Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
Jim Rohn
Over the past several years, we’ve zeroed in on what moves the needle most in helping people achieve long-term success. And we’ve found: High performers do things differently from the way others do, and their practices can be replicated across projects (and almost any situation) regardless of your personality, past, or preferences. In fact, we’ve found that there are six deliberate habits that made most of the difference in performance outcomes across domains. Even your greatest strengths or natural abilities are moot without these habits to support them.
To uncover which habits mattered most, we used relevant concepts from the academic literature, data from our global lab, and insights from over three thousand high performance coaching sessions. We then marshaled all these inputs to create structured interview questions that we could ask high performers.
We identified high performers through standard social science practices, such as survey identification and objective performance measures (e.g., academic performance, athletic performance, objective business and financial outcomes, etc.). For example, we asked people how strongly they agreed with statements such as the following:
- Most of my peers would consider me a high performer.
- Over the past few years, I’ve generally maintained a high level of success.
- If “high performance” is defined as succeeding at what you do over the long term, compared to most people, I identify as a high performer.
- In my primary field of interest, I’ve had success for a longer time than most of my peers.
For those who strongly identified with these statements, we then conducted one-on-one interviews with them (and often their peers). We also took additional surveys asking the self-reported high performers questions such as:
- When you start a new project, what do you consciously and consistently do to set yourself up to win?
- What personal and professional routines help you stay focused, energized, creative, productive, and effective? (We asked about each trait in turn.)
- What habits have you started and discarded, and what habits have you kept that always seem to work?
- What recurring thoughts or affirmations do you purposefully say to yourself, to perform your best when you (a) go into new situations, (b) respond to adversity or disappointment, and (c) help others?
- If you had to discern three things that make you successful, and you knew you could deploy only those three again in your next major project, what would those three things be?
- When you prepare for a meeting (or match, performance, scene, conversation) that really matters, how do you go about (a) your preparation, and (b) your practices?
- If you took on a major new team project tomorrow, what, exactly, would you say and do to set your team up for success?
- Which habits get you quick wins, and which are longer-term practices that make you stand out?
- When you’re under the pressure of a near-term deadline, how do you maintain or protect your well-being?
- What do you habitually tell yourself when you experience self-doubt or disappointment or feel that you’re failing?
- What makes you confident, and how do you “turn on” confidence when you need it?
- How do you approach dealing with other people in your life who (a) support you, (b) don’t support you, and (c) you want to support you but who don’t?
- What practices keep you happy and healthy as you strive for bigger goals?
These questions and dozens more like them helped us being narrowing down the factors and habits that high performers reported as making the greatest difference in their success. Clear themes emerged, and an initial list of almost two dozen high performance habits was created.
Next, we rolled out surveys to the general public, with questions similar to those we asked the self-reported high performers. After studying which habits best differentiated high performers from those in our general surveys, we narrowed the list even more. Finally, we pared it down to the habits that were deliberate, observable, malleable, trainable, and, most important, effective across domains. That is, we wanted habits that would help someone become successful not just in one domain of expertise but across multiple topic areas, activities, and industries. We wanted habits that anyone, anywhere, in any field of endeavor, could apply over and over again to measurably improve performance.
Ultimately, just six habits made the grade. We call these final six the high performance habits, or HP6.
Once we identified the HP6, we worked to conduct additional literature reviews and validity tests. We created the High Performance Indicator (HPI), based on the six habits as well as other proven success measures. We tested the HPI pilot with over 30,000 people from 195 countries and quantitatively proved its validity, reliability, and usefulness. We found that not only do the six habits combine to correlate with high performance, but each habit correlates with high performance on its own. And together they correlate with other important life outcomes, such as general happiness, better health, and positive relationships.
The HP6 will help you succeed whether you are a student, entrepreneur, manager, CEO, athlete, or stay-at-home parent. Whether you are already successful or not, these habits will help you reach the next level.
While dozens of other factors can affect your long-term success—luck, timing, social support, or sudden creative breakthroughs, to name a few—the HP6 are under your control and improve your performance more than anything else we’ve measured.
If you want to reach higher levels of performance in anything you do, you must consistently do the following:
- Seek clarity on who you want to be, how you want to interact with others, what you want, and what will bring you the greatest meaning. As every project or major initiative begins, you ask questions such as “What kind of person do I want to be while I’m doing this?” “How should I treat others?” “What are my intentions and objectives?” “What can I focus on that will bring me a sense of connection and fulfillment?” High performers ask these types of questions not only at the beginning of an endeavor but consistently throughout. They don’t just “get clarity” once and develop a mission statement that lasts the test of time; they consistently seek clarity again and again as times change and as they take on new projects or enter new social situations. This kind of routine self-monitoring is one of the hallmarks of their success.
- Generate energy so that you can maintain focus, effort, and well-being. To stay on your A game, you’ll need to actively care for your mental stamina, physical energy, and positive emotions in very specific ways.
- Raise the necessity for exceptional performance. This means actively tapping into the reasons you absolutely must perform well. This necessity is based on a mix of your internal standards (e.g., your identity, beliefs, values, or expectations for excellence) and external demands (e.g., social obligations, competition, public commitments, deadlines). It’s about always knowing your why and stoking that fire all the time so you feel the needed drive or pressure to get at it.
- Increase productivity in your primary field of interest. Specifically, focus on prolific quality output (PQO) in the area in which you want to be known and to drive impact. You’ll also have to minimize distractions (including opportunities) that steal your attention from creating PQO.
- Develop influence with those around. It will make you better at getting people to believe in and support your efforts and ambitions. Unless you consciously develop a positive support network, major achievements over the long haul are all but impossible.
- Demonstrate courage by expressing your ideas, taking bold action, and standing up for yourself and others, even in the face of fear, uncertainty, threat, or changing conditions. Courage is not an occasional act, but a trait of choice and will.
Seek Clarity. Generate Energy. Raise Necessity. Increase Productivity. Develop Influence. Demonstrate Courage. These are the six habits that you need to adopt if you are to reach high performance in any situation. In the hundreds of personal efforts and social behaviors that we’ve observed, these habits move the needle the most in dramatically improving performance.
In the next six chapters, we’ll address the extraordinary power unlocked by developing these habits.
* Source: High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard