Need to brainstorm or ideate? Need to come up with a radically new idea? Need to be agile and innovative? Step out of execution mode and relax.

Other than the odd remote meeting or conference call, you now have the freedom to set your own schedule. This can lead to something very dangerous: continuous access to food.

Instead of worrying so much about what exactly you should be doing, just get up and MOVE. Moving can be anything - setting an alarm every hour to stand up and stretch, doing a couple flights of stairs, or getting outside for a quick walk (provided you’re practicing social distancing!).

When I criticize our culture of hustle and endless drive, I am not in any way diminishing the importance of focus and execution. In fact, I think a commitment to rest and recovery is, in many ways, about setting you up to deliver results when it matters.

Besides decreasing the risk of numerous chronic diseases, sleep helps to regulate appetite, improves mood and mental clarity, and increases immune function (which is particularly important right now!). Bottom line - sleep is essential for your mental and physical health and performance.

Living in a constant state of hustle and drive is so familiar to most of us that we aren’t always aware of what does – and doesn’t – help us focus.

Given how brains work, there are certain conditions that will cue beta waves when it comes time to deliver results.

Here are five techniques you can use to cue your brain to get into go mode.

Alpha waves are emitted when we learn, reflect, think strategically or engage in metacognition. In this mode, our brains achieve a blend of activation and relaxation. To get into this mode, we have to step out of focused execution, which limits our ability to pull the lens back and see the whole picture.

I learned about this effect firsthand on a trip to Africa for a friend's wedding.

My primary advice to ensure world-class sleep is to defend your last hour. To do so, I developed a comprehensive pre-sleep protocol.

Here are three tactics you can use:

The benefits of optimal sleep are enormous and have a huge impact on performance and health. Along with enabling your brain to wash itself, deep sleep cues delta brain waves, which drive recovery and regeneration.

From every possible perspective – physiologically, psychologically, emotionally and energy-wise – humans need to sleep deeply and regularly engage in proper recovery. To be as inspired and energized as possible in your daily life and work, you need to invest in your recovery.

There is a shift in corporate culture underway toward supporting naps as a high-performance tool that also has massive health benefits.

One of the major side effects of the epidemic of unrelenting drive and constant hustle has been to limit our collective capacity for deep and broad thinking.

When it comes to reflection, learning, strategic thinking and metacognition, our brains need to slow down, focus and trigger alpha waves.

What we know is that there are specific cleaning cells inside the brain called astroglia that are between the neurons. When they are activated, astroglia scoop up waste products and drive them towards blood vessels so they drain away from the brain.

When you are awake and hustling, this system is shut down. Only when you enter a deep sleep and delta waves prevail, do the astroglia activate and do their work.

We drive ourselves day and night. We never rest. We never step back. We push and push and push.

Why is this a problem? Because that’s not how the brain works. It’s not how the body works. It’s not how performance works. And it’s not what optimizes our health and longevity.

During his remarks, Eisenhower referred to a university president he knew who was fond of saying, “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” This phrase went on to become the basis for what is known as The Eisenhower Decision Principle – a decision-making process for prioritizing tasks and projects.

Though body and mind are typically thought of as being separate, it’s helpful to consider them as a unit because they work together. For your mind to be engaged, your body needs to be energized. There is a growing body of research showing that physical activity improves brain function and facilitates learning, creativity and problem solving among other key functions. Even simple movements like walking get you physically energized and open up the possibility of creating beta wave activity in the brain, which is reflective of the brain state you need to be in if you have to work at a task or perform an action that requires your concentration.

If you want to live a world-class life, you’ll need an exercise plan, because physical activity can dramatically improve your health and performance. In particular, you will want an approach that capitalizes what I call the 4Fs: Fitness, Force, Fast and Flexible.

In the #hustle culture of manic busyness, it can be hard to remember the basic facts about personal growth. Mentally and physically, human beings are built to adapt to stress, but it will not happen if we don’t take time to rest and recover. That’s when the growth occurs. We cannot grow, let alone heal, if we are constantly on the go.

There is widespread agreement that one of the common pathways involved in all human disease, especially chronic diseases, is inflammation. We also know that chronic stress is one of the primary contributors to elevated inflammation levels in the human body. As a result, any conversation about optimal health and performance needs to include an exploration of how we can decrease systemic inflammation. We all need to make an effort to recover and regenerate more effectively so we give ourselves the best chance to avoid conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and depression.