Why Aren’t You Investing In Your Most Important Asset?
Why Aren’t You Investing In Your Most Important Asset?
PLUS: 84 Minutes With A Genius
June 07, 2026
“If a brain is exercised properly, anyone can grow intelligence, at any age, and potentially by a lot. Or you can just let your brain idle and watch it slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a sedentary body.”
\- Dr Michael Merzenich
Neuroscience tells us the brain responds well to repetition, so I make no apologies for returning to this subject again.
As a leader, your brain is your single biggest asset.
Your ability to make complex decisions under pressure. Your ability to creatively problem solve. Your ability to regulate your emotions. All are affected by your cognitive health and performance.
There’s still a belief that cognitive performance just happens. That if you're smart, experienced, and work hard, the brain takes care of itself.
It doesn't. And before I explain why, I want to clear up a distinction that most people fail to make: your brain is not your mind. They are not the same thing.
Think of it this way. Your brain is the hardware. Your mind is the software. But it's only as good as the hardware it runs on. To truly show up at your best you need them working in sync.
THE SCIENCE
Dr Michael Merzenich, Professor Emeritus at UCSF and the scientist who effectively proved that the adult brain can change and be trained throughout life, has spent decades demonstrating something that is critical for you to understand: the brain is not fixed.
Neuroplasticity (the brain's ability to reorganise, form new connections, and improve its own function) continues throughout your life. It is constantly changing, but the brain improves most when it is deliberately challenged. It declines when it is left to idle. Merzenich's research showed that targeted cognitive training can drive measurable improvements in your processing speed, attention, and memory.
Deliberate, purposeful repetition physically changes the brain's structure. Every time you practise a skill with genuine intention and attention, the nerve fibres carrying those signals become faster and more reliable - think of it as you starting with a dirt track and forging it into a motorway. This is how your skills move from feeling uncomfortable and effortful to smooth and automatic. This is how expertise is built at the hardware level.
But you can’t explore new motorways if you’re just sticking to the ones you’ve already built. To promote brain growth you need to intentionally seek out new experiences. Novelty (which in the scientific sense means genuine, unfamiliar experience) triggers new neural connections. Existing networks reorganise and expand. So do this, and the brain doesn't just get more efficient, it also grows in capacity.
A brain that only repeats gradually loses its ability to adapt. The pathways deepen, but the range narrows. The brain needs both. Repetition builds efficiency. Novelty builds capacity. Together, they are what genuine cognitive development looks like.
The best way to think about it is like the gym. You wouldn't walk in every day and lift exactly the same weight in exactly the same way and expect to keep improving. Progressive overload - seeking out deliberate challenge - is what drives adaptation. Your brain works on precisely the same principle.
THE PROOF
Victor Wembanyama is 22 years old and already the most extraordinary basketball talent of his generation.
His talent has been built on thousands of hours of purposeful practice - intentional repetition to bed in his elite skills.
But this is also a player who understands the power of novelty - which is why last summer he flew to China, shaved his head, and spent 10 days with Shaolin monks, training in movement disciplines his body had never encountered.
His own organisation confirmed they sent him because they needed a training stimulus that sat entirely outside everything he already knew. The specialist preparation had built the hardware. His constant quest for novelty upgrades it further.
So many people focus on mindset in isolation, but if you don’t understand and invest in your hardware, your performance is going to degrade.
THE APPLICATION
Start by asking yourself two honest questions:
1. Where in your professional life are you practising with genuine intention - not just going through the motions, but pushing the quality of your thinking and decision-making in a directed way?
2. Where are you introducing experiences that are genuinely unfamiliar - not mild variation, but stimuli your brain has never encountered?
Most people struggle to answer either with any conviction.
On the repetition side, this means identifying the two or three capabilities that matter most to your performance as a leader and practising them with the same deliberateness a professional athlete brings to their craft. Not just doing them. Doing them with attention, feedback, and intent to improve.
On the novelty side, the bar is higher than most people set it. Listening to a podcast is not novelty in the scientific sense. Trying to get to grips with Claude Skills, seeking out conversations which challenge your assumptions, an environment that places completely different demands on your brain - that's the level of stimulus that drives new neural connections.
You don't need to join a Shaolin temple. But you do need to be honest about whether you are actually developing your brain, or simply assuming it will take care of itself.
It won't. And now you know why.
This is exactly what we’re built for at Prime Performance Labs. We work with leaders who know they have more in them - those who want to get unstuck. Those who want the stimulus, structure and support around them to find it. If you feel like you've plateaued, or you're ready to find out what you are truly capable of, let's talk.
Progress is always possible.
J.
🔥 LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER
The best content I researched this week:
1. Speaking of your cognitive health, neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff highlights the hidden cost of easy answers. Spoiler alert: you shouldn’t outsource your thinking to AI.
2. As I touched on, seeking out different perspectives that challenge your thinking is great for your cognitive health. And if you’re not convinced, this 5-minute read on the value of conversations that involve serious disagreement may change your mind.
3. I use this word carefully, but I believe Rick Rubin is a genius. So you won’t be shocked to know that I’ve been absorbed by his latest podcast. It’s packed with practical wisdom and really captures the importance of finding meaning in your work. If you’re not a hip-hop fan, if you don’t work in the creative industries… you should listen to the full 84 minutes. The power of different perspectives…
Share this with a fellow leader - we’re stronger together.
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