Peak Performance

2025

Recently, I found myself asking a familiar question “Why do some days feel super productive, while others feel busy but hollow?”

Reading Peak Performance gave me insight into something I’ve intuitively felt for years but never articulated clearly. Productivity and performance are also topics I am particularly interested in as I enjoy learning how to optimize and be more efficient.

The book reduces growth to a (not-so) deceptively simple equation:

Productive Stress + Deep Rest = Growth

At first glance, it sounds obvious. But when I held it up against my own habits, I realized how often I was stuck in what the authors called the zone of minimal improvement where one works hard enough to feel tired but not hard enough to truly grow.

What Productive Stress Actually Demands of Me

I asked myself whether I am really stretching my abilities or merely being busy? Productive stress, I learned, is not endless effort.
It is precise effort that must be:

This reframed how I view “good work”. If I’m always jumping between various tasks (contributing to proposals vs actual delivery of work vs internal administrative initiatives), checking messages or emails then I’m not training my capacity but actually diluting it.

Building a Peak Performance Portal

To make Productive Stress repeatable, I began experimenting with what the book describes as a Peak Performance Portal, which is a deliberate routine or entryway into deep work. To move ‘through’ the portal, 3 things are required:

  1. State Selection
    Before starting, I ask: What mental state does this work need? Sometimes that means calm clarity while others, it means intensity. I consciously shift my internal state through music, a short talk or silence before I begin.
    A few good motivational speakers I listen to when I need clarity, long-term thinking and drive, are Graham Weaver, Tony Robbins, David Goggins, Eric Thomas and Simon Sinek. I don’t listen to these while working (just because I can’t really concentrate when I hear words) but before work, long enough to step into the emotional state the task demands. Only then do I begin.
  2. Consistent Focus Cues
    Familiarity reduces friction. I now anchor my deep work sessions to the same place, the same tools and the same sensory inputs. Same place would be my work desk or a coffee shop that I am comfortable working at; Same tools are the same laptop, fountain pen (yes, I use one of those), same Moleskine dotted journal; Same sensory input are rain sounds, noise-canceling headphones amonth others. Over time, my brain associates these things with “where focus happens”.
  3. Purpose Priming
    When motivation dips, I remind myself who benefits from this work. I visualize the downstream impact i.e. real people and real outcomes. Purpose, I’ve learnt, is one of the most effective antidotes to burnout.

The Discipline of Deep Rest

Here’s the part that is the hardest to do/achieve. Deep rest is not passive scrolling on Reddit or Instagram, it’s not “half-working”. It should be true cognitive disengagement.
Between intense work sessions, I now deliberately step away by:

Deep rest is super important as this is where the growth solidifies. It’s the same as strength training, building muscle doesn’t happen while actually doing the exercise but during the rest periods where the muscle fibres that tear actively get rebuilt by the body. I aim for 50-90 minutes of productive stress, followed by rest equal to one-third of that time. An easy ratio to follow is

3:1 for PS:DR

Funny enough, the book taught me something contrarian. Growth is actually not about doing more but about doing the right amount, at the right intensity, with the right recovery.