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1-Page Summary of High Performance Habits

Overview

High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become that Way (2017) is a self-help book by Brendon Burchard. It focuses on people who want to be successful in their work and live meaningful lives, and it shows them how they can do that with six habits.

People often misunderstand what it takes to succeed. They think that success is based on factors such as passion and talent, but in reality, success comes from developing six habits that anybody can do. These habits are referred to as the HP6 (Habits of Highly Effective People). The first three are personal habits: being clear about who you want to be; focusing on relationships with other people; and deciding which skills you want to focus on. Then there are social habits: understanding your purpose in life; finding out what makes you happy; and achieving balance between work and family/friends.

It’s important to have good health and a positive mindset. This can be accomplished by making small changes in your diet, exercising more often, or getting enough sleep. It’s also helpful to schedule breaks during the day so that you can relax and recharge. Avoid negativity as much as possible, because it will only make you feel worse about yourself.

The third habit is about identifying what’s most important in life. It involves thinking about the people and values that are most meaningful to us. This can help make work more satisfying and meaningful.

The final three habits are considered social habits: increasing productivity, developing influence, and demonstrating change. The key to increasing productivity is spending at least 60 percent of work hours on deep, focused work and the remaining time on administrative tasks and meetings. Another important aspect of productivity is planning; projects should be broken down into smaller tasks with concrete deadlines.

To become a leader, one must develop influence. This can be done by becoming a role model and nurturing other people’s professional development.

The final habit is courage. People who demonstrate this quality are apt to take risks in support of their most essential beliefs. While many people think that acts of courage are spontaneous, they can be planned out and executed well.

Once you’ve achieved high performance, it’s important to avoid three common traps: developing a superiority complex, feeling dissatisfied with your accomplishments and neglecting responsibilities. It’s also important to cultivate confidence because that is the best predictor of continued success.

Key Point 1: Success is tied to six long-term habits, not personality or talent. These habits must be deliberately cultivated.

Many people mistakenly believe that success is a product of inborn talent or sheer effort. In reality, it’s more about cultivating the right habits to achieve peak performance. This idea was not widely accepted until recently because scientists believed that habits were fixed and could not be changed. However, some researchers have shown that this belief is false and we can change our bad habits by replacing them with good ones.

All habits have three parts: a trigger, which is typically an action or event; the habit itself, and a reward. For example, people who eat at McDonald’s often do so after visiting the mall. The smell of freshly baked cookies is what triggers them to buy one and eat it on their way home from shopping. This kind of cookie-eating behavior has been repeated so many times that it’s now become a habit for these individuals.

The best way to change a bad habit is to associate it with something. At first, this process is intentional, but the behavior becomes more automatic over time. For example, an employee might take a break once every hour and relax for 10 minutes in order to reset and be more productive. The trigger would be the break itself (or a timer), the act of relaxing would be the habit, and being more productive would be the reward.