PDF Summary:High Performance Habits, by Brendon Burchard

Many people believe that if they work hard, practice consistently, and focus on the things they’re good at, they’ll succeed. However, these aren’t the keys to long-term success. What gives successful people their competitive edge? The answer is high-performance habits.

High performers are people who maintain success and well-being over a long period of time. They excel more than their colleagues and can adapt to almost any situation. In High-Performance Habits, personal development trainer Brendon Burchard defines the six habits you need to become a high performer. These habits range from maintaining your health to generating influence. By developing them, you can take your first steps toward increasing your performance.

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Plan Your “Five Moves”

Work toward an objective and focus your energy and attention on the tasks that are most important to your success. To create a long-term plan, find your “five moves”:

• Solidify your goal. Make sure it’s clear and specific.
• Write down the five major moves you’d need to make to achieve that goal. These are big steps that require many smaller tasks to achieve. For example, if your goal is to become a published author, one of your major steps may be to “get a literary agent” or “find a way to self-publish.”
• Under each of your five major moves, write down a list of tasks that you need to do to accomplish that step. For example, if your goal is to “get a literary agent,” your tasks would include researching agencies, crafting writing samples, fixing up your resume, and practicing your interviewing skills.
• Once you have a list of tasks, put them into your calendar and hold yourself to hard deadlines. Giving yourself a specific schedule will motivate you to complete tasks in a timely manner.

Master Important Skills

To start your journey towards mastery, define the five most important skills in your field. Constantly be on the lookout for new educational opportunities and improved ways of working. For example, if you’re a salesperson, important skills include communication, problem-solving, customer service, negotiation, and market awareness.

Instead of simple repetition, practice progressive mastery to improve your skills. Progressive mastery relies on setting increasingly challenging goals, attaching meaning to your process, and using teaching as a method to learn. Here are the steps of progressive mastery:

• Define the skill you want to work on.
• Make long-term stretch goals that will challenge you.
• Attach meaning to your work by reminding yourself why it's important.
• Visualize success and failure.
• Schedule time to practice challenges and exercises created by experts.
• Chart your progress and invite external feedback.
• Share your learning experience by competing or practicing with others.
• If you reach a goal, set another goal that challenges you even further.
• Take time to teach others what you’re learning.

Habit #5: Generate Influence

To become a high performer, you need a group of people around you who are willing to support and invest in you. The best way to achieve this is by generating influence. Influence is your ability to mold other people’s perspectives and behaviors. With high levels of influence, you’ll boost your performance by avoiding unnecessary conflicts and developing a network of support.

How to Generate Influence

Influence is not tied to personality traits such as introversion or extroversion. Anyone can become influential if they put energy into developing their relationships. If you can create strong relationships with your friends, family, and colleagues, you will begin to gain the influence necessary for high performance. To foster these relationships, be generous and consider the ways you can use influence as a leader.

Be Generous

Be willing to provide favors. The more willing you are to give, the more your friends, family, and colleagues will trust and respect you. Often, people avoid being generous by making the excuse, “I’m simply too busy.” If you feel you’re too busy to be helpful or generous, chances are you have a time-management problem or are just unwilling to be generous.

Influence and Leadership

As a leader, gain influence by using the following three principles:

• Change how people think: High performers show others how they want them to think. By asking framing statements and questions such as, “Think about it like this…” or “What would you think if I…”, you can adjust the way people look at a situation. If you lead people into more efficient models of thinking, you’ll start to earn their trust. As you do, you’ll be able to shape the way that they think about their role and their impact on the world around them.
• Challenge people to raise the bar: High performers know how to challenge the people around them without insulting or degrading them. They set standards for the people around them and hold them accountable. Though they have to endure the occasional awkward conversation, high performers know how important it is to push people to meet and exceed expectations.
• Practice what you preach: Once they’ve set high standards and shown people how to think, high performers adhere to the expectations they set. If you don’t, people will view you as hypocritical and ignore your guidance.

Habit #6: Be Courageous

High performers courageously step into the unknown and take action. Courage is the willingness to take purposeful action in service of a worthy and sincere goal despite fear, danger, or adversity. Even if they don’t know the ultimate outcome, high performers have a tendency towards action over discussion. Courageous people speak up for themselves, respond effectively in crisis, and master new skills.

How to Be Courageous

Courage requires a mindset of gratitude, a tendency for action, and the willingness to face your fears. High performers use these qualities to embrace risk and live confidently. To begin to develop courage, appreciate the hardship.

Appreciate the Hardship

Hardship is often the route to success. It develops your character, thickens your skin, and builds your skillset. For example, a world-class athlete didn’t get to the top of their game by using “get fit quick” plans. They worked out every single day, struggled through injuries, and fought to overcome obstacles.

To change your mindset on hardship, consider the following principles:

• Embrace the challenge. Learn to enjoy taking on and overcoming obstacles. This will help you change your fear to excitement.
• Accept that difficult and unappealing tasks are essential to growth. There is no “easy way” to high performance. Remind yourself that the frustrating tasks you’re facing are helping you grow as a person.
• See the light at the end of the tunnel. Always remember that there are better times ahead. Remind yourself why you’re doing what you do and fight relentlessly towards that goal.

Maintaining High Performance

To sustain your success, be aware of the three traps that often cause high performers to fail: feeling superior, being unsatisfied, and neglecting important things.

Trap #1: Feeling Superior

When you become a high performer, it’s easy to feel superior without realizing it. Because you’re at the top of your game, you may subconsciously look down on people who haven’t achieved as much as you have.

Humility is the antidote to feelings of superiority. It keeps you from demeaning the people around you and shows you the value other people bring to the table. It also reminds you that you always have more room to grow.

Trap #2: Being Discontented

Many people believe that contentment prevents progress because it promotes “settling.” They’d rather use discontent to drive them to find “the next project” or “a better way.” However, while staying motivated is important, discontent creates negative thoughts.

High performers are able to stay motivated without resorting to negativity. While they accept critiques and strive to improve, they find contentment in what they do by recognizing their accomplishments. Their positive attitude keeps them from becoming overwhelmed by their work and helps them build relationships with their colleagues and friends.

How to Avoid Being Discontented

To be content without “settling”:

• Take pride in the work you’ve already done. While listening to feedback and critiquing your process is important, be sure to acknowledge what you’ve done well.
• Share your accomplishments and encourage others to do the same. Open communication about success boosts morale and keeps people motivated.
• Reframe your perspective. Changing the way you motivate yourself allows you to stay positive while pushing forward. For example, instead of saying, “My work’s not good enough,” try saying, “This part of my work is good, and this is what needs improvement.”
• Journal your progress. Every day, write down three things that went well. Describe any growth you felt that day. This allows you to look back and reflect on the good things in your life as well as on your development.

Trap #3: Neglecting Important Things

As a high performer, there are a lot of important things that you have to juggle at once. It's easy to lose sight of what’s important in your professional and personal life. These gaps in your focus can lower the quality of your work and lead to significant failures.

How to Avoid Neglecting Important Things

As you begin to reflect on your current circumstances and listen to the people around you, you’ll likely become aware of areas you’re neglecting. Take responsibility for your action (or inaction), and develop a plan to address the areas that you’ve overlooked. This requires patience, diligence, and a willingness to listen. To avoid neglecting important things in your life:

• Determine what’s actually important. As a high performer, you likely feel the drive to excel at everything you do. While this is a noble perspective, it can also lead you to put significant levels of energy and focus into unimportant areas. Find and define the most important things in your life and be sure that you’re putting the proper amount of energy into those things.
• Be willing to say no. While you may want to take on as many projects as possible, you can’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Especially when you’re busy, only agree to the projects that are important to you or your work and politely decline any offers that don’t support your goals.

Exude Confidence

As you work on the six high-performance habits, one of the most important characteristics to develop is confidence. Confidence helps you take bold steps in the face of obstacles or adversity because it reminds you that you have the strength to overcome and succeed.

The Three C’s of Confidence

Even when under immense pressure, high performers know how to generate the confidence to push ahead. Confidence isn’t something you’re born with. It requires patience, hard work, and persistence. To build your confidence, think about the following characteristics:

• Competence: High performers are confident in their abilities. They use their knowledge and skills to feed their confidence. To develop competence, take the time to master important skills. The more you know about a topic, the more confident you can be in your abilities.
• Congruence: High performers are confident in who they are. They have a clear self-image and act in accordance with their values. To develop congruence, have a strong sense of identity, define your values, and set your intentions. Once you know those things, you won’t second guess any choices that align with them.
• Connection: High performers use their relationships to build their competence and congruence. They use interactions with their family, friends, and colleagues to learn more about themselves and their work. To develop connection, engage with the people around you and seek out opportunities for education and development.