Twitter Space participated by Josh Jay, Dave Meier, Josh Hellman, Alexander

Hey Ryan, I think let's get started on today's space.

And I'm sure people will join in as we go.

So yeah, this is our third high performance space.

So today, our topic is going to be foundations of a high performer.

So for example, if you want to perform at a higher level as an entrepreneur, coach or an athlete, you need to master the foundations.

And yes, Orion and I will be talking about these and our principles of how to be a high performer outside of our jobs, outside of our businesses, so we can perform at a very high level in our jobs and our businesses and anything we do in life.

So we'll be talking about our 7 principles that we'll be discussing, and why it is so important to have these foundations, and we'll also give you some tips and tricks on how to go about with them.

Yeah, like you said, I like these basics and these principles that we're gonna talk about are so important.

You know, you always hear about people who are high performers in their job or in their business and it's always go, go, go.

But there can tend to be something lacking in other aspects of their life.

And I understand that sometimes, you know, not everything's going to be balanced and you need to focus more on certain things, but establishing and taking time to work on these fundamentals that we're going to talk about can greatly impact you, you know, for the rest of your life, if you include them in your lifestyle and have them alongside your Your business or your job or whatever that might look like for you So that way you're showing up as your absolute best self every single day

Yeah, absolutely So what do you think is going to help people like focus on these principles?

For example, like we were talking about this earlier, how these principles can actually help even prevent burnout.

Because as a high performer, you're just, you're always constantly like going after 1 goal after another.

You don't even stop sometimes, like look back and pause and relax.

So because of that mentality, you forget to just take time for yourself or go back to basics.

And that could lead up to burnout as well.

So these principles will definitely help you sustain in the long run and for even online entrepreneurs that there's a lot of expectations we set ourselves.

So I think these principles will really, really help.

Do you think we should start on our 6 principles?

And yeah, if you want to introduce, go for it.

Today we are going to talk about the foundations of a high performer and why it's so important for high performers to go back to their basics because if they want to perform at a higher level as an entrepreneur, coach or an athlete, they need to be performing at a higher level outside of that.

So, Dave, would love for you to join in and speak as well.

So, we're just going to be talking about 7 principles that I think are really essential for anyone to perform at a very high level.

Yeah, I might also request you to speak, Dave, if you're open.

So while Dave's getting connected, the first principle that we want to talk about is, everyone knows this is very simple, but mostly overlooked, how important sleep is.

And I'll get Ryan to talk more about that.

And Dave, please feel free to hop in and ask to speak as well.

Well, I guess before I get into that, I just want to say, Hey to Dave and thanks for joining in.

Uh, appreciate you coming back for, to join our space once again.

So sleep is so important because whether you're an athlete or you train a lot, or even when you're learning new things, Sleep is kind of what makes all of that happen.

You know, that's where our body recovers and we actually build muscle while we're sleeping.

And when we're learning, that's how everything gets processed when we're sleeping and it sinks into our memory.

And It's really just 1 of the most important aspects that we should really focus on in order to see improvements in almost every aspect of our life.

And a lot of times it is overlooked because people feel like, you know, working more, more, more, more, more is often better than prioritizing their sleep, which of course, I'm sure there are times where that's necessary.

But over, you know, your lifetime, you really want to make sleep a priority and Without it you can find everything starts lacking and Your energy isn't there your drive isn't there Not to mention sleep in general or I should say lack of sleep is associated with so many health risks and chronic illnesses, you know, from cancer to heart disease to diabetes and all these kinds of things, you know, as we learned everything's connected, right?

And if you're not prioritizing your sleep, likely you're not showing up as your best self every day, which is, you know, what, what it's really all about at the end of the day.

And I guess Anali, did you want us, we can get into some tips and things to focus on with sleep?

And Dave, like, do you have any information you can give us about sleep and what your thoughts on that too?

At the same time, we can take this as a discussion between the 3 of us.

Yeah, yeah, more than happy I have some insights on sleep as well.

For me, 1 of the best resources on sleep is the book Why We Sleep.

I think that's really interesting to kind of get to the fundamental problems and then the fundamental benefits of why we're doing something rather than, you know, the normal advice is like get more sleep, eat good food, you know, exercise and their long-term effects and long-term outcomes rather than the short term.

And I think reframing it on the benefits of short term as well is, I think is really helpful.

They do it with say, when people are quitting smoking, they talk about the benefits of within 24 hours, blood flow and taste sensations and within 72 hours and within 1 week.

And I think framing sleep in those tangible benefits that you're going to get tomorrow is really beneficial as well, rather than just long term health benefits.

Because I think we're we're all impatient for results and kind of too often born the candle at both ends.

It's funny you mentioned that book, I was actually going to mention it later on.

But yeah, I heard I heard Matthew Walker speaking in several podcasts quite a while back and yeah, it definitely struck me with a lot of different things.

I do think it is important to focus on those short-term effects too.

I know there's statistics out there where if you get less than, I don't know the exact statistics, but 5 hours of sleep, it's the equivalent to driving with a certain blood alcohol content as if you've had a couple of drinks.

Things like that, it can really throw off everything from our mental and physical energy to so much stuff.

But yeah, it's great you mentioned that book because I think it is a very pivotal, pivotal book.

Like, while you guys were talking about it, I was going back to my time when I was working as a registered nurse about 6 to 7 years ago.

And I remember how much it affected my mood and just being awake all night and trying to function throughout the day.

And I think about people that actually do that their whole life, like working night shifts.

And Now I know how bad that can be to your health as well.

So yeah, that really made me think about that.

So anyway, we can talk about a few tips and tricks on how to get proper sleep.

Something I've been learning is that you need to have your dinner maybe 2 to 3 hours before you go to bed.

And that's gonna really help you have a good night's sleep.

And Ryan, do you wanna extend on that topic?

Trying not to eat within a couple hours before bed.

the exact science behind it but I think it's something with, as your body is metabolizing your food and breaking it all down and everything.

It's hard for you to fall into a deep sleep as well.

So getting good night's sleep starts in the morning.

I'm not sure people have heard that before, too.

But it wasn't until I actually like started implementing, you know, getting some sun exposure in the morning that it really started to notice how my sleep became more routine.

And I could fall asleep better at night and stay asleep better.

So sun exposure is actually 1 of our other principles we're going to talk about in a bit, so I won't talk too much about it.

But you know, getting sunlight in your eyes within the first hour after waking up, or just as soon as you can, after you wake up, really helps set your circadian clock and, and allows your your body to essentially acclimate with, you know, the time of day and, and get your whole body and systems running in sync, which is so key and so pivotal.

It's such an easy thing to do that's often very overlooked but it can really really help with our sleep and it's the same too if you for getting or watching sunset as well so sunset can the different color rays and light rays can help with any, you know, so let's say you're going to watch TV and stuff before bed, it can actually help to mitigate a bit of that and dim those effects.

But also some other things would be having some sort of wind down routine, rather than just, you know, maybe you're working, working, working, and then you just jump in and try to go to bed.

Of course, that's gonna be very difficult.

You know, your mind's gotta wind down and shut off.

So I would say that's a very important 1.

So maybe if you can take 30 minutes to an hour to just wind down, whatever that looks like for you that can be reading a book, you know, with a cup of tea or something like that.

Or just relaxing with family talking anything really that want to try to avoid screens the best we can, but anything that's going to allow us to just wind down and in not, you know, be so on alert and highly focused.

Let's see then after that I another 1 I've really implemented to is dimming, dimming the lights at night.

So a lot of these principles I learned from Dr.

Yeah, big, big fan of Andrew Huberman as well.

But I'm lazy, and I think most of us are lazy and our brains are lazy.

We try to optimize energy naturally, so we take shortcuts.

So for me, like I just said, I set my phone to dim and to block out blue light automatically at a specific time.

And I use an app called RISE Science App, which integrates with your Apple Health and your watch and your sleep.

And it basically it adjusts to your natural rhythms, understands when you go to bed, when you get up, and you can set a kind of target of how much sleep you want.

And what it will actually do is based on your energy levels and exercise and stuff like that.

It will actually tell you when you have the melatonin window, because if you go past your melatonin window, you will actually be more alert.

So some people will kind of fight through it or will just stay awake and then they don't understand what you can, what it can't go asleep.

So that app just gives me simple prompts to tell me that in 1 hour's time, you will be entering your melatonin window.

So it gives me that kind of prompt to actually start to wind down naturally, to start to put the voices down, rather than, I don't want to have to use willpower because that's using energy and brain activity.

I want stuff to prompt me to say, OK, now it's time to wind down, Dave.

And likewise, if I don't get enough sleep, it will adjust that window and say, maybe you should go to bed a little bit earlier tonight and it will adjust my melatonin window for that as well to help me stay within a kind of healthy range.

Yeah I love how you say you don't have that willpower because definitely I know that as well and it is so important.

that I don't have it, it's that I'm aware that it's a resource that exists.

And I don't want to use willpower when I don't need to use willpower.

But if I can just get an app to kind of, you know, to hack the willpower, that's even better.

And I haven't used the, you know, like smart watches or, you know, whoop or oaring.

I haven't really used any of those things.

So I don't really have all that kind of stuff connected.

But yeah, I agree with the dimming, dimming the phone background.

I forget what time, usually like an hour before I'm going to go to bed, it dims my background and changes the color profile of it or the color gradient, which I think does really help as well.

But yeah, I've been wanting to look more into those kinds of systems with like the watches and stuff and see how that would affect my sleep.

Well, can I make a recommendation of you, do you?

Not really helps because I'm, you know, it will tell me during the day, it will tell me when I have peaks of energy, when I have dips of energy.

I'm not looking for it to, you know, be the be the boss of my energy and sleep.

It's reminding me like if I take a walk or a jog, it reminds me I've got a boost in energy.

And even when it tells me it's a melatonin window, it's giving me an error of a window rather than saying, you know, go to bed at exactly this time as well.

So it's I'm taking it with like it's it's aggregated anonymous data.

It's not going to be always specific to my energy and my health every day.

But it's it's it's helping build that routine as well.

But it's it's by no means am I looking at it to be an exact science.

Yeah, because I know I've heard stories to people, you know, they'll wake up in the morning and see their their whoops sleep score or whatever and then it says they had you know, terrible sleep and this and that and then it just kind of ruins their whole day because They're they're thinking in that mindset of oh, I had a terrible sleep.

I have 0 energy You know whereas normally if they woke up and didn't look at that or see that, it would have just been another day and they would have went about their things.

I guess it's like a double-edged sword in a way and something to think about.

Dave, would you mind putting in the comments the app you're using?

Yeah, so yeah, There's also more other things that we can do to get a good night's sleep, like not having alcohol before we go to bed.

Well, I mean, in so many things, like Dr.

Matthew Walker talks about and stuff, it's even, you know, 1 glass of alcohol before bed.

Like a lot of people think, Oh, I need that glass in order to help me fall asleep, which it may help you fall asleep.

But alcohol prevents you from falling into that deep REM sleep that our bodies and that we so desperately need, you know, for our learning and recovery and all those things.

So I think trying to, I guess not not have any alcohol before bed if possible, or cutting down as much as you can is really gonna help benefit your sleep tremendously.

I even, I know firsthand too, when I used to drink a lot more, my sleep was terrible.

And if I had a couple drinks before bed, like I could never fall into a deep sleep.

And I would wake up, you know, exhausted.

And even if it wasn't necessarily a hangover, it was just exhaustion.

And yeah, so I can definitely attest to that 1.

other simple things just like having your room nice and dark as best you can.

You don't want you know streetlights and things like that coming in and having it nice and cool.

I think it's like 18 degrees Celsius or what would that be?

Fahrenheit, like 66 degrees or something like that.

In order to to have a really great night's sleep.

So there's, I read up on this before about when you're going to sleep and the temperature.

And there's kind of sensors on our bodies, which are based on our neck, on our wrists, and I believe on our legs as well.

And sometimes you're actually in a warm environment and you're trying to transition from that kind of warm environment to the slightly cooler environment.

It's typically 2 degrees Celsius below your normal, you know, environment.

So like you were saying 18 degrees if your house is normally 20 degrees.

But what I found really useful there is when you know you're brushing your teeth and doing your whole routine is to actually splash cold water on your neck, on your wrists and on your legs.

You can you can dry it off then but that just kind of lowers those sensors as well.

They're going to indicate, OK, this is sleep time as well.

Yeah, OK, I never heard that 1 before, but no, that's that's really great.

Is that that's something you actually do most nights?

And not most nights, I would only do that if it happened to be like summer and it was extremely warm.

You know, you can't actually lower the temperature.

I find if you're struggling to sleep, sometimes I would be struggling to sleep and I would get up and I would actually splash.

Within a few minutes, I would go to sleep.

It wasn't like you didn't have to have a cold chair.

You're not trying to lower your entire core temperature.

You're just trying to lower the sensors, the primary sensors that go to sleep.

I also want to welcome Jeremy here and I can see Jeremy here.

And Jeremy is someone that I've connected to Twitter and he's a really a wonderful person.

So would love for you to join and speak to Jeremy if you wish.

Today we are talking about the foundation of high performance and we are just going back to the basics of what we need to master outside of our jobs, outside of our businesses, so we can perform really well in our businesses as athletes, like as coaches.

So we're just going back to our basics, we're talking about 7 principles.

So right now we're talking about the first principle, sleep and why it's the most important thing for us to function really well.

And how about we go to principle number 2?

So that's another big 1, that's hydration.

Definitely overlooked, but this plays such a huge part of us being able to think so clearly, having that clear mind throughout the day, and trying to drink at least 2 liters of water because this is something that I didn't do really well and I remember I felt a lot more tired like I couldn't think properly my decisions weren't as good But the only way for me to get into the habit of drinking a lot of water was that I have a big water bottle that's bigger the size of me, honestly, like sitting right in front of my face.

So once I started doing that, I actually, yeah, I got into the habit of drinking 2 liters or more and I felt more energetic throughout the day.

So, yeah, that's something that I think is really important.

How about Ryan, Dave, Jeremy, your thoughts on that?

Hydration is key in the sense, I mean, if we're not hydrated, our bodies just can't function properly.

And, you know, our organs and our systems need to be hydrated in order to actually do what they're supposed to do.

That's why I think like you said, Ronali, if you're not hydrated, we tend to get headaches and maybe get a bit spacey or just feel off, like we're lacking energy.

It's just essentially prioritizing and remembering to do it.

Like you said, having something with you like a bottle all the time, like a refillable bottle, not just buying plastic water bottles all the time, but having that big jug or whatever you want to call it next to you is key.

If it's there, it's convenient and you're going to drink it.

At least for me, I know when I have my bottle, I just am drinking it all the time without even thinking.

But if I don't have it with me, I can go hours without drinking anything, without even realizing.

So it's 1 of those things, if it's there, you're gonna do it.

Hydration is 1 of probably the areas that I forget and struggle with most often.

And exactly like you said, if I have a bottle on a desk in front of me, then it's very easy.

But what I've started doing over the last few months is I kind of work in 60 minute blocks and then I take, you know, some downtime.

It might be only 5 minutes, it could be 15 minutes, but I'm trying to make sure within those few minutes before I start the next session, I'm like, have I got everything available at hand for me?

And 1 of those things has been, have I got water there as well?

Do I need to refill or just have it there?

As again, that simple prompt, I think, out of sight, out of mind, unfortunately, is the problem for me when it comes to hydration.

I think that's how it is for most people, like you said, out of sight, out of mind.

Another thing too that has really helped me get hydrated and make sure I'm starting the day off on the right foot is after I wake up, you know, within, I don't know, the first 10, 20 minutes, I always have like 2 glasses of water, you know, because that way, it's like, boom, starting the day off, right, I'm already, you know, got that much water in my system.

And I tend to feel it actually gives me a bit of energy.

So prioritizing that hydration straight away, it's definitely made a massive impact.

And that can be as simple as just leaving water out the night before or leaving a glass out on the counter so you see it, whatever it is, you know, to kind of trigger that or to be that cue for you to drink water.

But that's another 1 that's really benefited me.

So how about we move on to our third principle.

And like we mentioned before, how simple these things are, but they're so often overlooked by people and but if we don't focus on these things so It's tough for us to sustain at our jobs, at our businesses, as athletes, and we can prevent burnout if we do go into these principles.

So the third principle we want to talk about is nutrition.

It's funny that comes after sleep and hydration, but it's just as important as sleep and hydration.

Ryan, what are your thoughts on nutrition?

Yeah, so when it comes to nutrition, it's funny, I know it's a very loaded topic.

Many people have their opinions about what's best and all that.

I think the baseline of nutrition is essentially the same throughout no matter which I guess diet or whatever you're looking at.

And and that's, you know, we want to focus the diet around whole foods, right?

So cutting out most of the crap, so all the highly processed stuff, you know, refined grains, all those types of things, cutting them out as much as possible, because there's so many studies showing how how they just lead to all these different chronic illnesses.

So cutting those out and replacing them with more whole foods is definitely a step in the right direction.

So I guess that that's the biggest aspect of it.

And I know it can be difficult, we could do a whole bunch of spaces on nutrition, but I don't think that's what we're really here for.

And there's already so many spaces dedicated for that.

So just being mindful, I guess, of what you're putting in your body, body and just looking at it, from the perspective of is this going to, you know, give help me become the healthiest version of myself?

Or is this just going to continue making me feel the way that I feel already?

Maybe that's lack of energy and, you know, gaining weight, all that kind of stuff.

See all Onali McDermott transcripts on Twitterspaces

High Performers Space #3 The foundation of a high performer