From Zombie to Zest: What Optimal Performance Looks Like

How do you feel everyday? Exhausted, distracted? Subjected to your life rather than an actor in creating it? Or do you feel present, thoughtful, and dynamic? For the most part, we are somewhere in between. Fortunately, it is possible to sway the balance and spend a whole lot more time in an optimal performance zone.

Who would refuse to have more energy and clearer mind? To be more productive and in a better mood?

In a state of optimal performance, we oscillate between using our full potential, on the one hand, and renewal, on the other. In the former, we are present, reflective, involved, dynamic, open. In the latter, we are relaxed, calm, creative, with a diffused focus. In other words, you feel alive, awake, and capable. It is our natural state.

And the opposite? It’s the daily grind for so many. It's living between survival and exhaustion. It is being in reaction rather than in action, impatient, distracted, explosive and rigid, when you are not feeling empty, listless, indifferent, and scattered.

The great lesson of biohacking is that access to our full potential, to that former state of optimal performance, depends on us. With action, exploration and experimentation, little by little, we can leave behind the default mode of apathy and live in a state of high performance whenever we want.

The first prerequisite is to have a body that works well. This means nutrition, sleep and physical activity are keystones. Second, there is the mind, with our emotions, our thoughts, and the meanings we assign. And then, there is our environment and the systems we put into place.

When we optimize body, mind and environment, we feel better, perform better, and can be more more often.