Olympic Gold: Habits for Peak Performance with Justin Best (Team USA Men's Four Rowing & Investment Banker)

Work and compete at the highest levels

Ethan & Jason here—your motivation will skyrocket after today’s article of Level Up: Your source for executive insights, high performance habits, and specific career growth actions.

Three FYIs:

1. Read Ethan’s recent interview with author Sebastien Taveau. Dive into Ethan’s childhood, Amazon career, thoughts on current trends and technology, and fun questions. Read here.

2. (Event) Level Up Career Talks: Driving a Culture of Innovation. Ethan will present and take live questions. RSVP here. Learn about Career Talks here.

3. (Event) Maven Lightning Lesson. Learn the principles of backwards planning with lessons from a successful Paris 2024 Olympics and an Amazon deadline failure. RSVP for ‘Delivering against a hard deadline (Paris 2024 Olympics).’

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Justin Best is a two time Olympian, Gold Medalist at the Paris 2024 Olympics in men’s four rowing, and Analyst at Union Square Advisors.

He is an inspiration, a great Team USA ambassador, and an organizational machine BEAST. In this fireside chat, Justin and Jason Yoong (my COO) dive into:

1. How Justin does it all.

2. Motivation and achievement at the highest levels.

3. Time management, sleep optimization techniques, breaking down big goals, sacrifice, career advice, and favorite Olympic memories.

Watch on YouTube.

Takeaways on balancing investment banking with Olympic training

1. Run your calendar on automatic. The key to Justin’s rigorous schedule is siloing work vs training so that he can focus 100% on one at a time and decompress:

   1. 5:30am wake up

   2. 6:20-8:45am training #1 cardio on the water, interval or steady-state

   3. 9:30am arrives at work via BART (train)

   4. 9:30am-5:30pm at working doing deal support, execution, mandates, and anything that needs to get done

   5. 5:30-8pm training #2 weights and indoor rowing machine

   6. 8-10pm complete unfinished work (sometimes till 11pm)

   7. The next day…run it again!

2. Optimize your energy and recovery. Justin is strategic with caffeine, taking ~200mg every few hours with a 3pm cutoff to avoid sleep disruption. The keys to deep sleep are a cold room (65°F), white noise, comfortable mattress, and sleep on your side or stomach (not your back—it makes you more prone to snoring and reduces oxygen intake).

3. Work like an Olympian—Be an organizational machine with compartmentalized work streams. Justin has an organization system of checklists and notes per project. For example, he will have 5 simultaneous checklists prioritized by Immediate, Medium (due 1-2 days from now), and Long-Term (due 1-2 weeks from now) — this system helps him get locked in and avoid boom and bust situations which cause stress and anxiety.

   1. Set clear expectations and work to go beyond them. Justin over communicates, gives work in progress (WIP) updates, and blocks out his calendar so his team knows when he’s in training.

Takeaways on motivation and competing at the highest levels

1. Visualize your goals and work backwards from controllable inputs. At age 17, Justin visualized himself as an Olympic Champion in 10 years…crossing that finish line, seeing and feeling what it looks like. Being hyper-competitive, Justin is addicted to optimizing every input to drive outputs.

   1. And where did he learn most of his motivation, visualization, and working backwards methods…YouTube! He would watch what the best people in the world were doing.

   2. His new goal is to close $50M in overall deal transactions.

2. Run full speed at what you want and hedge your risks. A prime motivational driver for Justin to live with urgency was while he was in college, Justin’s cousin lost his battle to brain cancer at age 27. It hit Justin that we all don’t know how long we have, so go full speed because you can figure out many things (like a job) later.

3. Turn pain into motivation. On tough days when Justin is exhausted and needs a gut check, he watches a video recording of their Tokyo 2020 Olympics performance where they got 4th place by ONE SECOND. Recalling that painful experience refuels his motivation to get up and get it done.

4. The hard truth about sacrifice to be world-class. Justin’s hardest obstacle was the personal sacrifices—less time with his fiancée, not attending friends’ weddings, not going out on Friday nights. He kept rowing his top goal and priority.

Takeaways on career advice

1. Find really good mentors and leverage them. Find people you want to emulate and reach out to them. Put yourself in the physical locations where they are and bridge those connections. You can be the smartest but if you don’t have a group behind you, you won’t move forward (that’s how business and the world works).

2. When you disagree with a boss/coach, know where they are coming from and approach it productively. Whenever Justin disagreed with a decision, he first sought to understand their 10,000 foot point of view, bridged how they got to that decision, and then made suggestions to those points rather than attacking the decision. It’s a give and take in being accommodating but pushing back on the important points.

Justin’s favorite Paris 2024 Olympics memories (outside of winning gold)

1. Connecting with athletes all over the world. At the Olympic Village, Justin saw how the power of sport brings athletes together—there were athletes from Russia, Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, all coexisting without altercations.

2. And…GETTING ENGAGED ON LIVE TV! Justin may have one of the best proposals ever (surprise, family and friends, Eiffel Tower, live TV, after winning gold, and 2,738 roses). Watch on YouTube.

Thank you Justin for the motivational chat and being a great Team USA ambassador—we look forward to rowing with you soon! Connect with Justin on LinkedIn, support USRowing, and learn more about Team USA.

Find your “Olympic Champion” goal and live life with urgency.

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More articles on high performance habits

1. Implement New Habits

2. Relentless Self-Improvement: 4 ways to be exceptional

3. Traits of top performers: 3 ways to be High Agency

4. Visualize your success: 5-minute exercise for "corporate athletes"

5. Do your hardest task first thing in the morning

6. High performance through daily action: 40+ actions for career success

7. Leading a High-Performing Org & Cross-Functional Acumen with Omar Halabieh (Amazon Tech Director)

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