The promise of “The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer” by Steven Kotler is to provide a blueprint for achieving peak performance and accomplishing seemingly impossible goals. Kotler, a known expert in human performance, draws on neuroscience, psychology, and behavioural science to present a comprehensive guide. The red thread of this review is to determine how to apply it practically.

The quest for being a productive human in a world that values exponential growth of output and efficiency can be exhausting. The engine that enables personal success and prosperity needs to be fed by purpose and meaning. For a few people, the financial kickback is enough, but in most cases, a bigger vision is needed to make the individual push through and deliver what many call grit or the hustle. My personal interest in the subject is based on how to do more with less, as I believe that I can maximise my time better and direct myself towards areas that have more value for myself and society, instead of grinding out on tasks that are disconnected from meaningful outcomes. It is also fascinating to understand how high-performing individuals and groups maximise their potential. Of course, there are a lot of circumstantial elements that make someone perform at their peak, but it is very interesting to understand the different methods that enable an individual to take the extreme steps towards the top of their sport or profession. I have read and experimented with many methods and theories for individual and group performance but have always found the methods difficult to stick, and as a result, I have rarely seen the long-term effect. Especially in professional settings, it’s easy to ‘go through the motions’ of workshops and process design, but not make it count. In my opinion, this can do more damage than good, as it devalues the approach and demotivates individuals to improve the group dynamics, so much that the result can actually have a negative effect on productivity, creativity, and efficiency. So in this review, I will keep things very practical by outlining the key concepts of the book and giving some insight into my personal use of the approach in my daily routines, purpose, and motivation.

Key concepts

• Peak Performance Pyramid: A hierarchical model outlining the stages of achieving peak performance.
• Flow States: Deeply immersed states of consciousness where individuals perform at their best.
• Goal Setting and Achievement: The importance of setting and systematically achieving goals.

Practical tools

• Daily Habits: Building a routine that supports motivation, learning, creativity, and flow.
• Mindset: Cultivating a growth mindset and resilience to overcome setbacks.
• Feedback Loops: Implementing mechanisms for regular feedback and adjustment.

My main takeaway from the approach is the performance pyramid, where you need to find your purpose x motivation, to not only identify the right direction but to persist in the direction. The main approach is to have a long-term perspective, defined by a “Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP)” and “High Hard Goals (HHG),” which then dictate your daily checklist and time prioritisation. Applying this to myself, here is one of my health-oriented HHGs:

🏂 Master the art of snowboarding, by being able to ride the biggest peaks in Norway, beyond my 50s. Why : To stay able and healthy as long as I can, with underlying objectives to improve my wellbeing, health, and mobility to a high level that I am able to sustain over the long term.

My love for snowboarding is the foundation that pushes purpose x motivation, which in theory should enable me to live a healthier life and have intrinsic motivation to complete the harder fitness and mobility sessions, and make me more curious about nutrition/food. This might be some tricks for the mind, but I can already feel that it is pushing me in a positive direction, so it will be interesting to see if it sticks. I’ll report back in my 50s about the progress!

To make the MTP and HHGs a reality, Steven Kotler argues that it is the daily habits that will make a peak-performing individual. To test how this approach works in practice, I have adapted the recommended daily habits to my own interests and set up a checklist in Notion. In addition to the daily habits, there is also a set of weekly habits that focus on exercise and flow state. They are weekly and not daily, as they can be spread across the week.

☀️ Daily habits

📝 Journal: Daily notes from the day, happenings and feelings, gratitude and learnings

📸 Photo: novice photo and text uploaded

🎧 Focus: 90-120 min for uninterrupted concentration: Most important task(s). If completed it should feel like I won my day.

🧘🏼 Mindfulness: 10-20 min mindfulness activity (headspace)

📚 Reload: 25 min / 25 pages read of a book or podcast outside of the core area, to load pattern recognition system

👍🏼 Complete: 5 min to clear today’s checklist. Everything needs to be done; if not complete, break up tasks for the next day.

👨🏼‍💻 Next: 5 min to create lists for the next day, order tasks from difficult to easy, including all tasks: Workout, recovery.

💤 Sleep: 7-8h sleep every day

Tracker is built on Kina’s Notion habit template

🌗 Weekly habits

🏃🏻 Running: 2-3x sessions with a goal of a minimum of 20 km

🏋🏻‍♀️ Strength: 2x sessions with a goal to move towards the snowboard mobility course

🌻 High Flow: 2-6h active flow state with snowboarding, running, drawing…

🗣️ Feedback: 30-60 min on the work I have produced in focus time.

🍔 Make a new recipe for dinner, once a week

You can go quite deep into these different habits and goals, and I would really recommend making the habits your own rather than just copying them from the book. However, it’s a good starting point.
In conclusion, I would recommend reading or listening to this book (as I did) if you are interested in learning how peak performance athletes and entrepreneurs shape their days and work towards larger missions that give them the motivation to overcome challenges and build grit when things are difficult. I see this approach as an experiment that is likely to evolve, but it provides a very interesting and solid foundation for structuring my days and pushing me in a direction where I have a clear intention and purpose to pursue.

The next books on my productivity reading list are “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout” by Cal Newpor t and “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Book Title:  The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer

Author:  Steven Kotler

Publication Date:  January 3, 2023

Publisher:  Harper Paperbacks

ISBN:  0062977512

Amazon (not affiliated) :  The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer