Book Review: Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness

Last year I read the book “Do Hard Things” by Steve Magness, so “Peak Performance” showed up on a list of books you might like in some internet search that I was doing, and I’m glad that it did.  “Peak Performance” written by Magness and Brad Stulberg, takes many of the ideas that I have read about over the past few years and puts them all together to help the reader come up with a way to perform at their best, whether that be mentally or physically. 

The book starts with this premise, “stress + rest = growth”.  The authors define stress as pushing yourself just past your comfortable limits.  They call this “just manageable challenges”.  If “you feel fully in control” of the task, then you should make it harder.  But if a task is unattainable then you need to dial in your expectations.  The authors discuss defining your purpose and having concrete objectives.  There were a few key points in this part of the book that really stood out to me. The first is that you need to have complete focus on your task.  Which means being present and eliminating distraction.  Here the authors also discussed the idea of multi-tasking and the fact that it is actually more effective to focus on one thing at a time. 

The book then discusses rest.  Many people find it hard to let themselves rest but if we don’t give ourselves sufficient rest time then we won’t be able to put our best effort into our goals and we run the risk of burning out.  We need to learn when our optimum work time is and when we need to step back and take a break.  Some rest might be just a short break but sometimes after completing a longer more daunting task we might need to take a longer rest.  This section of the book also discusses the importance of prioritizing sleep and ways to help you get better sleep.

The final section of the book discusses having a purpose.  Here the authors discussed that for your purpose to be truly meaningful your purpose needs to have a greater purpose than yourself.  You are more likely to push yourself if you are doing something for someone else.  The book ends with ideas on how to help you set your purpose.  There is a summary at the end of the book of the key points throughout the book.  It was nice to have that to reinforce the ideas from the book. 

Throughout the book the authors give you “Performance Practices” or ideas for things that you can do to support the ideas that they are discussing.  In this book the authors present many ideas from many of the books that I have reviewed the past few years.  A few examples of this are Carol Dweck’s work on the importance of a growth mindset, Kelly McGonigal’s work with stress and Angela Duckworth’s ideas on grit.

The book is easy to read and gives the reader ideas that you can start putting into practice immediately.  If you are getting ready to start a new task, or maybe you are experiencing some burnout and need some motivation I think this book has some great insights and practical ideas that could help all of us as we try to achieve peak performance.

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