4 Patterns For High Performance (And One Many People Miss Completely)

In any learning activity, we aim to improve. Whether that’s increasing our running speed over a middle distance, improving strength at the gym, or becoming better leaders at work.

We look for a pattern in our improvement.

There are three patterns for high performance we might expect, but there is also a fourth pattern that, from my experience, we rarely think about. And it’s this last pattern that makes us feel frustrated, sometimes enough to give up our goal.

When we track our progress with a new development activity, ideally we look for small gains in our performance, every time we practice the activity.

The runner wants to see their time steadily decrease for a selected distance. The weightlifter aims to increase weight for each new session. The leader might want to see their team’s output increase over time.

It’s human nature to expect the measure to get better, whatever it may be –speed, time, weight, distance,  volume, quality. We feel a sense of achievement when we see these measures improving over time.

The four patterns I’m about to share with you are linear improvement, diminishing returns, accelerating gains and the zig-zag pattern.

These patterns won’t apply for a one-off task. But for habits or routines that we’re looking to embed into our regular practice to boost performance, knowing these patterns can mean the difference between success and failure.

Linear pattern for high performance

In linear progress, performance increases at a constant rate.

Let’s say you took on the task of writing, with the aim of writing 1,000 words a day, and increasing that amount by 10 words per day. On day one you would write 1,000 words. By the end of the first year of writing, you would write 4,640 words per day.

This is completely possible within a first year of writing. The performance trend would look something like this, progressing in a linear, even line.

Advice: in linear patterns, steady increases yield strong gains overtime. The key is to be patient, and allow the passage of time and small increases to reveal significant change.

Diminishing Returns pattern for high performance

In the second pattern, after an initial burst of gains, it becomes more difficult to realise increases in performance when compared with prior periods.

This is a pattern of diminishing returns – while we’re using the same amount of energy, we’re seeing smaller increases in the performance measure we’re tracking.

This occurs when we start to move closer toward a natural limit or threshold.

As an example, professional weight lifters who commence training see high gains in the initial phase of their training. As their strength increases, they lift higher and higher weights.

As they approach the limits of what their body can lift, they still realise gains through hard training, but these gains are likely to be smaller and smaller, requiring more and more effort to realise. The same is true in many sports.

Usain Bolt set the Olympic World Record for the 100m of 9.63 seconds in Jamaica in 2012. Before that, in 2008, he set a new record of 9.69 seconds, which beat Donovan Bailey’s previous time of 9.84 seconds in 1996.¹⁾

To realise these small gains required enormous effort, and that is the nature of competition in such sports, where fractions of a second mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Often when elite athletes reach these limits, they seek new knowledge, in order to break-through their limits. This is why many athletes seek new coaches at important times in their careers.

Advice: when we’re doing activities that result in diminishing returns, we need to do two things. The first is to realise smaller gains are not necessarily an outcome of our efforts. We need not be disappointed, because we’re reaching a threshold that is often not of our own making. The second is to seek new knowledge (whether that be in the form of a coach, our network, or self-learning) to move through this threshold.

Accelerating Gains pattern for high performance

Accelerating gains occur when the measure we’re tracking increases with every new day of practice. This is a pattern of rapid expansion and growth.

We often think of this type of gain in terms of the share market. A new stock may go through a burst in valuation, creating a steep rise in growth.

We don’t always think about it in terms of our personal development. But in life we can go through these periods.

When Steve Jobs rejoined as Apple CEO in 1997, the company had $1 billion of loses from the previous year. The next phase of growth he started for the company was one of accelerated growth.  This must have been an exhilarating time, but also one where everything moved with incredible speed, and where Jobs himself likely faced accelerated growth. ²⁾

We can see the same accelerating gains pattern in our own lives. If we read for thirty minutes every day for six months, likely we would go through a pattern of accelerated gains. Because it’s not just the new knowledge we’d acquire from each book, but the connections between this material, that would make the sum greater than the parts.

Warren Buffet told students at a Columbia Business School:

“Read 500 pages…every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” ³⁾

Advice: the struggle during accelerated growth may be to keep up with the pace of change, and also keep oneself steady and balanced. Questions like, “am I keeping up with this speed, how am I keeping myself steady with all that’s happening around me, am I focused on a ‘true north / mission / vision’ to guide myself through this pace” can be very helpful.

Zig Zag  pattern for high performance

While the three earlier patterns are well known to you and I, from my experience we think less about this final pattern.

The Zig Zag pattern for personal development involves a pathway of twists and turns and ups and downs that are far less predictable and stable to the earlier patterns.

This pattern can be observed in business as well as sports.

A collaboration of four researchers from Australia and Canada found the zig zag pattern when studying 256 athletes across 27 different sports, as they pursued pathways through amateur and professional sports.

The research uncovered that “more than half of the athletes (57.4%) descended from a higher junior competition to a lower senior competition level in order to eventually progress to Senior Elite competition.” ⁴⁾

34% all athletes in the study had at least one dip in their trajectory, with majority of this number experiencing two or more downturns in their trajectory.

This staggered pathway applied to both Olympians and non-Olympians. There were no significant differences between these groups, suggesting that the zig zag pattern of improvement is indiscriminate.

The study found that “trajectories of development are mostly characterised by non-linear patterns, with highly variable oscillations between and within the junior and senior competition levels.”

If we extend this thinking to our own personal development, we could expect to see a dip in performance, right before we see an uplift in improved performance.

The zig zag pattern is a classic rollercoaster of ups and downs, of breakdowns and breakthroughs.

As you’re reading this, you may remember a time when you have gone through a pattern that looked a lot like this. Perhaps you remember a particular moment, where you evaluated whether continue with the activity or do something else entirely.

In my own training, in a sport I’ve done for over ten years, I recall times where I saw little progress.

It would feel as though I was in a slump, like I’d hit a wall for my development in that area. It would be tough work emotionally and physically.

And then one week, everything would fall into place, and I would go through an accelerated path of growth.

At these times it was not unusual for other people I trained with to say, ‘something has changed in your training’, ‘things are just clicking for you at the moment’.

When we’re in the downward path of the zig-zag pattern, it can feel like our efforts are getting us nowhere and things are hard work.

This is where we need to rely on habits most of all. Because it’s by practicing regular activities that eventually the downward pattern will subside, and we’ll find ourselves again on an upward trend.

In fact, if there is one comfort in the zig-zag pattern, it’s that it feels very different to the other patterns.

Rather than a slowdown in the gains you are making, the zig zag patterns feels likes our performance is actually dropping off.

Those are the signals we’re in the zig-zag pattern. It’s also the signal that our mind is re-ordering what it knows, and is getting ready for the next big push.

Unfortunately often people become disillusioned during this stage. From entrepreneurs to athletes, when the zig-zag pattern feels tough, it’s tempting to stop the activity that causes us to feel like this.  But this is where persistence is actually most needed.

History is full of examples where people have experienced a zig-zag pattern and have continued anyway. They have been able to push through a temporary dip in performance, to then reach the next upward trend in gains.

In 1974, Spencer Silver invented a strange adhesive. He spent five years trying to interest colleagues in it. He could have easily given up. But he persisted. In 1977 he met Arthur Fry who gave him the idea to market the product as an adhesive for paper, and so Post It notes became a marketable product.

In 1936 a little-known writer created a book while working as a cartoonist for Judge Magazine. He shopped his book around and wracked up 27 rejection letters, before he bumped into a friend who encouraged him to submit one last time to Vanguard Press, who then went on to published his first book. That writer was Dr Seuss, who eventually published A Cat in The Hat in 1957 with great success.

Brian Acton was the software engineer that Facebook and Twitter rejected in 2009. Just five years later, Facebook bought the company he co-founded, What’s App, for $16 billion.⁵⁾

Imagine if these and many others had given up? What would the world be like without all of the outcomes which we have come to know and love, many of which resulted when people pushed through the zig zag pattern.

Advice: One thing that is incredibly important when we’re faced with a zig-zag pattern is to keep our enduring purpose front of mind. For us as individuals, this might be in the form of a goal or objective. For companies, mission and vision statements act as a reminder for what teams strive for in the face of adversity. It might be worth considering what makes a great mission statement and vision statement.

If you enjoyed this article, I would love to hear. Please consider leaving a comment below.