This Performance Enhancing Drug is Free and Completely Legal

There are a myriad of parallels between sports and sales, although there’s a key difference that makes being in the business world even more challenging than pro-sports— we get no off-season. Everyday, it’s game on. New challenges arise, competition gets stronger, and at any moment macroeconomic factors can turn periods of prosperity into droughts.

There are no rules that keep things in order for us, no such thing as „financial fairplay“ or transfer-windows in which companies can make „trades“ for A-Players in limited time frames. And while sports teams compete for trophies, startups compete for market share in a constantly shifting environment. Even the big winners get disrupted all the time, e.g. Netflix crushing Blockbuster, Uber crushing Taxis and Airbnb the hotel industry.

Given the challenging nature of being an entrepreneur, I think it’s worth taking a look at how pro-Athletes deal with a constant pressure to perform at the highest level. The best athletes invest millions of dollars into recovery, so that in the little spurts of productivity that they do have, they can deliver. One notable example of an athlete who invests heavily in recovery is LeBron James. Widely recognized as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, James reportedly spends approximately $1.5 million per year on his body, including recovery processes. His regimen includes cryotherapy, hyperbaric chambers, and normatec leg boots, among other advanced recovery techniques. This substantial investment in recovery helps him maintain peak physical condition and prolong his career at the highest levels of competition.

I don’t think any one reading this article has those kind of resources to spend on recovery. However, one of the most performance-enhancing drugs that Lebron James, Rafael Nadal and Christiano Ronaldo all tap into is absolutely free—sleep. All of the mentioned athletes have reported tremendous benefits from tracking and optimizing their sleep schedule — in addition, they all use naps strategically, carefully tracking the amount of deep REM sleep their getting, tracking the latency, efficiency and timing of their circadian rhythms. They’re aligning their schedules with the natural biological clock we have in our body and reporting game changing benefits to their performance.

Because sellers are exposed to a high amount of pressure and challenges every day, it still surprises me why this obsessive focus on the concept of recovery and rest is often kept in the circles of professional athletes, and not used by entrepreneurs and sellers the same way. 

After all, the impact of our work lies in short intervals of client calls, high stakes negotiations and pipeline generation, similar to the way athletes have to tune into their energy reserves when game time comes. The more you reap from these short sprints/moments the better. 

The more I learn about sleep, this mysterious and still under-researched field of the human experience, the more my mindset changes in relation to it — shifting from sleeping to not feel fatigue to using it as a tool to perform better.

I think we can draw a lot of parallels from the sports world’s obsession with it, and apply it to ourselves. Embracing good sleep practices could mean the difference between an average performance and excelling in your field.

I’ll leave you with three ways to improve your sleep:

• Get a tracking device to help you understand your circadian rhythms and sleep quality (you can’t improve what you can’t track): The Apple Watch, Oura Ring or Whoop are all good options. I personally use the Oura ring and love its usability. 
• Keep a regular sleep schedule: consistency is key and trumps sleep duration in improving sleep quality. This way you tune your body to your internal biological clock.
• Mind your diet + regular exercise: Avoid large meals, caffeine, and alcohol before bedtime. 

Happy ZZZs. If you like this article, please make sure to subscribe to my newsletter for regular articles like this.