If Your Hardware Is Failing, Your Software Won't Work
If Your Hardware Is Failing, Your Software Won't Work
PLUS: The Reason Why You Can’t Stay Motivated
September 06, 2026
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
\- James Clear
I always think of early September as the real ‘New Year’ for leaders.
There’s no true ‘off-season’, but in most cases there’s a rare window of opportunity to shift pace and recharge. I hope you took it.
Now the arena is calling you back and it’s tougher than ever - AI-driven disruption, geo-political challenges, changing workplace cultures.
The leaders who hope things will eventually return to ‘normal’ are going to end up on the sidelines.
As I wrote recently, this is the era of leaders as cognitive athletes and over the coming weeks I’m going to focus on helping you develop the capabilities that will set you up for success.
That starts with laying the right foundations: for you to perform at your best mentally, you need to be looking after yourself physiologically.
The reality is that if your hardware is failing, your software is going to be glitchy.
THE SCIENCE
Let’s cut straight to it - how you sleep, move and eat impacts your cognitive health and performance.
You can tell yourself whatever story you want, but the data doesn’t lie.
Let’s start with sleep, because the evidence here is overwhelming. You will already know its importance when it comes to physical rest, but you need to know the specific cognitive benefits.
Your brain runs its own waste disposal service. It's called the glymphatic system, and it really only gets to work while you're asleep. All day, as your neurons fire, they produce metabolic waste. When you let that build up, the result is slower processing speed, worse judgement calls and brain fog.
Life is full of trade-offs and there will be times where you need to burn the midnight oil. The key is not letting it become habitual. Good behaviours compound. But so do bad ones.
Movement matters almost as much. Exercise triggers a release of a protein called BDNF, which supports the growth of new neural connections - these are the physical ‘pathways’ that support learning, memory and processing speed. Harvard's Dr John Ratey has called it "Miracle-Gro for the brain."
This isn't about being a beast in the gym. It's about moving consistently enough that your brain keeps receiving the signal to build.
Nutrition matters, but even Harvard researchers are clear there's no single miracle food. What research points to is a clear pattern of certain food types - leafy greens, fatty fish, berries and nuts - being beneficial for cognitive health and performance.
Again, no need to be a dietary freak or go reaching for the supplement that doesn’t deliver what it claims. Just do the basics well.
Get your sleep, movement and nutrition locked in consistently and you’re building an evidence-based foundation to perform at your best.
THE PROOF
The biggest challenge with the facts I’ve shared? It’s still easy to be seduced by the tales of the entrepreneurs and executives who worked insane hours, partied hard and were still able to act on their A-game.
Just like everything in life you’ll have outliers and exceptions to the rule, but ask any elite performer and they know the reality.
They’re aware of the gap between when they’re in the ‘simmering six’, just managing to keep up appearances and hold things down, and their prime, where they’re truly expressing their full potential.
I’m privileged to work with a man who has led teams in the toughest arenas of all. Kevin O’Connor, our Elite Performance Advisor, was a Team Leader in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.
An expert in surveillance and counter-surveillance, Kevin has led missions where the stakes have been higher than we’ll ever experience. Where the consequences of not being cognitively sharp and alert have been matters of life and death.
He’ll be the first one to admit that there were times he was in the field where his performance was compromised due to those fundamentals not being in place.
In these situations, sleep was by far the biggest enemy of prime performance - reaction times were slower, thinking was muddier and at times the wrong decisions were made.
Remaining still for long periods while on surveillance also took its toll - his body wasn't getting the movement it needed, just like it wasn't getting the right foods.
Even an elite mindset can only get you so far when your foundations are beginning to crack.
The lesson here is that of course you can still soldier on if you neglect the fundamentals. To an outsider it may even look like you’re smashing life.
But you know your own data - whether you are a Special Forces Team Leader, a CEO or a founder, you know the difference between you in the ‘simmering six’ and you at your best.
THE APPLICATION
You know the evidence. You also know your reality and where the gaps are.
The only thing I really want you to do with this? Lower the bar.
Change is tough and if you decide you are going to go from zero to 100 on all of this, the wheels are going to come off pretty quickly.
Be intentional about where you can make incremental, sustainable changes - these investments compound over time.
Prioritize and focus: better sleep will give you a better return than improved nutrition. Twenty minutes of movement three times a week will be better than an hour once every fortnight or so.
None of this is complicated. That's the point. We start closing the gap between the ‘simmering six’ and your prime by sorting out your hardware.
If you’re still not convinced, think about how much better you feel and how much sharper your thinking is after a great night’s sleep. Tune into your own data and you’ll know the truth of what I’m saying.
Start small. Get it locked in. Then move to the next. These are the solid foundations a cognitive athlete’s performance is built on.
Go well.
J.
🔥 LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER
The best content I researched this week:
1. Find out how to use sleep to enhance learning, memory and your emotional state. Thirty minutes packed with actionable insights from the Huberman Lab essentials series.
2. A simple 3-minute guide on the 7 types of rest your brain needs, according to a cognitive neuroscientist.
3. Stoicism author Ryan Holiday always serves up great brain food. His latest article on the discipline required to create the life you want challenged some of my preconceptions and gave me a different perspective on discipline. I suspect it will have a similar impact on you.
4. Finally, this is the perfect way to sign off as it ties in with The Application perfectly. In just 97 seconds, Dr Alok Kanojia, Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, explains what could lie behind why you can’t stay motivated.
Share this with a fellow leader - we’re stronger together.
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