Improving Your Habits Towards Higher Performance

Picture: Gullfoss Waterfall, Iceland – where power meets grace, M. Laitila 03/2025.

Improving our habits and behaviors toward high performance is about unlocking our potential by intentionally developing six key areas: clarity, energy, necessity, productivity, influence, and courage (Burchard, 2017).

Sounds like a lot to work on? We all know those people who seem to have it all figured out, achieving results with joy and generosity, without compromising their health or relationships. How do they do it? And what have they had to change to get there?

The truth is, when we start to focus on our personal development, we begin to see better outcomes and new opportunities. We often feel more fulfilled, more confident, and more motivated. These benefits extend to our work, wellbeing, and relationships alike. It’s much easier to navigate life when we have a clear direction, a mental roadmap, and the skills to move forward.

How to Establish New Habits?

A habit forms when a behavior is repeated in the same context and reliably rewarded—eventually running on autopilot. As health psychology researcher Phillippa Lally found, it takes about 66 days on average for a new behavior to become automatic (Lally et al., 2010).

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, emphasizes starting small. His “two-minute rule” suggests scaling any habit down to something that takes two minutes or less. For instance, “read 30 books this year” becomes “read one page today.” The key is consistency, not intensity (Clear, 2018).

Clear also reminds us:

“Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.” (Clear, 2019)

Making Change Stick

To make change last, we must view ourselves as the kind of person who has the habits we seek to build. Identity comes before outcome. Start small, but start with intention. Try to improve just 1% each day.

And remember: practice rewires the brain. It takes repeated effort to break old patterns and form new ones (Effron, 2018).

High Performance at Work

High performers don’t just work harder, they work with greater clarity and focus. They align their actions with their values, goals, and the bigger picture (Burchard, 2017). That often means managing multiple priorities, hitting deadlines, driving innovation, and improving results.

Organizations benefit enormously from high performers. They tend to be more engaged, motivated, and capable of delivering results efficiently, which often leads to better retention, trust, and leadership opportunities.

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What About High-Performing Leaders?

Leadership matters. According to Goleman and colleagues, a leader’s mood and behavior have a ripple effect on everyone else’s performance (Goleman et al., 2021). The best leaders cultivate emotional intelligence and lead by example.

One of the often-overlooked superpowers of high performers is emotional mastery—the ability to stay calm, centered, and even optimistic in the face of adversity. It’s the rare skill of smiling through a challenge without denial or detachment. Emotional mastery is not just a trait, it’s a trained ability—and one that only few people ever realize is available to them, let alone intentionally develop.

Even when high performers push beyond their comfort zones, they typically know how to maintain balance, avoid burnout, and focus their energy where it matters most.

The Six Habits That Drive High Performance

Brendon Burchard’s research at the High Performance Institute identified six habits that consistently lead to long-term success, regardless of age, personality, or career:

Seek clarity
Generate energy
Raise necessity
Increase productivity
Develop influence
Demonstrate courage (Burchard, 2017)

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Don’t Forget Sleep

One overlooked but crucial habit is sleep. Despite the myth that sleeping less leads to greater productivity, research shows that most high performers sleep 7–8 hours a night. This quality sleep acts as a “meta-habit” that supports all others (Schwartz, 2012).

Clear adds, better sleep puts us in a stronger position to perform all other habits more effectively (Clear, 2019), and Tony Schwartz writes:

“Sleeping one hour less only gives you one more hour of tiredness.” (Schwartz, 2012).

Final Thought

Improving your habits doesn’t mean transforming your life overnight. But every small step counts. The more consistently you show up as the person you want to become, the more natural that identity will feel, and the more powerful your performance will become.

“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” James Clear.

References

Burchard, B. (2017). High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way. Hay House, Inc.

Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery.

Clear, J. (2019, December). The right way to form new habits [Interview by Alison Beard]. HBR IdeaCast (Episode 76). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/12/the-right-way-to-form-new-habits

Effron, M. (2018). 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus on What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest). Harvard Business Review Press.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2021). Primal leadership: The hidden driver of great performance. In HBR’s 10 Must Reads on High Performance (pp. 131–150). Harvard Business Review Press.

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674

Schwartz, T. (2012). Why great performers sleep more. In HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done. Harvard Business Review Press.

HAPPY MIDSUMMER !!

#highperformance, #highperformancehabits, #buildingnewhabits, #howtomakenewhabitsstick

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