By Linky van der Merwe

We all want to become healthier, happier and more productive, but we seldom address these desires consciously on a day to day basis. Recently I was so fortunate to attend the Peak Work Performance Summit hosted by Dr Ron Friedman. Ron Friedman, PhD, is an award-winning social psychologist who specializes in human motivation and he’s author of the book: “The Best Place to Work”.

Since I’ve learnt so much from each interview that Ron so masterfully conducted, I have decided to share a few takeaways with you. By simply applying some of these principles, I believe it has the potential to transform your life!

Find a 2nd article on Peak Work Performance here.

Pre-mortem instead of post-mortems

I loved this idea from Dan Pienk, an idea I have come across before, but I’m now more motivated to apply it at work as well as for personal growth.

He recommends doing a pre-mortem every six months asking:

1. What do I want to learn?
2. What do I want to achieve?
3. What are the pitfalls?

Like you can imagine, this can lead to much better goals that will be easier to achieve, since you are already addressing anticipated challenges even before they appear.

As for starting a new project, it’s a good idea to start with a pre-mortem so that the project can be setup for success, because it helps to think through what success will mean and it will identify possible risks or obstacles that may be blockers to successful delivery. Then a project manager and team can purposefully go ahead with the intention of solving possible problems even before they occur and continue to follow the markers identified for success.

Find out more in Dan Pink’s book: Drive by clicking on the image.

Reduce your focus to achieve better results

What Jay Papasan shared about the one thing that high performers do differently, is that it helps to reduce your focus to achieve better results. What does he mean by that?

It means that you focus on your one thing – the 20% that give 80% output. By doing one thing only, it could throw other things off and it may seem like the balance can go off, but in reality you are focusing on the one thing that will yield the biggest results.  This can be applied at work, but also to your health, finances and family life.

Another interesting point he made, was to put being a husband or wife first, before being a parent, because you want to role model being good in marriage.  Where else will our children learn to stay committed in marriage?

Find out more in Jay’s book: The one thing by clicking on the image.

For good fruit to grow, you need to be pruning

Todd Henry, who writes about creativity, productivity, and how to find passion for your work, shared an important principle. For good fruit to grow, you need to be pruning, like for a vineyard.

According to Todd, it’s important to learn to say NO to things. Build good practices around the domains you need to excel in. For example, establish blocks of time for study, reading or for writing, whatever it may be that you are doing.

Innovation happens in the gaps, in the quiet times.  Create space in your life to bring the best of who you are to what you do. Personally, I loved this statement and as a working mom of 3 children, I constantly have to remind myself to carve out space in my life in order to be my best self.

Read Todd Henry’s books to find out more.

• “The accidental creative – How to be brilliant at a moment’s notice”
• “Herding Tigers – Be the leader that creative people need”
• “Louder than words – Harness the power of your authentic voice”

Pillars of Success

Craig Ballantyne, coach to high-performing entrepreneurs and executives to get more done, have massive impact, grow their influence, and have a personal life, shared ideas to help you ‘own the day and control your life’. He shared five pillars of success:

1. Do better planning and preparation than ever before
2. Have a measureable outcome; have action points at the end
3. Positive social support – engage with people around you for support
4. Meaningful incentive that will motivate you
5. Self-imposed deadline and the power this has to help you stick to what you’re doing

Read his book: “The Perfect Day Formula” for more ideas on how to have the perfect day.

If you like the Peak Performance ideas that I shared in this article, I have good news for you.

You can get Lifetime access to the ‘Peak Work Performance Summit’. You will have unlimited access to interviews with people who are sharing valuable information based on years of research for books and based on their real life experience.

Click here for the Peak Work Performance Summit Lifetime Pass.