How can founders create a High Performance Routine?

January 23, 2025

Article written by Dr. Rob Archer.

Click here to read the first part in this blog series

In our previous blog, Rob Archer explored the challenges of sustaining high performance and the impact of falling into unsustainable work patterns. Building on that, Rob outlines how it’s essential for founders to identify when they’re stuck in these patterns and take steps to reset. A High Performance Routine is the key to making that shift.

A High Performance Routine is based around two key insights concerning human performance:

Insight #1: Humans evolved to work in a rhythm

Human performance has never been about just one thing, but a rhythm comprised of many different behaviours.  Because these behaviours couldn’t all be done at once, our internal body clock helps dictate what should be done, and when.  Just like the conductor in an orchestra, the body clock helps keep time and from a biological perspective runs the show, every single day.

We either adhere to this daily (circadian) rhythm or ignore it.  But generally, if you fight your own biology, you will lose.

Insight #2: elite performance in other fields is seen as a sequence

If you consider high performance in other fields (like sport), performance is usually conceptualised as a sequence, namely:

1. Preparation
2. Focus and intensity
3. Warm down
4. Recovery

This sequence reflects far more of our human potential. It is dynamic, sustainable, and crucially one stage enables and supports the next.

A High Performance Routine is a way of working in a sequence which reflects all of our human potential and which is in tune with our natural circadian rhythm.

Instead of just waking up, reacting all day, falling into bed and hoping you can switch off, a High Performance Routine will draw the best out of you.  Consistently.

How to reset your day with a High Performance Routine

The start of a new year is a great time to reset your routine, so start by thinking about each of the 4 stages:

  • Preparation.

Instead of just waking up and immediately checking emails, intentionally design a Preparation stage which helps you ‘win the morning’.

At minimum this should include a ritual to help you mentally prepare for the day (think how an athlete mentally prepares for and visualises each match), a routine to narrow your focus and identify your priorities, along with early exposure to daylight, to help your body clock keep time.

  • Focus

The Focus stage is about identifying the times when cognitive function is at its highest, and using these times to work on important priorities.

It is important to protect at least one focus time each day, where you are NOT available, and instead able to go deeper on something important. This stage is about intensity – and should feel materially different from the rest of the day.

  • Warm down

This underrated stage is about having rituals towards the end of the day which help you intentionally shut down.  This often includes a quick review of what you have done, closing any open loops you can, planning ahead and anticipating any challenges.

Not only does this protect the intensity of the Focus stage before it, but it will also give you a sense of control so that you can better switch off and recover.  This stage also includes pre-sleep routines, which are highly effective in helping improve sleep.

  • Recovery

This is a broad category which includes short breaks – pit-stops – maintenance activities like exercise and sleep, and a lot of what makes life meaningful and gives perspective, like relationships, hobbies and holidays.

Many founders treat recovery like a luxury – something to be done only if time allows.  But high performers in other fields see it as a foundation for performance.  The evidence suggests that without recovery founders lose energy but also perspective. A High Performance Routine treats Recovery as both a reset mechanism, but also as having value in itself, as it provides greater perspective and very often, creative solutions and insights.

Taken together, we are left with 4 distinct stages, each with their own rituals and benefits, and with each stage reinforcing the next.

 

 

What can a Founder do now to start implementing a High Performance Routine?

The most important action you can take right now is to get your own High Performance Routine in place. Not only will this immediately improve your performance and health, but role modelling some best practices in each of the four stages will help your team, too.

There’s an assessment you can take that will help you identify the best place to start: https://highperformanceroutines.typeform.com/hprassessment.

Next, get everyone in the team to consider their own HPR. There are free tools on the website https://www.highperformanceroutines.com/ to help. By identifying simple practices and rituals in each of the four stages, you can create a shape and a rhythm to your days which will be far more conducive to sustainable high performance, and provide a foundation for success at the dawn of another demanding year.

Note

Rob Archer is a Chartered Psychologist specialising in helping organisations and individuals build resilience, improve mental health and sustain high performance.

Rob works with fast-growing businesses, established multinationals and also in elite sport, including Premiership football and Formula 1. 

Find out more about Rob’s work via his website: https://rob-archer.co.uk/