“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

– Steve Jobs

In a world that is constantly telling you that you need to do more, the best advice I can give you is to do less. 

The double-edged sword of being a high-performing leader is that there is not only external pressure to always do more, that pressure comes from within as well. 

The highest performers I know and work with understand something that most people don't – progress is fundamentally a subtraction game rather than an addition game. Fewer inputs. Greater output.

It’s about identifying what actually moves the needle – and ruthlessly editing out everything that doesn't.

I want to be clear – this isn’t me talking from a perfect pedestal, this is me talking from deep reflection on how often I got this wrong during my time in leadership. 

I frequently got lost in the ‘glamorisation of busy’ and failed to protect the boundaries required for deep, meaningful work. In that constant battle between urgent and important, I lost as many times as I won. 

So this week, I want to help you strip things right back to some fundamentals. Just three things. All underrated. All backed by neuroscience. None of them requiring a new framework, a new system, or a new subscription.

Sleep. Walk. Write.

That's it.

Sleep –  The Real Productivity Hack

If you were told there’s a groundbreaking new piece of tech that will transform your energy levels, clarity of thought and mood, you’d be first in line for it, right?

Well, all the evidence tells us that sleep does all that and more. 

You know you need physical rest, but I think what's really important to understand is what actually happens when you sleep. Your brain's glymphatic system (think of it like a waste-clearance mechanism) is almost exclusively active during deep sleep. Think of it like a dishwasher running overnight – if you skip the cycle, you wake up with yesterday's mess still on the plates. I suspect you instinctively know what that feels like. 

The prefrontal cortex – the region governing your decision-making, emotional regulation, and complex thinking – is acutely sensitive to sleep deprivation. Your sharpness and clarity of thought will start to deteriorate rapidly the more you neglect sleep. 

Let me be clear. There are always going to be times when you need to push through – that’s a reality of high performance leadership. What I’m saying is understand the trade-off and invest in your performance and wellbeing when you can.

Walk – The Transformational Technique Hiding In Plain Sight

I want to deliberately separate walking from ‘getting your steps in’. That binary interpretation really undersells the multiple benefits of this simplest of activities. 

We’re talking about a relatively small investment of time (ideally outdoors) that leads to everything from stress reduction through to measurably improved cognitive performance.  

For starters, walking activates the default mode network (DMN): the brain system responsible for creativity, problem-solving, and self-reflection.

A Stanford study found that creative output increased by up to 81% during walking compared to sitting. Critically, the effect persisted after returning to a seated position. The walk does something to your thinking that stays with you.

There's the physical dimension too. Even 20 minutes daily measurably reduces cortisol (the primary stress hormone), improves cardiovascular health, and enhances insulin sensitivity. Again, I suspect many of you know this instinctively – those times when you’ve been stressed and just gone out to ‘clear your head’. The difference is you make this a ritual rather than an ad hoc response. 

You don't need more time. You need to use the time you already have differently. Leave the phone behind. Let the mind wander. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re somehow wasting time – knowing the evidence I’ve shared with you here, start thinking of this as brilliant ROI. 

Write – The Most Underrated Performance Tool

We’re in a world now where it’s possible to outsource everything from meeting notes to full-blown strategies using AI-powered tools.

But that can come at a cost. The reality is that you need to consciously invest in your own cognitive health and performance if you want to be at your best when it matters most. 

Writing by hand is neurologically different from typing. Research from Princeton and UCLA demonstrated that handwriting activates greater neural processing and deeper encoding. The slower pace forces you to synthesise before you commit – you can't write everything down, so you have to decide what matters. 

For leaders like you, this matters in two specific ways.

The first is processing. Psychologist James Pennebaker spent decades studying expressive writing and found that people who wrote about challenging experiences showed measurable improvements in both psychological wellbeing and physical health markers.

The second is clarity. Writing is where you discover what you actually think. The moment you get stuck on a sentence is usually the moment you've hit something you haven't fully resolved yet. Writing surfaces the edges of your thinking, and in a sea of noise it helps you to find clarity.

It creates the white space for reflection, the clarity that comes from seeking the right words and the action that results. What happened. What it meant. What you intend as a result.

It takes less time than you think and compounds significantly over time.

A Provocation For You

None of this is new information. That's precisely my point.

The risk isn't that you haven't found the right tools. It's that you've accumulated too many of them. More inputs than you can process. More commitments than you can honour. More noise than signal.

So if you accept that the benefits of sleeping, walking and writing are proven and compelling, my provocation is what are you going to remove to create space for them?

🔥  LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER  

The best content I researched this week:

1. Here’s one more great performance and wellbeing tool to consider –  in this Instagram reel Dr Andrew Huberman tells you how research proves just 5 minutes of meditation a day can reduce anxiety and improve sleep. 

2. More data doesn’t mean more clarity – ironically it usually means the opposite. Sahil Bloom’s Noise Bottleneck is a sharp read on why consuming less information is the key to better decisions.

3. Is your life plan actually working for you – or just working? Entrepreneur and Stanford lecturer Dave Evans speaks on how to engineer more meaning into your life in the latest Modern Wisdom podcast.