Amanda NorthcuttFounder & CEO | Keynote Speaker, LevelUp · B2B sales as a solo is HARD. I’ve got you. I help consultants & coaches sell high-ticket services comfortably & confidently, while enjoying consistent, predictable revenue | Founder & CEO | Speaker |

Always Performing Makes You Worse

31 Oct 2025 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, the author of The Performance Paradox defines the performance paradox as the counter‑intuitive truth that constantly performing—spending all available time on execution—actually degrades overall performance. While many assume that maximizing time spent on performance will boost results, the paradox suggests the opposite: over‑practice or over‑performance leads to diminishing returns. The conversation points to examining world‑class individuals to understand how they develop their extraordinary skills, implying that their approach may avoid the pitfalls of constant performance.

You've written this incredible book, The Performance Paradox. So, let's talk about what is the performance paradox?
Performance paradox is kind of the counterintuitive reality that if we're constantly performing, our performance suffers. So, we might think that if we want to maximize performance, we have to perform as much as possible, right? To spend all our time performing. But the paradox is that that lowers our performance. And so, what do I mean by that? One way to kind of understand this really clearly is to examine people who are fantastic at what they do, super skilled, like world-class, and think about how do they develop those skills?