6 ways to think about high performance that aren’t a gold medal

My mum always told me to 'have fun' at sporting competitions. 'Winning is fun,' I'd always reply. It's a mindset I've had to update.

Braids marched in perfect rows down my head. 

Hairspray had been applied to my head, and sprayed on my butt to make my leotard stick.

Pristine new white socks were laid out.

Routines had been visualised hundreds of times. 

Stretching started exactly seventy minutes before they corralled athletes.

Warmups were carefully planned down to the second.

I was ten years old. 

Already, I had trampoline competition mornings down to a military structure. 

‘Have fun!’ My mum always said as I left.

‘Winning is fun,’ I would reply.

And it is. 

I’ve spent 30 years of my life as an athlete doing everything I can to win. There is no feeling like standing on top of the podium, the weight of gold around your neck, and the national anthem playing just for you.

But if we limit our definition of high performance to only gold medals, we aren’t going to achieve it very often. As humans, high performance means more than winning. 

There are 6 other ways you can think about it.

1. Speed - Rate of improvement

2. Capability - Top end ability

3. Consistency - Improving your worst

4. Capacity - Increasing output

5. Pressure - Performing when it counts

6. Longevity - Increasing performance span

1) Speed - rate of improvement

The snatch is the most technically difficult lift in weightlifting and CrossFit. You take the bar from the ground, to fully overhead, in a single motion. 

The first day I picked up a barbell I could snatch 40 kilograms. My technique was awful - the bar never connected with my hips. It resembled a fast deadlift followed by flailing chicken elbows to get the bar above my head. With a bit more coaching, on the second day, I lifted 45 kilograms. A month of training took me to 50. Within a year I could do 60. The next year 70. That’s considered heavy.

Then I stalled. I was stuck at a PB lift of 70 kilograms for 18 months. 

Ever noticed that the better you get at something, the harder it becomes to improve?

Put a single kilogram more on the bar and I’d fail. 

Improvement in any skill follows a diminishing returns curve. As beginners, improvement is rapid with little effort. As masters, we can spend years toiling away for the tiniest improvement. 

Every skill you try to learn - from weightlifting to wrestling to writing - follows this improvement curve. AND, there is a typical pace of progression up the curve. In martial arts, everyone knows it takes 10 years to earn your black belt. 

The first way to rethink high performance is with SPEED. Move up the diminishing returns curve with more pace. Know what the accepted improvement rate is, and go faster. 

Earn your black belt in 7 years. 

For me, it took a teammate sneaking a couple of extra kilograms onto my barbell without me noticing, to break that PB. 

‘Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.’ ~Charles M. Schulz

Celebrate your SPEED of improvement, even if you don’t win gold. 

2) Capability - top end ability

On my best day I can run the 100 meters in 12.5 seconds. On a bad day, it’s more like 14 seconds. 

We each have a range of performance for any given skill. Usain Bolt also has a range, but it’s a little faster than ours!

The second way to rethink high performance is CAPABILITY - what is the top end of your ability range? 

Just once, can you run the 100m race in 11 seconds? Or squat a personal record weight for a single rep? How about a flash of inspiration to solve a problem that previously stumped you? 

What is your absolute best? And how can you do better? Even if it’s only on your best day.

‘Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.’ ~ William Arthur Ward

Celebrate improvements in CAPABILITY, even if you don’t win gold. 

3) Consistency - improving your worst

For 17 years I was a trampoline athlete. 

And for 17 years, every Monday looked the same. The basics. Single backwards and forwards somersaults. Trying to make the line of my body a little more perfect. My kick-out a little sharper. My position a little tighter. My toes pointed a little more. It didn’t matter that I could do a triple somersault. On Mondays we only ever did single somersaults.

That’s 884 Monday’s of the exact same thing.

If we each have a range of performance for any given skill, CONSISTENCY is about bringing up the bottom end of that range so that your performance on your worst day is closer to your best day. 

Repetition builds consistency. Practice the words you learnt in a new language. Shoot hoops until you rarely miss. Solve more of the same type of math problem to cement the skill. 

‘I fear not the man that has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.’ ~ Bruce Lee

Celebrate improvements in CONSISTENCY, even if you don’t win gold. 

4) Capacity - increasing output

‘Try and meet 5 new founders a week’

This was the target my manager gave me when I started my first job in venture capital. 

From a stack of 30 companies I might look at, perhaps 5 would be worth taking a meeting with the founder. So by the time you source those opportunities, filter them, send rejections to 25, set up the 5 meetings, prepare for those meetings by researching the founder and their company, take the meetings, and then do all the follow-up feedback… 1 founder meeting is a minimum of 3 hours of work.

Gold medals in investing are hard to come by. Last year I met 279 founders, and made just 2 investments. And I’ll have to wait 10 years to see how those investments do. So instead of waiting to see if I backed winners, I focused on increasing my CAPACITY - how could I do more in the same amount of time?

5 meetings a week. Then 7. 8. 10. Until eventually I took 15 founder meetings in a single week. 

We train capacity with progressive overload. Add more than you can handle for a short period of time to force yourself to adapt. Then take a period of rest. 

And adapt I had to. Three examples:

• I used to need an hour with each founder to make a decision on whether to progress to a second meeting, I learnt how to get all the information I needed in 45mins

• I used to waste hours context switching between companies, I set up my calendar so that for each company meeting prep, the meeting, and writing founder feedback were all done sequentially

• I changed how I took notes during a meeting, so that I could copy and share them directly with the rest of the investment team, rather than having to rewrite them for our CRM

15 founder meetings a week was unsustainable, but when I dropped back to 5-7 meetings a week, I suddenly had a lot more time because I’d been forced to improve my capacity. 

‘If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.’ ~ Fred Devito

Celebrate improvements in CAPACITY, even if you don’t win gold. 

5) Pressure - performing when it counts

Imagine… thousands of screaming fans fill the stadium. The noise reverberates through your body as you wait to enter. Fans wear your team’s colours, wave your country’s flag. Not a single person is sitting. And somewhere up there are your family, screaming louder than anyone else. 

It’s finals day. 

A day you’ve trained decades for. A day you’ve sacrificed sleep-ins and time with friends and a reasonable salary for. You are warmed up. Muscles ready. Mind focused. Eyes forward. Surrounded by your teammates. 

‘Introducing the athletes to the field…’ booms the announcer’s voice. 

And then they call your name.

In that moment, can you produce your best ever performance?

Athletes call it ‘the zone’. A mental state where time slows down. The ball seems huge. You can’t miss. Your intuition whispers in your ear what your opponent will do next. You’re demanding extreme physical exertion from your body, yet it feels easy. 

I train all year in the hopes of playing a single game in this state. There is no feeling like it.

Can you perform under PRESSURE, in the moment where it really counts?

Scientists who study the zone agree that it occurs when two conditions are met. First, the task is difficult enough to test the limits of your capabilities. Second, the individual’s level of arousal (not that kind!) is at their unique optimal point. Your focus, energy, and stress levels are all peaked, without tipping over into anxiety. The first of these we don't control. The second we can train and prepare for. 

‘Pressure is a privilege.’ ~ Billie Jean King

Celebrate improvements in your ability to perform under PRESSURE, even if you don’t win gold. 

6) Longevity - increasing performance span

For most of the population…

…the ability to learn a new language peaks at age 7

…strength peaks around age 25

…endurance peaks at age 28

…arithmetic skills peak at age 50. 

What if you could learn a language like a 7 year old in your fifties? Or run a marathon like a 28 year old in your seventies. Or do arithmetic like a 50 year old as a teenager? 

LONGEVITY means increasing your number of years of high performance.

Longevity is embodied by athletes like Tom Brady who played NFL until he was 45, Roger Federer who played more than 1500 professional tennis matches before he retired at 41, and Oksana Chusovitina who competed in 8 Olympics for gymnastics and is still going at 48. Outside of sport, Warren Buffet is still running his company at 93 years old, and the Queen was working until her death at 96 (not that there is really a way to retire from that job!)

‘Longevity is a big part of credibility.’ ~ Jason Calcanis

Celebrate improvements in LONGEVITY, even if you don’t win gold. 

High performance means more than gold medals

‘Have fun!’ My mum always said as I left for competitions.

‘Winning is fun,’ I would reply.

And for a long time, I thought it was the only kind of fun. 

But as I grew up I realised that my passion for sport was actually tied to a sense of progress. And the accumulation of gold medals isn’t the only way to progress. There are 6 other ways to think about high performance.

1. Speed - Rate of improvement

2. Capability - Top end ability

3. Consistency - Bottom end ability

4. Capacity - Increasing output

5. Pressure - Performing when it counts

6. Longevity - Increasing performance span

The other problem with gold medals? There is only one. You have to beat everyone else to get it. It’s only about comparing yourself to others. These 6 other measures of high performance are all about comparing yourself to your previous self. 

What aspect of high performance will you work on today?