Want to improve your performance? Focus on this

There was a time where being a high performer meant putting every other aspect of your life on the back burner and devoting all of your time and energy to your work. Family, hobbies, and other obligations were cast aside. Rest and sleep in particular were a luxury the high performer could not afford. That thinking is changing in several ways. For one thing, being a high performer at work for the long term does not necessarily require sacrifice of the rest of your entire life. Maintaining a family and some hobbies can be healthy and can provide interesting insights into your work from other perspectives. It turns out productive rest and getting a good night’s sleep can help your performance. Here’s how. Productive rest The concept of rest involves two distinct elements. Having some specific times in which you are explicitly reducing your stress during the day is one form of rest. The other is having stretches in which you step away from your work and focus your mind on other topics. Let’s start with calming rest. Being a high performer is often stressful. You take on challenges that others shy away from. Those challenges come with risk. You may fail to achieve your goals, create te…