David Spindler knows what it takes to succeed at the highest level. As a cognitive performance consultant, he works with athletes to help them achieve greatness; and as a neuroscientist, he has a deep understanding of how the brain works and what it requires to keep it functioning at its peak. David has strong views about how founders should approach their work/life balance, and he joins Antler partner Bede Moore to share some crucial lessons that can be taken from the world of elite sport. 

For a start, David gives short shrift to some of the excesses of the 996 working culture. “It made no sense to me whatsoever,” he tells Bede. “It was a recipe for burnout.” As David sees it, there’s a huge cultural gap between how those in elite sport, and those in elite business leadership approach their health. “How you sleep, how you prioritize when you make really high level decisions is really important,” says David. “And you can't do that if you have overly high cortisol, which is the stress hormone in your brain. The higher the stress hormone, the less likely you are to make a correct decision….” The 996 approach – which recognise the importance of recovery – will compound that over time, he says, and “you're more likely to make really poor decisions over and over again.”

As Bede points out, lots of listeners might take some convincing. Especially if you work hard, stay up late, and wake up feeling good. David walks through the science of why just because you think you’re working at your peak, doesn’t mean you actually are. In fact, working at a high attentional focus for a long time is particularly draining on your ability. If you’re dismissive about the significance of cortisol levels, listen to this: in the US Navy, they actively measure cortisol levels in fighter pilots. And if the levels get too high, you’re not allowed to fly. 

David goes deep into the neuroscience of why this is. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for high level decision making, can “freeze” when a person is under high levels of stress, which means decisions are increasingly made using the amygdala, which are more emotions based. The result? “You stop looking at the overall evidence in front of you and you start using more evidence-based on what you've seen in the past, right?” It is, he explains, more of a “gut feeling” decision. Which might work some of the time, but if you function like this day-in-day-out is going to cause an overall decline in the quality of your decision making. 

It’s just one of many (literally) mind-expanding insights David shares with Bede. To learn more about the similarities and differences between founders and elite athletes, how to re-think your thinking and what the best time of the day is to make high-stakes decisions, listen to the full episode here.