James Sinclair tells startup founders that sleep, diet, and exercise are the highest-leverage tools for making better decisions faster. Small, consistent improvements in these three habits compound into greater velocity. Adopt them even when your schedule is chaos.
Chapters
As a startup founder, there are three performance enhancing drugs that I swear by and I swear will pay you dividends. Your job as a founder is one thing and one thing only. To be able to make the most brilliant decisions as quick as humanly possible, which means your ability to think, strategize vision, understand and convert that into a decision quickly matters. I also understand that your life is mayhem. You have an endless to do list. It doesn't matter how much you do today, there's more on the plate tomorrow and the list is getting longer. There is no end in sight. There is no such thing as well, I've done everything on my to do list. I get that you might have international engineering teams or international customers that dictate the hours and the time zones that you have to work. I am not debating everything I know you are going through. But there are three things you can do that will increase your velocity, increase your capability to make great decisions and compound. They get better every single day. The three things are simple. Sleep, diet and exercise. And it seems so pedestrian, so normal to give this kind of conceptual advice. It's not conceptual advice, it's fact number one. Sleep wherever you can. And I don't mean as him like right now. Take a nap. I mean wherever you can. Get a good night's sleep. Get the good night's sleep. Don't do the extra hour of work because you think you have to get the sleep. Your body needs it, it will serve, it will come. Compound. Do not wait until the weekend and sleep until 2pm get the hours you can, especially when you can. Second is diet. When you can. And where you can try and eat moderately better. Try and switch your Diet Coke and chocolate bar for like water and nuts and berries. Try and make sure when you're traveling for conferences and getting in late, you don't just grab a slice of pizza that you have an alternative go to that you can run to that will actually give you the fuel you need. That's not junk. Stay hydrated, drink more water, eat more berries, eat more fruits and veggies and proteins and less crap. What you put in your body is the fuel that is going to make the decisions that you need. And number three is exercise. So aside from the value it brings to thinking, just go for a walk, whatever that means. Half a mile, a mile, five minutes, 20 minutes every single day. Just get out and make sure you are stretching, make sure you are moving. You want to talk about performance enhancing drugs? Those are the three that will deliver you the most value as a startup founder and that you can do by making minor tweaks to how you operate. I get it. I get all the feedback you're going to tell me about why it's just impossible. It's not. It's just tough. And I wish, even though I knew this information, I actually took it to heart earlier. I wish I'd done it because I know I would have been more productive, because I know my velocity would have increased, because I know my decision making would have been better. You're not being judged on the hours you spend working. You're being judged on the results you deliver for your organization. Good luck.
