Business Book Review: High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard

If you had a chance to follow the habits of the world’s most successful people, wouldn’t you? Burchard helps show you how.

My Rating: ★★★★

Length: 432 pages

Publisher: Hay House

Released: 2022

Key Takeaways for Personal Branding

For the purpose of the book, Burchard defines high performance as:

“Succeeding beyond standard norms, consistently over the long term.”

Before reading High Performance Habits, it’s easy to label it yet another book on personal development and habits. But author, Brendon Burchard, was named by SUCCESS and Oprah Magazine as one of the most influential leaders in personal development and achievement.

Burchard has worked as a high-performance coach for some of the world’s most successful people. His client list includes CEOs to celebrities, including Oprah herself. High Performance Habits shares decades of insights from research and his coaching. When someone has an inside look (and influence over) the world’s greatest achievers, it’s worth paying attention to.

HP6

Burchard shares what he calls the ‘HP6’. The six cornerstone habits for success all others fall into:

Personal Habits

• Habit 1: Seek Clarity

• Habit 2: Generate Energy

• Habit 3: Raise Necessity

Social Habits

• Habit 4: Increase Productivity

• Habit 5: Develop Influence

• Habit 6: Demonstrate Courage

Habit 2: Generate Energy: Health and Fitness

In a discussion that feels neglected by his counterparts, Burchard highlights the health and fitness habits of high performers. While others can make it feel like high performers stay glued to their desks at all costs, he shares an important insight.

From Burchard’s findings, high performers are healthier than their peers. They eat better and work out more. The top five percent are 40 percent more likely to exercise three times per week.

As we know, physical exercise creates more than just physical results. As little as just six weeks of exercise enhances dopamine production and receptivity in the brain. This elevates mood and mental performance.

Habit 4: Increase Productivity: Prolific Quality Output

According to Burchard, high performers have mastered the art of what he calls ’Prolific Quality Output’ (PQO). Over the long term, they produce more quality output than their peers. And this is how they become more effective, known and remembered.

More specifically they are producing output that matters to their field. This is derived from what they have established as their ‘Primary Field of Interest’ - part of the ‘Seek Clarity’ (Habit 1) process. Mastering this field of interest is integral to Habit 3 (Raise Necessity).

In the digital era, some of the greatest success stories are from those who simply enabled PQO, such as Facebook and Instagram.

Favourite Quotes

High performers don’t “end up” successful at the very last minute of a decade’s efforts. They don’t come crashing across the finish line of success. They’re steady. They regularly beat expectations. There is a consistency to their efforts that eludes their peers.

High performers get more things done that are highly valued in their primary field of interest. They remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

High performers are not lucky stiffs loaded with a great big bag of strengths at birth. They simply deploy the habits we’ve discussed, and do it more consistently than their peers. That’s it. That’s the difference.

High performers don’t keep their goals, or the why behind those goals, secret or silent. They confidently affirm their goals to themselves and others. If there is one necessity practice that seems to divide high performers and underperformers the most, it’s this one.

You want to get around more successful people? Then earn your way into that party by becoming exceptional at what you do. Work hard. Practice the high performance habits. Never give up, add a tremendous amount of value, and stay on the path to mastery. When you become supremely skilled and successful at what you do, doors will open and you’ll meet more and more extraordinary people.

If your future best self—a version of you ten years older, who is even stronger, more capable, and more successful than you imagined yourself to be—showed up on your doorstep today and looked at your current circumstances, what courageous action would that future self advise you to take right away to change your life? How would your future self tell you to live?

While books on habit formation have quickly become household names, few have focused on the ones that matter most. High Performance Habits is for anyone who wants to focus their energy on what’s most likely to help them succeed.

High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard:  Available on Amazon.