Good everyone, Craig Anthony Harper, I hope you're great. I hope your days just bloody terrific. I want to talk to you today about peak performance as specifically, I want to talk to you about when you are at your peak. I want to talk about your peak performance time. Now, there's a whole lot of science behind this, with genetic stuff and epigenetics and bi rhythms and circadian rhythms and
all kinds of stuff. I just want to talk to you about what your body tells you, what your results tell you, and what you can learn about you experientially with a bit of awareness, with a bit of perhaps with a bit of n equals one experimenting. That is you being the experimenter and you being the subject, you being the researcher, and you being the researched. What you can learn about you, like, for example, when does your
brain work best? When are you cognitively optimal? Is it the morning, is in the middle of the day, is it late, is it early? Does it depend? Does it vary? So for example, with me, I know that typically my brain Now obviously it's different for different people, but my brain seems to work better. And when I say better. I'm more focused, I'm sharper, I'm I can solve problems better, I can remember things better. I seem to perform better creatively in the morning. So I get up generally around
six and generally between six and twelve. I am premium me. I can still do stuff at night and in the afternoon, of course, but I feel like it's hard to work. You know. It's like after you've been for a ten k run. You can still run, but you're tired. You're still running, but it's not the same. And so for me, it's kind of like that. I feel like there's a window for me, and it's about probably three or four hours where I'm flying, but maybe six hours overall where
I'm pretty good. And so my window won't necessarily probably won't be your window. But so think about and your body will tell you, and your mind, your ability to focus, your ability to train, your ability to be productive will tell you, like when are you the most productive? When are you the most effective? When are you the most efficient? When do you train best? Like our body and our results and the world around us, and our conversation and
our relationships, our output, it's always telling us something. We're always getting data. We're always getting information when it's from our body. We call it biofeedback. More broadly, we might just call it work feedback or productivity or efficiency when we're talking about all the external stuff. But we're always
getting information, and it's our job. It's your job, your responsibility, and my responsibility to be able to analyze that and go, here's what I know when I do this, Like, for example, when I lift weights in the morning, when I do strength training in the morning, I'm stronger body, same bloke doing the same things. I'm stronger. Now, that's probably because I have more testosterone in the morning. I think most people do. I think generally we do. Maybe it's just
because I'm less fatigued. Maybe that's on top of it. Maybe I've got a better attitude in the morning. Maybe I don't know, But here's what I know. Consistently, I can still do strength training at night. But if let's just make up a scale, the Craig awesomeness scale. If in the morning i'm my awesomeness, let's call the the
productivity scale or the performance scale for me. In the morning, I might be ten, I might be nine, But relatively at night I'm going to be a seven or eight same bloke doing the same things with the same physiology. I'm just not quite there. So as much as I can, I do my strength training in the morning. Conversely, comma, I seem to do cardio better at night. I don't even know why I'm excise physio. I'm an excise scientist. Can't even tell you why. But here's what I know.
My body is always telling me something. My results are always telling me something, and you are the same, Okay, Like I know, for example, my peak performance has something to do me functioning physically, mentally, emotionally, and in terms of productivity. There's a relationship with meals and many of
you know this. When I eat lunch. For example, if I have lunch in the middle of the day, as obviously most people have lunch, I have some serious cognitive decline after that depending on what I eat for an hour or two. So I've figured out for me in terms of peak performance, I breakfast, I ate dinner, I
ate nothing pretty much for about twelve hours. I might have a coffee or two maybe, but it's always about for me and hopefully for you, it's always about recognizing how do I get the most out of my body and my mind and my skill and my talent what works best for me. So there is no set window, there is no set time, There is no three step operating system for optimal performance that works for every body. And this is obviously because psychologically, physiologically, emotionally, we are
all different. And so the challenge is to find the right program from some generic external source, but rather to listen to the data and to act on that awareness, and to act on that information that we are constantly being given, and then to develop our own system via that. I know that for me when I study in the morning, when I study, when I'm doing my PhD stuff, and I've got to read papers, and it's heavy going and it's very, very cerebral and very it's not fun, right,
It's kind of sucks a lot of it. But I know that I absorb more, I'm more present, I can concentrate better, and I can get through what might take me ninety minutes in the afternoon and will take me sixty minutes in the morning. I also know that, for example, as a presenter, as somebody who stands in of audiences,
and we're not just talking about peak performance time. Now we're talking about peak performance habits here, but I know that if I'm speaking at nine o'clock in the morning, even though I normally eat breakfast, I won't eat breakfast because even after breakfast there's a little bit of a cognitive lull. Not massive, but I know. And again this
is not a recommendation. This is a personal revelation that I've had an awareness that I have when I am a little bit hungry, I present better, My brain works better, I'm more present, I'm more switched on, and I tend to perform at a higher level. So what's the bottom line. The bottom line is you are constantly getting feedback from your body and from your results, and from all the things happening to you and around you because of you
and despite you. And the challenge is to think about, how do I get the most out of my genetics, What is the thing that works best? How do I get the most out of my mind? How do I get the most out of my time and my talent and my resources. What are the peak performance times for me to get stuff done, to do stuff to be most effective? What are the piece the peak performance habits and behaviors that work optimally for me, and when we start to pay rather than just being in this groundhog
daaness of repetition. I train at six pm every night because I always train at six pm. And I know there are lots of variables that mean we can't always train or do things at the best time because of practical commitments. But there are some things over time where we say, you know what, maybe I could get up and go for a run at five point thirty because when I run at five thirty AM, I feel way better than five point thirty pm. But it's about awareness,
it's about trying stuff. It's about an equals one. It's about you being able to do a bit of research on you. You don't need to be a scientist to do scientific stuff so that you can figure out what works optimally for you on planet you. We'll be back in a minute. So here's my my suggestion for this week, not a or yeah for the coming week, not a question,
more a suggestion. Maybe if you feel compelled, if what I said kind of makes sense and you want to do something about that, identify an area or a couple of areas that for you you would really like to do better, or you would like to become more of a peak performer in that place. Well, rather than just doing what you've always done, try something new. Start to record like one of the things that I used to
do for years and years and years. I'm not suggesting you do this, and of course it's about much more than your body and food, but I'm just giving you a practical example. I recorded all of my workouts. I recorded sets, reps, volume, intensity, workload. I recorded food, I recorded Micro's macros meals, I recorded sleep, I recorded I recorded all of the things, all of the variables that would get me in shape and give me peak physical performance.
I recorded all of that for fifteen years, and somewhere I've got fifteen years worth of data, but me me tracking my behavior and diorizing my behavior so that I could recognize where peak performance, where optimal performance came from for me. So maybe an idea for you is to start tracking things so that you can see what works. Trying things and don't try it for two days and
ago it didn't work. Maybe you're going to go, you know what, I'm gonna work out, or I'm going to do a cold shower every day for the next twenty eight days. See what happens. Or you might go, I'm going to switch my workouts from this time to that time, see what happens. Or I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm going to stop eating at six o'clock at night, and I'm not going to eat till eight the next morning, so I've got a fourteen hour window when nothing's gone, I
might sleep better. Or I'm gonna I'm not going to look at a screen, any kind of screen, a phone, a tablet, a television, a computer. I'm not going to look at a screen from seven pm on any night, Or I'm not going to turn on my phone to ten o'clock every day, or whatever it is. Figure out what the thing is for you that might be relevant, Try stuff, change stuff. You're not going to accidentally figure
it out. It needs to be a conscious process where you are starting to figure out what works optimally for you. See tomorrow,