A few weeks ago we discussed the importance of meal prep, particularly when working from home. Without having a strict lunch or break, it’s easy to get caught up in work and miss your regular meal times. The problem is that when you’re really hungry, that’s when you reach for that bag of chips or leftover cake sitting in the fridge. This is where meal prep comes in! If you plan out what you’re going to eat when, you won’t get to that point of extreme hunger. You just have to do a little planning the night (or week) before.

It’s time to stop thinking of exercise as a workout, and start thinking of it as just doing something you enjoy! Exercise doesn’t have to be running on the treadmill for an hour or counting down the minutes until your workout class is finished.

If you locate measures of success and failure outside yourself— whether by accepting the judgment of others or internalizing it to judge yourself—you give away control of your sense of accomplishment. If you feel happiest and most satisfied when you receive external validation and rewards, then your sense of who you are (and how good of a person you are) will come from other people as well.

That’s a risky way to live and work. Fearing external judgment and relying on external validation to feel good are equally problematic. And they are both barriers to high performance.

Your circadian rhythm is your internal biological clock which regulates everything from sleep, eating patterns, mood, hormone regulation, and energy levels during the day. Disruption to your circadian rhythm can lead to insomnia, fatigue, loss of appetite, depressed mood, and decreased physical and mental performance. This is particularly apparent when you are jet lagged - I’m sure you’ve all experienced how bad that can be!

Great performers enter a state of complete connection to the task while remaining completely relaxed. In so doing, they consistently deliver exceptional performance. From a brain science perspective, they are able to access gamma mode, a state of intense brain activity when the entire brain works together at once.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to crack the code of ultra-performance.

I do it by looping back through everything I’ve learned as a scientist and physiologist, and comparing that knowledge to everything I am learning from meeting and working with some of the highest-achieving people on the planet.

What I’ve observed is that elite performers are consistently able to access their full potential.

Your creativity isn’t something you can just turn on and off, but it is definitely something you will undermine if you are in constant go mode. Our brains aren’t designed to ideate and innovate when we are in focused execution mode.

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.