Welcome to Week 30 of the High Performance Playbook.

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If you’re new and just tuning in to the HPP, we cover the strategies and frameworks that separate the 1% from the .01%. We dive deep into: health & fitness + longevity, personal finance & investing, business growth hacks, and how to optimize all areas of your life.

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Mindset & Psychology

The Patience Dividend

Most people underestimate compounding because they want results now. 

Not just in money, but in skills, relationships, health, and even confidence. 

We live in a world of instant feedback, same day deliveries, and constant entertainment at our fingertips, and it has trained us to value speed over depth. Notifications, likes, and rapid progress create an illusion that growth should feel dramatic and immediate. 

But the truth is, transformation rarely looks dramatic in the short term. The day-to-day usually feels boring. Small wins, repeated consistently, rarely excite us in the moment. Yet when you step back and look at the year-to-year, the change is striking. 

It’s cumulative, exponential, sometimes even explosive.

This is the Patience Dividend: 

• Consistency compounds. Reps stack quietly until they look like overnight success. What looks like a sudden breakthrough is almost always the product of countless unseen repetitions, failures, and course corrections. There’s no substitute for the grind. Every habit you build, every step you take, quietly multiplies your advantage over time.

• Leading indicators matter more than outcomes. Track your habits, not just the results. Did you show up? Did you put in the work? Outcomes are often noisy and lagging. They can be influenced by luck, timing, and variables outside your control. Habits are the engine. They are the only things you can truly own and improve consistently. Each small action compounds into skills, credibility, and momentum that you can’t fake.

• Measure in decades, not days. The big results won’t show up until much later. You have to stay in the game long enough to see what your efforts produce. Most people quit too soon. They stop when the visible progress is small, not realizing that the next 6, 12, or 24 months of consistent work could completely change the trajectory. Patience isn’t passive. It’s active and deliberate. It’s the discipline to continue when it feels like nothing is happening, knowing that small steps create exponential returns over time.

One of my favorite Biblical passages comes from James 1:3–4 (NIV):

Here’s why I like this one so much:

• It reframes patience as strength, not weakness — waiting isn’t passive, it’s active growth.

• It connects patience to maturity and wholeness — you don’t just endure, you transform.

• It’s brutally honest: patience comes through testing, not comfort.

Stop chasing fast breakthroughs and start investing in compounding actions. 

Patient, consistent work is a secret weapon. It builds resilience, confidence, and skill in ways short-term hacks cannot. It trains your mind to focus on what matters long-term rather than what feels urgent today. 

Over time, patience doesn’t just pay off; it creates leverage. The small, boring, daily actions become the edge that separates the 1% from everyone else. 

Patience becomes power, and compounding becomes your greatest ally. Lean into it.

🧠 Biggest Story of the Week (Mindset & Psychology)

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Health & Fitness + Longevity

Give Your Body Real Fuel

The fastest way to lose your health? Play the modern food industry’s game. When you eat what’s convenient, packaged, and engineered for taste, you’re playing a game that wasn’t designed with your long-term health in mind. You’re competing with shelf-stable snacks, lab-made flavors, and a culture of shortcuts.

That’s how most people get stuck endlessly chasing energy, managing symptoms, and rarely building real vitality.

High performers take a different approach: they simplify.

They strip away the artificial layers and get back to basics. They stop reacting to food marketing and start defining what food means for them and their families. Usually, that means whole, simple ingredients. Food that actually nourishes instead of simply filling.

The shift doesn’t require perfection. It just requires awareness.

Start reading labels. Notice how many products are packed with ingredients that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Notice how often your “snack” is really just sugar, salt, seed oils, and chemicals dressed up in clever packaging. When you begin replacing those with simple, whole alternatives, you discover that energy doesn’t have to come in wild swings and crashes; it can be steady and reliable all day.

Take a simple swap: real fruit instead of “fruit-flavored” snacks. It’s not just a calorie difference, but a complete shift in how your body processes, recovers, and sustains itself.

Over time, those swaps compound. More energy. Better focus. Less reliance on stimulants. A body that feels like an ally instead of a burden.

And it’s not just about the body. Food is culture and connection. Cooking together, sharing meals, or even prepping basics for the week reconnects you to rhythms that the convenience culture has stolen. Simplification isn’t about nutrients alone; it’s about meaning, community, and control.

To get started making this shift, ask yourself the questions that drive simplification:

• What foods give me lasting energy, not just a quick hit?

• How can I replace one ultra-processed option with something real today?

• Where can I build rituals around cooking and eating that make “healthy” automatic, not forced?

Being someone who simplifies also changes how you think about health. You stop chasing fad diets and start setting your own rules. You stop reacting to cravings and instead develop good habits.

You don’t just manage your health. You redefine what thriving looks like.

In short, the key isn’t eating “less bad” food. It’s designing your diet around what actually fuels you, consistently, sustainably, and simply.

That’s how you build health that lasts decades. Don’t just try to add more years to your life. Aim to add more life to your years.

🏃‍♂️ Biggest Story of The Week (Health & Fitness)

Personal Finance Tip of the Week

The Rule of 10

Before you make a big financial decision, or any decision with lasting consequences, ask yourself three simple questions:

1. Will this matter in 10 days?

2. Will it matter in 10 months?

3. Will it matter in 10 years?

This is the essence of the Rule of 10: a simple mental filter that separates impulse from intention.

Most people make decisions based on what feels urgent or exciting in the moment, ignoring the long-term implications. By asking these three questions, you force yourself to zoom out and view your choices through the lens of time.

If the answer is “no” at any stage, you’ve just saved yourself money, stress, and regret.

That’s the power of deliberate patience in decision-making. It’s not just about delaying gratification.

It’s about recognizing what truly moves the needle over time.

High performers don’t measure ROI only in dollars. They measure it in decades, in relationships preserved, opportunities created, and mistakes avoided.

This approach applies to nearly everything: from daily spending and career moves to business investments and lifestyle choices. A $50 impulse buy today may be meaningless in 10 months, but consistently redirecting that money toward long-term growth may compound into significant wealth over years. A risky business decision may seem thrilling in the short term, but a sober 10-year perspective often tells a very different story.

Time horizon thinking also reduces emotional volatility. Decisions made in the heat of the moment often backfire.

By using the Rule of 10, you train yourself to pause, reflect, and act strategically rather than reactively.

You begin to see patterns: which choices compound value, which are distractions, and which are traps in disguise.

Ultimately, the Rule of 10 isn’t just a financial tool. It’s a framework for intentional living. It teaches you to prioritize what matters, ignore the noise, and invest energy and resources where they yield the biggest returns over time.

Like compounding in health, relationships, or skill development, small, thoughtful decisions stacked consistently over years create extraordinary outcomes. The longer your time horizon, the clearer your path becomes, and the greater the dividends you reap.

🏦 Biggest Story of the Week (Personal Finance)

Business Playbook

Don’t Compete. Create.

The fastest way to lose in business? Play someone else’s game.

When you focus on beating competitors at their own rules, you’re automatically one step behind. You’re fighting for scraps, fighting over margins, fighting over attention in a crowded market.

That’s where most businesses get stuck: endlessly competing, endlessly reacting, and rarely building anything distinctive.

High performers take a different approach: they create.

They stop competing and start defining. They carve out new categories, new experiences, and new ways of thinking. When you innovate at the category level, you make competition irrelevant.

You don’t compare yourself to the crowd. Instead, you redefine what the game even looks like.

You want to avoid becoming a commodity. Start being a category of one.

Ask yourself the questions that drive category creation:

• What experience do I deliver that no competitor can copy? It’s not about features; it’s about the unique emotional or cultural impact you create.

• How do I make my business newsworthy, not just functional? Headlines and attention are driven by novelty, not just efficiency.

• Where can I fuse two worlds to stand out? Look for intersections: food + entertainment, gyms + media, software + lifestyle. Finding unexpected fusions creates magnetic differentiation.

Being a category creator also changes how you think about growth. You stop chasing trends and start setting them. You stop reacting and start leading. You don’t just add value, you reshape expectations.

Every choice, every product, every interaction becomes an opportunity to define a new space where you’re not just competing but dominating by being the only option.

In short, the key isn’t just working harder than the competition. It’s thinking differently, designing experiences differently, and delivering value in ways no one else can touch.

That’s how you build a business that scales, resonates, and survives the long game.

👩‍💼 Biggest Story of the Week (Business)

DOPAMINE HIT

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this week’s newsletter, please share it with some friends! And thank you for reading!

🗓️ STAY TUNED:

In next week’s newsletter, I’ll be sharing one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from traveling the world for the last 15 years, and how you can apply it to your personal life and business.

… Stay tuned. You won’t want to miss it!

Here’s to your success,

Austin L. Wright

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_{Disclaimer: The ideas shared in this newsletter are those of the author, and this is in no way intended to be medical, legal, or financial advice. Always do your own research and consult with licensed professionals.}