High Performance vs. Low Performance Scheduling Mindset and Process

Over time, I’ve noticed a major disconnect between the way most people approach work and the way I want to approach it. For the longest time, I thought working longer hours and staying busy was the ultimate path to success. But through trial and error, I’ve come to realize that scheduling with intentionality—instead of simply reacting to tasks—is the key to real progress.

Shifting to a high-performance scheduling mindset hasn’t been easy. Due to a lifetime of social conditioning most people around me don’t understand or simply choose not to work this way. I get it, because this is an ongoing challenge for me too, but I’ve been reshaping my approach to prioritize life first and let work fit around it—not the other way around. In this article, I’ll share what I’ve discovered, the struggles that come with it, and how I’ve been implementing a high-performance scheduling process that actually fuels both personal and professional success.

The Core Difference: How Time is Viewed

At the heart of this shift is a simple question:

Am I letting my career consume my life, or am I designing my life and letting my career fit within it?

A high-performance mindset, I've found, is built around purposeful time allocation, where personal well-being is a priority, not an afterthought. This means:

• Defining what feels "enough" in terms of work hours and commitments.
• Structuring career priorities after ensuring personal health, relationships, and rest are accounted for.
• Focusing on outcomes, rather than the number of hours worked.

On the other hand, when I am stuck in a low-performance mindset, I am constantly in reaction mode, where work dictates my life, often leading to stress, burnout, and lack of fulfillment.

High-Performance Scheduling: A Proactive Approach

As I have put these changes into practice, I see that a high-performance schedule is about being intentional and building a structure that balances both personal and professional responsibilities, even when it feels like the world around me is pulling in a different direction.

Key Principles of High-Performance Scheduling

1. Career Supports Life
   • I realize that work should be designed to meet financial and capacity requirements without overtaking personal priorities.
   • Instead of letting work dictate my life, I've began scheduling life activities first, ensuring work fits around them rather than the other way around.
   • I've found (and accepted) that life outside of work fuels creativity, energy, and motivation, which leads to higher career performance.
2. Time Margin is Crucial
   • Overloading my schedule had become my default mode—margin was something I had to consciously create.
   • Without breathing room, everything felt urgent, leading to reactive decision-making.
3. Defining "Enough"
   • I had never really defined my limits or understood my capacity, which left me constantly chasing 'more' and feeling like I could never get enough done.
   • Once I clearly identified what was enough, I can better understand:
     • Where I can best allocate work hours each week.
     • The income required to sustain my ideal lifestyle.
     • Time needed for family, rest, personal growth, recreation, and leisure.
4. Quality Over Quantity in Work
   • I started asking myself: What am I working on and why?
   • Efficiency became my priority—getting things done without unnecessary stress or complexity.
   • I've experimented with strategies like:
     • Task chunking—grouping similar tasks for deeper focus.
     • Delegation or collaboration—sharing the workload for better outcomes.
     • Focusing on impact—measuring success by results, not just hours worked.
       • I say "just" because it is still important to know how much time we are personally spending on projects so that we can understand our capacity, just not letting that be a metric of how much to charge or attaching time directly to earning potential.
5. Trimming the Fat
   • I am still learning to avoid busy work and distractions.
   • A key question I continue asking myself:
     • Does this task align with my goals?
     • Is this moving me forward, or am I just staying busy?
   • If I set clear objectives, I realize I can meet or exceed financial and career goals without unnecessary workload.
6. A Strong Support Network
   • If I surround myself with others who practice a high-performance mindset, it is clear to me how much easier it becomes to maintain this approach.
   • I've also learned to limit exposure to "anchors"—people who drain my energy and reinforce low-performance habits.
   • Collaboration fuels productivity—working with people who challenge and uplift me helps me to maintain focus and enthusiasm.

The High-Performance Scheduling Process

1. Acknowledge
   • Do my best to recognize my priorities and set clear objectives for both life and work.
2. Review
   • Evaluate where my time actually goes and identify energy-draining activities that are not adding real value. For example emails, slack chats, non-emergency "emergencies".
   • Top 3 to care for are health, family, income - which can be broken down into sub-categories.
3. Align
   • Schedule non-negotiables first (sleep, exercise, caring for family).
   • Allocate work in focused time blocks rather than spreading it across the entire day. For example, checking email every hour or being part of slack groups is extremely distracting.

Low-Performance Scheduling: The Reactive Trap

Looking back, I now see how easy it was to let my life revolve around work, pushing personal priorities to the side. This was the reality for me, and I'm sure many of us know it—people working harder but not necessarily better.

Key Traits of a Low-Performance Mindset

This is the state of being that "the system" wants to keep us in...

1. Life Gets "Leftovers"
   • Personal life (health, family, relationships) is neglected in favor of work demands.
   • If something doesn’t fit after work is done, it doesn’t happen.
2. Victim Mentality
   • I used to think:
     • "I have too much to do!"
     • "I’m always busy!"
   • Work felt reactive, and I was constantly responding to external demands rather than working proactively.
3. Constant Stress & Distraction
   • Without a structured plan, everything felt urgent.
   • When I would be out mountain biking or snowboarding for a few hours for exercise, I found myself reacting to emails, messages, and sudden work requests, which killed my enjoyment and being present in the moment, and even feeling guilty–like, is it wrong that I'm not at my desk?
   • Even when I would be at my desk trying to focus on a project, I found myself reacting to emails, messages, and sudden work requests, which killed focus and efficiency.
   • The result? Not feeling fulfilled with my attempts at enjoying life, and then work still took longer, leading to even less free time and more stress.
4. Lack of Energy & Inspiration
   • No time for hobbies, rest, or relationships meant I felt drained.
   • Work consumed all my energy, leading to burnout.
5. Trying to Do It All Alone
   • I resisted delegation or teamwork.
   • I believed that doing everything myself was the only way to succeed.
   • I struggled to ask others for help, choosing instead to take everything on—leading to inefficiency and overwhelm.

Final Thoughts: Designing a High-Performance Life

This shift hasn’t been easy. It’s something I still work through daily. Most people around me don’t understand or choose not to approach work this way, which makes it a constant challenge. But through prioritizing personal well-being, structuring work for efficiency, and focusing on impact over effort, I’ve started to create a practice for a sustainable and fulfilling lifestyle.

The biggest takeaway? At the end of the day, it’s not about doing more; it’s about being intentional with our limited time so that work and life can thrive together, not compete against each other.

This actually does work EFFORTLESSLY if you practice it AND the people around you also practice it. If the people around you don't practice it (such as co-workers or clients), then you will be fighting an uphill battle of internal conflict–especially if you are seeking acceptance. The key in that scenario is to just be mindful about who you share your personal practices and philosophies with because one or two negative comments will rob the wind from your sails.

Just do it, and then you and the people around you will notice the positive results such as a better mood, more energy, clarity, and outcomes.