and then
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physiologically um the symptoms of burnout often mirror the symptoms of just stress overload so um like
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i said in myself cold hands and feet inability to sleep frequent headaches onset of bad anxiety if
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you've never had that happen before so a whole range of things that are definitely a step further
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than just being fatigued yeah steve this sounds a lot like overtraining in the world of sports
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science like that's what burnout like it's like a sort of psychological overtraining yeah exactly and
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and you know and that's what i think we realized in in doing this book and coming at it from two
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different angles as my background is in addition to coaching is a as an exercise physiologist so you see
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all these kind of symptoms and these ideas in the sports science world and you realize hey like that
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that person over there burning out from you know working 70 80 hour weeks is just the same as like
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me burning out from lifting too much and um not being in and doing too much conditioning and not being able
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to sustain it and it's actually kind of funny it's like the um the symptoms mimic each other very well
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as brad said the apathy the lack of motivation but you can also see things on like a physiological level
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where where you'll see like either very heightened stress hormones like cortisol through the roof and
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people are more burnout or the opposite side is they just can't like they can't um get any stress
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hormones so that when it comes to get like excited to take on the day it's almost like they've they've run
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out of fuel so they can't get that that natural bump that um allows us to perform at a higher level
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so as i said earlier the book you guys basically took this uh stress recovery adaptation cycle from
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the world of sports science and i love it because i'm keyed into that because i i lift weights and so
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i'm always worried about okay am i adding enough stress am i doing adequate recovery that's how you get
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stronger is that the cycle for those who aren't familiar with it can you describe like
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the stress recovery out of like how does that work in say uh running or weight lifting or in sports and
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how have you guys taken that and applied it to the world of just work so if you think about stress
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recovery adaptation in sport i think that the easiest way to describe it is to think of how you'd
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strengthen your biceps muscle on your arm so when you go to the gym if you pick up way too heavy of a
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weight something that is beyond what you've ever even dreamed of lifting before and you try to lift it
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odds are you're going to injure yourself that's too much stress now the flip side is if you go to
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the gym and you pick up like a two or three pound weight something that hardly weighs anything at all
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you could sit there and curl that thing all day and your bicep's not going to grow it's not going to
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get stronger that's not enough stress so the first part of making a physiological muscle grow
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is to find a weight that is the right dose of stress so it should be something that is very
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challenging takes you damn near close to fatigue but isn't so challenging that you're going to throw
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out your back or tear your bicep tendon ripping it so then the second part of getting a muscle to grow
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is how often you stress it so even if i found that sweet spot weight if i lift weights every single day
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really hard same thing i'm going to get injured i'm going to burn out like literally my muscle is not
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going to recover in between sessions and it's going to fatigue so what you've got to do is you've not
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only got to find that right amount of stress but you also have to allow for rest after you stress the
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muscle so it's really interesting people think that a muscle gets stronger and grows when you're in the
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gym lifting weights but that's not the case when you're in the gym lifting weight you're actually
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tearing the muscle down the muscle doesn't get stronger unless you rest so it's while you're sitting on
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the couch while you're sleeping that's when your physiological growth occurs so you almost want to
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think of it like lifting the muscle is just or excuse me lifting the weight is just applying a
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stimulus but that stimulus only has value if you step away and let the muscle recover to grow now what
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we found is that that same cycle holds true for psychological and cognitive growth so if you think about
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how creativity works and problem solving what what the research shows is that it follows almost the
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same exact cycle so you want to immerse yourself in the work that you're doing and that can be reading
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research um working at the whiteboard you know you name it but the breakthrough moment the breakthrough
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thoughts they tend not to happen when you're actually working they tend to happen when you step away from the
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work and that's because your mind it consolidates stores connects information not while you're
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actively working but when you step away and it's also when your creative engine turns on so i think
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again the easiest to understand example is probably having an aha moment in the shower so there's a
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reason this happens because most people have been working throughout the day and thinking on something
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and then they go shower and the shower allows them to kind of turn off their mind and zone out
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and it's during that time period where they're zoned out that an aha moment can occur same thing
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happens with taking a walk waking up from a nap i mean there are all kinds of examples of kind of
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stressing your mind and then stepping away letting it recover for a bit and then having a breakthrough
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thought yeah and you mentioned like the recovery is probably the most important part of this process
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but it's overlooked not just in sports but in the world of work why steve why do you think that is
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like you've probably seen coached athletes who they're just like and this happened to you it's just
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go go go go grind grind grind i'm going to do crossfit every day i'm going to train every day
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uh and then you know brad you see this in in your your work history just go go like why do we have
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this ethos uh particularly in the united states of just constant grinding right i hate you see those
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memes on instagram like rise and grind right like what's going on there yeah i think i think you can
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hit the nail on the head with it it's just in our kind of dna and our ethos right if you look at
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other countries right particularly some european countries they don't have that same uh demeanor
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right they still work hard all that other stuff but if you look at for example how many vacation
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days are there off days are there even things like their lunch breaks they're not you know 15 minutes at
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the desk they're going to the cafe for two hours you know and if you look at other countries like that
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that ethos isn't there and i think part of the reason it is in the in the u.s is because we have
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this idea that to reach the next level to get where we want to be to reach our american dream
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like it takes work and effort and that is very true like we should be proud that you have to put in
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the work to get better but on the flip side of that is what generally happens is we obsess over
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the idea of putting in work and not because it has better outcomes but because we feel more productive
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right so when i go to when i go to the gym every day i feel like i'm getting better when i stay an hour
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or two after work um after closing time like i feel like i'm doing work the same thing happens
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with multitasking right we mentioned in the book like if you look at the science something like
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98 percent of people cannot multitask like it's just doesn't work in the brain okay so the vast
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majority of us can't but still if you ask most people like they multitask we're at home on the
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computer well you know watching tv while talking to our wife or husband right it's always more things
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than um than we realize and the reason that we choose to do things like that is because it feels
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like we're getting more things done and i think one of the reasons that we wrote this book and one of
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the reasons why we tried to shift that emphasis is that rest as brad mentioned earlier is when you
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grow it's when you get better it's when you adapt so if we can like shift that mindset a little bit
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then i think we'll see better outcomes than just that sensation of effort yeah the the the one quick
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thing that i'd also add in in and it's so it's kind of funny it parallels i think meditation in america
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and steve mentioned like productivity i think that our ethos is so let's be productive so meditation has
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taken on not as like a deep spiritual contemplative practice but a lot of people are meditating because
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the end is that they'll be more productive and i think it's kind of the same thing with rest you
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know in european countries people rest because they enjoy rest but here what i found um in the response
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to this book and then working with entrepreneurs is that the best way to frame rest is to let someone
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know that hey rest should be seen as a part of your work right rest is going to make you more
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productive if you just tell someone to rest because it's going to feel good and it's good for
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their health they're never going to do it steve's point they're going to be scared that they're
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sacrificing work but if you have someone understand that it's actually when you step away and when you
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rest that you're going to do your best thinking and problem solving then all of a sudden rest doesn't
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become something that's separate from the work it becomes a part of the work and people are more
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likely to respect it but i think it all just comes back to that kind of productivity that's
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it's in our ethos yeah that's pretty funny you have to frame rest as work to get americans to
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to do it bingo it's it's funny and it's sad that we're at this point but whatever works
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so let's talk about the stress aspect all right so in long distance running right the way you
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increase stress is intensity going faster or volume the length of running and weight training same
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thing you can increase the weight or increase the amount of reps you do to add stress how can we
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increase stress in our job uh where you know week after week so that we're you know contributing
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to this stress adaptation stress recovery adaptation cycle so i i think it's it's a question that we
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get asked a lot because it's not as clear-cut as you know i was lifting a 25 pound weight now i'm
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going to lift a 30 pound weight but if you think about the difference between a 25 pound weight
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and a 30 pound weight it's really just the next logical step so how i like to think about
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increasing stress in in a professional or um even just in personal relationships but but in a way
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that's non-physiological is to ask yourself what am i doing now where do i want to be what skills what
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capacities do i want to develop where do i want to go in my career and what's the next logical step to
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get there and then i think another helpful way to really hone in on on on what that next logical step
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is is it shouldn't be something that you think that if you take it on you're going to succeed 10
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out of 10 times because that's not that's not going to stimulate growth right that's just kind
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of sitting there lifting the same weight you've always been lifting now the flip side is if you
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take on something that makes you so nervous that you can't sleep at night that you feel your pulse in
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your neck that you constantly are thinking oh my gosh i could fail and if you rate yourself as oh i
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might only succeed three or four out of 10 times that's not good stress either that's like going
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from a 25 pound weight to a 50 pound weight it's probably not going to work out so i like to think
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of it as something that you think that you'll succeed about eight out of 10 times so there's a
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little bit of uncertainty right like you're just not sure but you think that if you really hone in
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and and give it your all you'll succeed and that can be taking on a new project at work it can be
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taking the next step in a personal relationship it can be in my life going from writing articles to
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writing a book right it's not like i went from like a blog to a book it was a very um methodical
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progression and and i think that that's the kind of progression that you'd have in the gym you also
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want to have that kind of progression outside of the gym yeah and steve you guys bring in research
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from like the flow research from i can't say his name i've like i know there's like a special way you
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can say nihay chikamisi i don't know anyways the flow guy mihali chikszentmihalyi we had to learn
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that yeah it's a prerequisite to write a book about this topic right but you guys use that as like that
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what the activities that engage you in flow that gets you in that flow state that's like you know
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you're you're you're pushing yourself once you get there so how do you know like what is the how
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do what are the type of activities that get you into that flow state so it's it's all about what brad
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just talked about and it's all about challenging right it's about like this balance between
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challenge and this fear of like can i do it right and in the book we call it taking just manageable
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challenges right so you only get flow if the stress or the challenge is high enough where it's gonna make
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you be focused and attuned and attention right you don't get flow by accidentally um getting there
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in work you don't get flow by hey i'm just gonna go out for a jog and and walk and you know let my
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mind wander like flow only happens if if there is focus and attention to do that and the only way to
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get there is if you're challenging yourself on the flip side of that it can't be so challenging
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that there's no hope of you succeeding right because if there's no hope of you succeeding
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your mind and your brain's just gonna shut down and be like this is like a failed cause right if i
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go run a race and i go out way too fast that at the start your brain's just gonna shut you down and
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fatigue you early right and the same thing happens in in the work environment so it's really about
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focused on this just manageable challenge idea where you're taking that as brad said that next logical
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step and the way i like to explain it to people is you could feel you should feel a little bit of
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that like nervousness right that little bit of that unease and you're you know where shoulders might go
00:25:13.880
up a little bit and you just feel that sensation of like oh man like i can do this but it's gonna be
00:25:20.160
tough to do right and you you also highlight i love how you brought this research um you know struggle
00:25:26.020
is where skill is built so if you feel like you're struggling you're in a good place because that
00:25:31.000
means you're you've reached that you're you're not it's not so bad you can't do the thing but like
00:25:35.020
it's hard and i guess you bring in research with uh math tutors there's certain math tutors that
00:25:40.920
produce students that do better in math compared to other ones and the difference was some math
00:25:46.260
tutors didn't give the answer right away or show how to do it they let their their students struggle a
00:25:51.980
bit with the problem yeah yeah definitely you know and i think that's again if we look at some of
00:25:56.960
societal norms right now is a lot of times as teachers as coaches as um bosses even whenever
00:26:04.640
we see someone struggling like the the feeling of what we need to do is to step in right like i see
00:26:12.060
someone struggling out on the track as a coach like the idea is like oh i better step in and like
00:26:17.280
correct them right away so that they can learn and what the research shows which you just rightly
00:26:22.300
pointed out is that like growth doesn't come when you're given an answer right away right so if i'm
00:26:29.040
struggling on math and then my teacher steps in and says oh here's how you do it here's the answer
00:26:34.420
like that sends a signal to to me and my brain that says oh okay like if i don't know how to do this
00:26:41.420
it's okay like someone's gonna help me out and the reality is to show value to show growth
00:26:47.780
like we need to struggle and comprehend and try and like figure things out in our mind a little bit
00:26:54.680
before our our brain kind of says all right this is of high importance i really need to figure this
00:27:01.240
one out and then if we step in and get the answer that's fine but it's like really having to struggle
00:27:07.640
is where skills are developed so brad i guess this means uh if you're a boss or a manager you need to
00:27:14.520
let your folks flounder a bit before you swoop in and save them yeah it it again you know i keep on
00:27:22.460
going back to that that gym analogy but you don't want your employees um to just be sitting there
00:27:29.500
lifting the three pound weight all day because they're gonna get bored you want to look out for
00:27:33.780
them and make sure they don't pick up the 50 pound weight way too soon but you want to help them find
00:27:38.960
that that that kind of just manageable challenge as steve said that 25 to 35 pound weight and and
00:27:45.040
struggle a little bit before you come in to help um and i think that as a manager it's a lot easier
00:27:51.800
to help than to let someone struggle letting someone struggle takes a lot more guts but that's where growth
00:27:59.400
um that's where growth occurs right and so this also means you have to be willing to accept some mistakes
00:28:04.980
they're they're gonna mess up and you got to be okay with that and because that's how they're gonna
00:28:09.140
learn exactly in in in context is key right if you've got someone working on you know an enormously
00:28:16.120
important initiative that if it fails it's going to be catastrophic for the company then that's
00:28:21.660
probably a time where you want to lean in and you want to kind of stop the struggle bus before it
00:28:26.920
gets too far down the road but there are very few contexts where that's the case and to steve's point
00:28:33.500
about coaches i think the same is true with managers i think that the inclination is often
00:28:36.900
to step in and help too soon and some of the best managers that i've observed they actually do the
00:28:41.800
opposite they're really good at seeing what their employees don't see so they've got the broad view
00:28:46.960
and they can step in if they need to but they restrain themselves and and they let folks struggle
00:28:51.520
um and i think it's more fulfilling for the employees right if you think about what makes for a good
00:28:57.760
workout you feel like you've really exhausted yourself and you're just kind of content after you're
00:29:02.240
like whoo you know that was tough i gave it my all now i can step away and i think that that's
00:29:07.360
also what makes for a happy workplace and also i guess all the flip side also for the employee
00:29:12.620
don't go asking for help right away you know try to figure it out on your own i imagine it's hard
00:29:18.020
for a lot of younger employees who are entering the workforce where they've had someone holding
00:29:22.940
their hand through college with clear instructions what to do and now they're put in a position where
00:29:27.380
everything's are sort of things are sort of nebulous uh there's nuance they have to figure
00:29:31.260
out on their own yeah there's this thing that i love and it's a lot easier to say than to do but i
00:29:36.020
think a really important skill is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable because it's during those
00:29:43.060
times where you're slightly uncomfortable that you grow so you've got to be comfortable in those
00:29:47.420
spaces and and really the only the only way to learn like what's too much discomfort is to try
00:29:53.920
um but if you don't try then you're just gonna end up on this path where you're going through the
00:29:58.660
motions and that to me is you know every bit is as dangerous as burning out because going through
00:30:05.240
the motions that's like what leads to midlife crisis right steve on this topic of becoming
00:30:10.120
comfortable with being uncomfortable you guys also highlight research that shows how our mindset
00:30:14.700
towards stress can influence whether that stress has a has a positive effect a growth effect or a
00:30:21.640
negative effect so what does that research say about our mindset towards stress yeah so we're
00:30:26.420
used to seeing stress as kind of a negative thing like where hey you know i have to go do this big
00:30:32.700
presentation or this big meeting and you know stressing and anxiety is getting in my way like it's a
00:30:39.380
negative it's going to pull me down but what recent research shows which you highlighted is that
00:30:44.820
what actually matters is how we appraise things so as we appraise it as like this is a going to be
00:30:51.920
a negative then what happens is our body follows so our hormonal shift will occur where we might have
00:31:01.260
high stress hormones and cortisol through the roof and all of a sudden like we're in a bad position to
00:31:07.100
perform but the opposite side occurs if as if we see it as um for lack of a better term a positive
00:31:14.800
so as we see this stressful situation as an opportunity to be challenged to grow to see
00:31:22.280
where my limits lie like then what happens is the body follows in a positive direction so instead of
00:31:28.640
you know cortisol going up through the roof to prepare us for that stress we might see like a
00:31:34.580
hormone like testosterone increase a little bit which kind of gives us that maybe a little bit of a
00:31:40.220
needed boost and um aggression to get through that performance and you see this whether it's in the
00:31:47.100
office place whether it's in presentations or whether it's outside on the um athletic field and
00:31:53.480
actually one of my favorite points of this from a coaching standpoint is that a lot of times when we
00:31:59.680
see someone stressed we go up to them and say hey relax calm down it's going to be okay and actually
00:32:06.340
that's like the worst thing in the world you can do because if you think about it if i come up to
00:32:10.860
someone let's say before they're about to compete in a big game and i say hey relax what that person's
00:32:17.380
mind gets the message it receives is that oh my gosh like i must look super stressed and that's gonna
00:32:25.480
hurt my performance so i need to force myself to relax and what happens is if we force ourselves to relax
00:32:32.300
like our body just goes into this cycle of being more and more stressed because we think stress is
00:32:37.560
a negative so in the book we call it um turning anxiety into excitement so it's about shifting our
00:32:45.240
mindset so that well yes you're gonna feel the same sensations that like nervousness that feeling in the
00:32:52.040
shoulders um because it you know it's a stressful time what you should see is that's an opportunity
00:32:58.920
now as i like to tell people where i work with if you start feeling those sensations of stress
00:33:04.360
all that means is your body saying like all right we're about to take our performance to another level
00:33:10.260
like we need to kick in these hormones and get ready like we're feeling this way because um we care
00:33:17.540
and it matters so let's get ready and go to battle and i think perspective here is also huge right i mean
00:33:25.160
if i think about the times in my life when i actually felt most stressed and kind of like down
00:33:31.020
and not in a good spot looking back i grew more from those experiences than any other experiences
00:33:37.480
so it definitely holds true on a micro scale like steve said but i also think on a macro scale so when
00:33:43.440
you're in a moment where you're feeling really stressed it sucks it's awful don't get me wrong
00:33:47.960
and if you can take that perspective and just kind of remind yourself of hey it's like when i've been
00:33:53.160
through tough times when i've been most stressed those are the experience is that have actually
00:33:57.640
led to the most growth just reminding yourself of that can can really help like shift the narrative
00:34:03.360
and then like steve said your your biochemistry your hormones follow yeah and i loved also the
00:34:08.640
research you highlight how you know managing your expectations about challenges can help you get
00:34:13.960
through the challenge so you know steve you talk about runners like having your runners do some
00:34:18.540
self-talk saying yes this is going to be hard yes this is going to suck and somehow that helps them
00:34:23.720
get through the hardness and the suckiness of a of a hard run yeah it's all expectations you know it's
00:34:29.800
funny how the mind works and how i how the mind and body kind of combine and and work together but
00:34:35.800
our as i said like our temptation is almost always to when we're facing something hard is to downplay it
00:34:42.120
right if i have a big presentation and say like hey i've been in this before like this isn't going
00:34:48.540
to be this stressful or if i have a big hard workout a lot of times what you do is you downplay it and
00:34:53.240
you say okay like yeah it's hard but i've done hard things before and i'm going to be okay and what
00:34:59.820
happens is like your your mind uses that like expectation to judge like okay what's the reality of
00:35:07.460
this is like okay i'm self-talking myself down so that this isn't going to be that difficult so then
00:35:13.980
your mind prepares for a thing that isn't that difficult and then when it becomes really difficult
00:35:18.880
your mind's like oh hey wait a minute like you just five minutes ago were telling me this wasn't
00:35:24.780
going to be that tough so what we actually have to do is do the opposite of our inclination and sit
00:35:30.460
there and say hey this race is going to suck like it's going to be tough it's going to be a challenge
00:35:37.600
i'm going to be on the pain train and i'm going to have to figure out a way how to get through it
00:35:42.860
and what happens is when you shift your expectations like that when the pain starts to come or when that
00:35:48.420
nervousness starts to come like your body and mind are prepared for it and it knows what to do
00:35:53.880
it helps you maintain that edge because i feel like in the so you do take that approach to a pitch like
00:35:58.420
oh it's no big deal i've never done you get lazy can cause you to plateau and make mistakes as opposed
00:36:03.440
to when you have that idea like this is going to be hard uh your your body your mind's gonna prepare
00:36:08.700
your body to just be on its top game exactly 100 yeah no yeah i love um i do that my my weight
00:36:15.580
training like if i know it's gonna be a lift i've done before like no it's still gonna suck it's gonna
00:36:19.200
be uncomfortable it's okay and just push through it and you'll be fine um so besides these these these
00:36:26.980
mindset shifts we can do what can we do throughout the day to ensure that we get this positive stress
00:36:33.780
because we have a lot coming at us there's family life there's fires that come up decisions we have
00:36:40.100
to make every day that add up and you know it increases stress in our in our minds and our bodies
00:36:45.700
so what can we do in our day to mitigate the bad kind of stress and focus on that that growth kind of
00:36:51.200
stress so i i think the first thing in in in if you do one thing this would be the one thing is to
00:36:57.760
try to carve out a few blocks of time even just two to three where you are doing deep focus work
00:37:05.480
so you're not multitasking your phone's in the other room you're distraction free and you're really
00:37:13.140
getting to put your head down and let your mind give its all toward a single objective um that is
00:37:21.700
like the most gratifying type of work and then that's also the quote-unquote good kind of stress
00:37:26.760
that is going to help your brain grow um i think then the second thing would be much along the lines of
00:37:35.400
the first is to just think about the things in your life that are causing stress that are somewhat
00:37:39.980
trivial and try to eliminate those things you know the the kind of cliche example is mark zuckerberg
00:37:47.520
wears the same hooded sweatshirt every day barack obama had the same suit and he wore the same suit
00:37:52.540
every day albert einstein was known to wear the same exact outfit and what they're doing is they're
00:37:57.660
not wasting any cognitive energy and they're not and it's going to sound crazy but stress is stress
00:38:02.960
they're not wasting one-tenth of a percentile of quote-unquote stress to decide what to wear
00:38:07.560
so they've completely automated that decision and what the research shows is trivial as it may seem
00:38:12.920
there are so many small decisions that we make throughout the day that they do take a toll on us
00:38:18.300
so to the extent that you can automate the things that don't really matter you protect your stress
00:38:24.240
budget for the things that do matter and and i'd add on to that is in addition to things that matter
00:38:30.120
and don't matter is it's also about the things that you can control and that you can't control
00:38:35.240
right and if you step back and do like a deep dive on um what causes you stress in the day a lot of
00:38:42.840
those things are things that you have no control and impact over right and if if i can't have an
00:38:48.960
impact on it why am i stressing on it so what i try and do in my own life and suggest to those who i
00:38:55.200
work with is say hey like when something is stressed stressing you out take a step back and ask like
00:39:01.600
okay what's causing this stress can i control it can i alleviate it or impact it in any way
00:39:08.640
and if not then like i've got to learn how to like put that in the back of my mind and move on from it
00:39:14.680
right so this idea of deep work what does the research say and like you know we should set aside
00:39:19.900
blocks of time for that like how far can we go with that until where you know there's diminishing
00:39:25.520
returns like how how much can we actually do that deep work so go ahead steve okay yeah i was just
00:39:32.920
going to say so the research basically says that up to about 90 minutes is the max time out at one
00:39:39.900
instant that you can um you can do deep focus work for now having said that it's going to be highly
00:39:46.980
individual so what we suggest is like keeping track of it when you start doing some deep focus work
00:39:53.740
at first and say like hey when does my mind start to wander when do i start feel that urge to like
00:40:01.280
go check my cell phone or go get up and do something else like that is your brain telling you in terms of
00:40:08.780
fatigue that i'm getting tired and i'm not going to be able to sustain this uh very much longer it's no
00:40:15.840
difference than when you go lift weights and you're on rep number eight of ten and you're feeling that
00:40:22.320
fatigue that's your brain telling you like hey i'm not going to be able to do this much longer so step
00:40:27.960
one is like paying attention to it and figuring out where your individual zone lies but most of the
00:40:34.400
research says between 60 and 90 minutes is about the max that you can push that before you need some sort
00:40:40.220
of uh break to step away but it's it's almost like when you're um you're doing any sort of intense
00:40:47.080
exercise right the more intense it is then the shorter that time frame goes before you need a
00:40:53.020
break to recover so that you can repeat it again so let's talk about recovery we mentioned earlier
00:40:57.840
like recovery is where the growth happens it's not when you're training not when you're lifting weights
00:41:02.440
not when you're running and it's not when you're working really hard on a presentation so for example
00:41:07.400
in the world of sports recovery primarily is just like eating enough food getting enough sleep
00:41:12.480
letting your muscles rest what does recovery look like in our professional lives and brad what do you
00:41:18.300
what's your take on that so i think it's two two really important things the first is letting your mind
00:41:24.720
wander throughout the day and then the second is sleep so starting with letting your mind wander
00:41:31.840
there's a wealth of research and i touched on this a little bit earlier that shows that the way that
00:41:37.980
breakthrough thinking and problem solving occurs is that it's only after we've kind of delved into
00:41:44.780
work and then stepped away that our brain that the creative network in our brain fully comes alive and
00:41:50.760
turns on there are studies that show that taking a shower which isn't so pragmatic for people midday
00:41:57.240
can help spur that kind of mind wandering that leads to creative thinking and problem solving
00:42:01.740
um also taking a walk meditating listening to music really just anything that kind of allows you to
00:42:10.300
turn off your effortful thinking conscious focus mind um because what the neuroscience shows is that the
00:42:17.040
brain has two networks in one network it's called the task positive network and that's the part of your
00:42:24.000
brain that is on when you're doing deep focus work when you're effortfully consciously thinking of
00:42:28.380
something the other part of your brain is called the default mode network sometimes it's referred to
00:42:33.420
as the subconscious and that's the part of your brain where creative thinking and associative linkages
00:42:40.020
occur and what the research shows is that it's kind of a zero-sum game so when you're effortfully
00:42:45.360
thinking and working on something that more creative side of your brain it doesn't light up in in neural
00:42:51.640
imaging like when they look at people's brains it kind of stays dark so in order to access that more
00:42:56.580
creative side of your brain you have to turn off the conscious effortful thinking side of the brain
00:43:02.040
and the way to do that is to let your mind wander so again the activities that i mentioned walking
00:43:07.680
meditation listening to music looking at pictures those are really just conduits to letting your mind
00:43:13.600
wander um those would be the types of breaks that you'd want to take throughout the day so in between
00:43:19.440
periods of deep work then the second and equally if not more important way to rest is sleep so i think
00:43:28.700
it was in early 2000 some researchers in harvard did a groundbreaking study that showed that it is
00:43:35.580
during sleep that we consolidate link and retain all the information that we were exposed to throughout
00:43:44.200
the day so if you think about a normal day we are exposed to so much like there's the stuff that
00:43:49.580
we're effortfully thinking and working on but then there's also like the color of the car in the
00:43:54.100
parking lot and the person that i saw at the grocery store like just constant stimuli coming in through
00:43:59.280
all of our senses and obviously we don't retain all of that because if we did our brains would be
00:44:04.700
completely overcrowded so the brain does the work of figuring out what to store and where to store it
00:44:10.020
when we sleep and that's why sleep deprivation can lead to just like terrible cognitive performance
00:44:17.480
poor self-control i mean you name it almost every single cognitive or psychological function goes down
00:44:24.060
when we don't sleep so back to kind of like putting the the american ethos around it a saying that i've
00:44:30.820
adopted coming out of this book is that sleep is one of the most productive things that you can do
00:44:34.720
because when you sleep your productivity is going way up and i mean i think everyone has had an experience
00:44:41.720
where they are they have some kind of deadline the next day and they're pushing on it late at night
00:44:47.160
and then they finally just say screw it i need to go to sleep and then they wake up the next morning
00:44:51.420
and they redo whatever they did because there's so much fresher and that is like the prime example
00:44:56.540
of the importance of sleep recover so besides these little mini breaks you take throughout the day
00:45:01.700
taking a walk maybe taking a nap getting out in nature what role does like you know just taking
00:45:07.640
time off from work completely play in the recovery part of the stress recovery adaptation cycle in our
00:45:14.200
professional lives so i think it's it's very similar again to to in athletics so if you look at the best
00:45:20.200
athletes um particularly endurance athletes who are really taxing their bodies most of them after their
00:45:27.360
most important big peak races they take between two and five weeks off where they don't do anything
00:45:32.920
they just allow their minds and bodies to completely recover and that to me is what a vacation should be
00:45:39.780
so to the extent that one can time their vacations to follow like the culmination of a big work or a big
00:45:46.420
project that's great because otherwise you're just bouncing from one big stress to the next and all that
00:45:51.880
stress is compiling without an opportunity to kind of um you know deflate a little bit and come back
00:45:58.680
to homeostasis um and then the second part about vacation is research shows that uh just you know
00:46:06.000
taking two days off can prevent the onset of burnout and for someone that is actually in the midst of
00:46:11.720
burnout and experiencing it a seven to ten day vacation can reverse it and so steve how do you how do you
00:46:16.860
how can people make this case to their boss that oh hey mr boss man i need to take more breaks during
00:46:22.180
the day and also need more vacation uh do you guys have any uh case studies where an organization
00:46:30.780
a business allowed their employees to you know unplug from work and it actually increased productivity
00:46:36.240
yeah i wish i had the magic answer for convincing your boss but um what we try and do is give people the
00:46:43.300
data um to show that hey this isn't me being quote unquote lazy this is me trying to make sure trying
00:46:50.760
to increase my productivity for you so if i'm able to step away during the day if i'm able to recharge
00:46:58.120
with the vacation afterwards like i'm going to come back refreshed and more productive and there was
00:47:04.160
actually a um research case study done with a consulting group where they took their um high level
00:47:12.100
consultants and essentially said hey like at first we're going to give you one night off per week so
00:47:18.840
not not a day off from work just like one night where you go home and like you got to put your work
00:47:24.820
away and and that's it and the consultants in this case study freaked out right they thought like oh how
00:47:32.260
are we going to get our work done like i'm going to get bad reviews i'm going to get fired like all this
00:47:37.740
negative stuff and even the people the bosses who accepted to do this study were kind of worried and
00:47:43.920
freaked out about it um but what ended up happening is that their productivity and their ratings afterwards
00:47:50.920
for this uh the work they were doing went up right and it increased with them just taking one night
00:47:58.180
off a week and what they ended up doing is follow-up study to expand this a little bit increase that
00:48:03.820
recovery and you saw again performance improvement so i really think it's this mindset shift that needs
00:48:12.120
to be had that we need to have that makes us realize that you know if i'm working all the time at
00:48:19.880
20 of my max capacity then what good is that like wouldn't you rather have me work you know five days a
00:48:27.120
week at 100 percent than every single day every single hour at 20 and that's how we have to start
00:48:34.260
looking at this recovery is work that's it rest is a part of the work i mean that's how we're going
00:48:40.660
to sell it here i think that's the only way to sell it and to be totally honest like i'm not above
00:48:46.420
that that's how i sell it to myself yeah so you guys in the book uh what that was interesting you get
00:48:51.880
high level and you talk about the importance of having a purpose and facilitating this stress
00:48:58.400
recovery adaptation cycle so so brad how can figuring out a bigger purpose help us through this cycle
00:49:05.260
so this is some of the most fascinating research in the book to me and i'll start in exercise science
00:49:13.340
so in exercise science there are two predominant theories of fatigue one is called the central governor of
00:49:20.980
fatigue and what the central governor of fatigue says that fatigue happens in the brain before the
00:49:26.420
body so the brain literally shuts down the muscles when the muscles have more to give and the brain does
00:49:33.600
this because it is an evolutionary programmed protective mechanism it's saying whoa you're pushing to the
00:49:39.280
extreme if you push any harder like you might do some real damage and get hurt so the way that they've
00:49:45.760
studied this is they've had people go into a gym and lift weights do leg curls till they were completely
00:49:52.140
tapped out till they said i cannot do one more curl their legs are quivering and shaking and then they ran
00:49:57.260
an electrical current through the muscle and the muscle contracted with full force so what that told
00:50:02.340
the researchers is that the muscle the energy system in the muscle still had plenty to give but the brain
00:50:08.080
was putting the brakes on early by creating the sensation of fatigue so hold on to that thought
00:50:14.240
that's the central governor of fatigue then the other model of fatigue in exercise science is called
00:50:18.960
the psychobiological model it's very very similar what that model shows is that at any given point
00:50:25.020
of physical exertion our brain is doing an evaluation and weighing perception of effort so how hard what
00:50:32.560
we're doing feels versus motivation and when perception of effort is greater than motivation we slow down
00:50:38.340
but when motivation is greater than perception of effort we keep on pushing so both of these two
00:50:45.280
predominant theories come at the same thing from the same place which is that if you have a really
00:50:49.860
strong motivation then you can push your body further and what we found is again kind of the mo of
00:50:57.180
this book when you look at the management literature the same thing occurs outside of the gym and in the
00:51:02.360
workplace so employees that tend to perform best and um also have long sustainable careers they tend to
00:51:10.240
find meaning in their work and in particular they tend to link their work to some sort of greater cause
00:51:15.040
and it's the same phenomenon that's happening right if you have that motivation that's beyond yourself
00:51:20.100
something greater than yourself you're not so worried about protecting yourself you're willing to put in
00:51:25.280
more work because there's there's something else there um and you know i could sit here and talk about the
00:51:30.700
research all day but i think the easiest way to explain it is just to ask folks when when you're like
00:51:37.760
really working hard putting an effort uncomfortable if you're doing it for a paycheck or you're doing it
00:51:44.760
because you know that someone else is going to really benefit and it's going to make an impact on
00:51:48.360
someone else's life which way are you more likely to do the work and almost everyone says the latter
00:51:54.700
right it's like for that greater cost and again what's happening is in our brain there's a little switch
00:51:59.840
that says i'm not so concerned about protecting myself i'm not so concerned about being uncomfortable
00:52:05.140
because i'm doing this for something beyond myself right so that purpose could be uh say you're answering
00:52:10.800
emails it's really mundane uh these emails help me you know help people like the clients we serve or it could
00:52:17.740
be like this is how i you know support my family it could be anything totally i have a very interesting
00:52:22.400
example with the emails um so you know i before i started writing i was in a job where i managed a
00:52:29.260
a big spreadsheet it was a report and it got published every single month and is in a health
00:52:34.100
care system and without fail every month after that report went out my phone blew up with calls from the
00:52:41.700
local leaders asking me endless questions about the report and i'm sitting there thinking like i cannot
00:52:48.460
believe that you're asking the same questions month over month like this is so straightforward
00:52:52.320
nothing has changed and what would happen is the phone would ring and i'd have that attitude and i'd
00:52:58.420
probably give shitty answers and i wasn't performing at my best i wasn't happy and then started getting
00:53:04.060
into this research and i had this this switch or this excuse me this this kind of um flip switched
00:53:09.920
in my mind which is that report the contents of that report and those managers it had direct
00:53:15.940
impact on how patients in this health care system were being cared for so on my phone i took a little
00:53:21.040
sticky note and i wrote this report saves lives because if you trace it all the way to its end it
00:53:27.500
truly does and then when the phone would ring my entire attitude shift i spent more time with these
00:53:33.260
people i i was feeling more fulfilled and happy same report same phone calls but just reminding
00:53:39.040
myself of what the real end was completely shifted my relationship with it and are there exercises you
00:53:44.760
recommend people go through to figure out their purpose steve yeah so we outline a series of um
00:53:51.360
exercises in the book to to do that and what it really comes down to is is figuring out almost doing
00:53:58.080
a deep dive of what really matters in your life right and then looking at what your core values are
00:54:05.420
right and assigning hey this is what is important to me and this is what i i value in life and then from
00:54:13.640
there it's about taking a step back and saying like okay out of these core values like what is the most
00:54:20.280
important thing to to me like how do i rank these core values um among things to see like what really
00:54:27.640
matters and then the final step of that is to get to what we call the purpose statement so taking those
00:54:35.360
core values and seeing how how much importance they have to you and then sitting down say like okay
00:54:41.840
how do i fit this into my greater narrative of life right what is the purpose of this and it's not that
00:54:49.980
everyone needs some grand answer um and grand overarching purpose but there has to be a reason for doing what you
00:54:59.260
are doing so it could be something as simple as brad uh mentioned there with his report and phone call and
00:55:05.840
similarly the research has shown that if you take um garbage man for example and you say hey this is
00:55:15.500
this you're not a garbage man like your your title is you know sanitation officer and you're helping to
00:55:23.000
keep the streets and houses clean and safe and all that and helping to eliminate the spread of disease
00:55:28.460
what happens is their you know overall enjoyment of their work actually goes up and they no longer see
00:55:35.580
it as a um as a mundane task that has no meaning so it's really about trying to figure out and frame
00:55:42.700
how you can bring meaning to whatever work it is that you're doing well brad see this has been a great
00:55:49.680
conversation where can people go to learn more about peak performance so the book is available on amazon and
00:55:56.500
wherever else books are sold so all booksellers and then the book's website is www.peakperformancebook.net
00:56:04.380
and then both steve and i are fairly active on twitter i'm at b stolberg and steve is at steve magnus
00:56:11.620
awesome brad stolberg steve magnus thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you
00:56:16.160
thank you my guests today were brad stolberg and steve magnus they're the author of the book
00:56:20.140
peak performance it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more
00:56:24.060
information about their book at peakperformancebook.net also check out our show notes at
00:56:28.540
aom.is slash peak performance where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into
00:56:33.660
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:56:50.960
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the
00:56:54.580
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00:57:02.280
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00:57:06.040
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