You Are Not at Your Limit: The 26 Heuristics of High Performance

How to strip away the noise, drop the ego, and finally get out of your own way.

We often misunderstanding the major role in coaching. We often think it’s the workouts, tactics, or technique that make the difference. Look no further than endurance coaches obsessing over physiology, and team sport coaches becoming play calling gurus. That stuff matters.

But, to get the most out of ourselves, to help folks reach their potential requires something a bit different. We’ve got to help people get out of their own way.

If there’s one truth, it’s that none of us every reach our potential. We always have more in the tank. It’s the basis of exercise sciences theories of fatigue. Our brain shuts us down (or the effort convinces us to do so) before we are truly at empty. And for good reason, we don’t want to push until we die. But it’s not just physical danger that our brain protects us from, it’s from other threats as well.

It’s ego, fear of failure, fear of embarassment or letting people down, status anxiety, and societies push towards validating ourselves through achievement and accolades. All of these create an environment where we often default towards protection instead of exploring what we’re capable of. It’s the kid in school who doesn’t study, so that if he gets a poor grade, he can say “Well, if I tried more, I would have aced it.” It’s the runner who says, “I haven’t started speed work” to protect their ego from getting beat in a race.

We all self protect. Much of the job of a coach is to get people to drop those protections, just enough, so that they can start to explore their limits.

Here are 26 insights and heuristics I’ve collected over the years that help us do just that, to put us in a position where we can inch closer to our limits:

1. Success causes us to narrow toward obsession, which helps in the short term, but backfires over the long haul. Cultivating perspective is the antidote

2. You’re only as good as those around you. Surround yourself wisely

3. Hard mindless work is easy. Hard intentional work is hard.

4. Be deliberate on your work AND recovery. We’re good at the former, not the later.

5. It’s easy to major in the minors. Keep the main thing the main thing.

6. Resist the urge to always step-in. Let people wrestle with problems.

7. Coach people up. Teach them the skills. Then let them do their job. Resist micromanaging.

8. Complex to simple. Chasing complexity fools you (and others) into thinking you are on the right path.

9. Work on eliminating. A good book is made great by cutting the mess, not by adding more writing. Same goes for most things in life.

10. Think ecosystem, not egosystem. Raising your whole environment up will life you up as well.

11. Know when you are building and when you are maintaining. We can’t grow in every aspect all at once. Going into maintenance mode, allows space to grow elsewhere.

12.Use your environment to help you. Create your own home-field advantage for whatever tasks you care about.

13. Find the right state. Figure out how to prime yourself for the work you want to do.

14. Counterbalance your strength. If striving or pushing is your skill, then you need to learn to be content. Our strengths often become our downfalls. Prepare for that.

15.Learn how to turn it off. Don’t carry your work home. Don’t go nuts during the family monopoly game because you think you are competitive.

16.Diversify your sources of meaning. If one thing is the only thing, you are setting yourself up to be fragile, to overreact to a loss

17. Run your race. The comparison game never ends well. Focus on executing your process

18. Sometimes quitting is the tough (& right) decision. Self-awareness & quieting your ego allows you to know when to quit.

19. Create Space, Stay in the moment, Focus on one thing at a time

20. When it gets tough, don’t fight, relax.

21. "Win or nothing" is a projection insecurity. Life is about being secure in giving your all. Regardless of where that puts you. Those who understand what it takes get that. Those who are insecure worry about proving their worth.

22. Consistency over intensity. It's about stacking week after week of solid work.

23.Under preparation is a coping strategy for stress. It allows you to protect your ego because you didn't 'try.' Actually putting forth effort, requires being okay confronting your limits

24. Failure is inevitable. It’s going to hurt. But the best transition to see it as informational, instead of self-defining.

25. Practice gratitude. Take the time to appreciate the good things in your life, no matter how small they may seem.

26. Bet on yourself

The common thread here is simple.

We often complicate performance with ego and insecurity.

The goal isn’t to add more tricks or hacks. It’s to strip away the noise.

Get out of your own way and let the work speak.

-Steve