Founders - What’s Your Peak Performance Recipe?
What we bring to work depends on our own health and well-being.
For founders, this is critical since the entire operation is depending on you.
Ask almost any investor out there and she will list “strength of the founder or founding team” as a top reason for making an investment.
Yet, we constantly see founders take in funding while simultaneously throwing their own health and well-being out the window. This is both counter-intuitive and counter-productive. Check out our post, Time to Call Bullshit on Tech’s All-Nighter, Multi-tasking Culture, for more on this.
As a founder, your job is to bring your best self to work - to walk into your office every morning as healthy, energetic, optimistic, creative and productive as you can possibly be. Said another way, your job is to optimize yourself, and your company, for peak performance.
Deciding you no longer have time to sleep or eat healthy or take a Sunday off is not going to cultivate your best performance over the long haul. Nor will it do so for your team, who are watching and mirroring your behavior.
Most people aren’t quite sure what makes them perform at their best. The key is to be intentional about your needs and prioritize them.
So, to get you started evaluating what makes you operate at your absolute best, here are some questions to ask yourself:
1. How much sleep do I need?
2. How much family time do I need?
3. How much exercise do I need?
4. How much social time do I need?
5. How much break time do I need?
6. What is my optimal morning routine?
7. What factors within my control contribute to me being in my FLOW state at work?
8. What factors within my control detract from me being in my FLOW state at work?
By answering these questions (check out the peak performance worksheet we have created for you below), you can start understanding yourself better and begin making tweaks where you might need them.
Keep in mind, there will absolutely be days and weeks in your startup journey where you don’t meet your needs. The goal is to know your Peak Performance Recipe and to manage yourself towards optimal performance over time. We guarantee that doing so will make you not just a better and happier worker, but also a better and happier human.
