Outlive: The Science of Art & Longevity
Outlive may be the most essential leadership book you never knew you needed.
As an executive coach I work with my clients to improve their ability to lead and create impact.
Maybe you think the work of building your ability as a leader only relates to learning the skills of management and leadership – how to delegate, for example, or how to set and communicate a vision. These are important element of leadership of course, but there is an essential capacity that precedes this.
You must know how to manage your own well-being before you can reach your full capacity as a leader. After all, the first person you lead every day is yourself.
That’s why I consider the new book, Outlive, by Dr. Peter Attia, not just a health manual, but an essential leadership book. Attia is a Stanford-educated doctor, the creator and host of The Drive podcast, and the founder of Early Medical which focuses on improving lifespan and healthspan. In Outlive, Attia shares a treasure trove of principles and tools that will help you immediately as well as for the long term.
When I spoke to him recently, he defined longevity in a thoughtful way. “I think about longevity as the product of lifespan and healthspan,” Attia told me. “Lifespan is binary – you’re either alive or you’re dead. Cognitive health, physical health and emotional health are the three things that define healthspan, and they are obviously not binary.”
This framework – physical health, cognitive health, and emotional health - is one of the centerpieces of Outlive. The reason this is such an important book for leaders is that in optimizing your long-term health, you inevitably improve your current health. And when your current health is strong along these three dimensions, you dramatically increase your leadership impact.
Outlive is rich in tactics that everyone can follow to improve their healthspan.
The Centenarian Decathlon
One of the core concepts of the book that everyone can relate to and take action on immediately is the Centenarian Decathlon. Picture your life in your last decade and the activities you’ll want to be doing at that time. The Decathlon in this case doesn’t refer to actual Olympic sports - you likely won’t care to throw a discus or pole vault over anything - but you’ll certainly want to do the things that bring you joy in your life and allow you to care for yourself.
These may include playing on the floor with your grandkids, running to catch a train while you’re traveling in Europe, carrying two bags of groceries up the stairs, and getting up if you fall down.
Once you have a list, you can keep these in your mind’s eye and train for them specifically.
“When you spend a lot of time observing people in their last decade of life,” Attia said “you realize that what's most debilitating is not that they are at the end of their life. It's their actual quality of life in that moment. It’s the frailty, the immobility, the lack of stamina.”
Since, as Attia says, your strength and cardiovascular capacity decrease slowly in your middle years and then drop very suddenly after age 75 or so, you need to build up far more fitness than you need in your middle years to give you leeway for the drops that will occur in your seventies and beyond. (He has a chart in the book to demonstrate this decline.)
In short, you need to exercise consistently to train for this last decade of life. And, luckily, the exercise you do for your future self is also beneficial for your current day leadership.
Executive Presence and Physical Fitness
One of my clients, Samuel, came to me initially seeking to build his executive presence. His team and his peers all said that he seemed disinterested and aloof. We discussed how he could change this perception, and he admitted to me that he felt tired a lot. We realized that his lack of energy was making him appear disengaged.
We worked on Samuel’s time management and rearranged his schedule so that he was interacting with his people during times he felt more energetic. That helped a bit. But ultimately his lack of energy was just getting in the way of showing up dynamically.
After his doctor confirmed for him that there was nothing physically wrong, I asked him to try a month of vigorous walking. To motivate him, I asked him to contemplate the last decade of his life. What activities did he want to be doing?
Samuel loved to travel, and he realized that if he kept going the way he was now, he wouldn’t be able to get to all the places he wanted to. With that as his guide, he started to walk and surprised me by hiring a personal trainer.
Within 3 months he felt and looked better. He had much more energy, drive, and a more positive outlook. He began to work with his employees more closely and his presentations had more dynamism. By the end of the year he was one of the most highly rated leaders in his department.
Staying Sharp
Another area of the framework is cognitive. We all know that cognitive ability starts to dip as you get older and you may have experienced not being able to remember a name or a common word.
Attia cites rigorous studies on the causes of cognitive decline. Importantly for leaders, you can take action to build your cognitive ability right now. In addition to physical activity, something you can do that’s free and in your control is get better sleep.
To get better sleep you can start by implementing a few simple practices such as going to bed and waking up at the same time every day; getting morning sunlight and dimming the lights at night; and having a standard bedtime routine that helps you calm down.
From Rolling Stones to Lizzo
One of my clients, Elizabeth, the CHRO of a fast growing startup, found herself procrastinating on working on and writing the headcount plan to align with the strategic plan. She had 20 years of experience, and this kind of thing should have been in her sweet spot. As we discussed this, she confided in me that she regularly felt “fuzzy in her head,” as she put it to me. “I want to be Lizzo but I’m acting like the Rolling Stones on their oldies tour.”
She had gone to her doctor who found nothing wrong. As we talked through some of the causes of this brain fog, it became clear to me that she wasn’t prioritizing her sleep. Although Elizabeth told me she’d gotten by on very little sleep for years, she humored me and agreed to implement a consistent bedtime and wake time and get at least 7 hours per night. She agreed to try this for 30 days.
After three days she knocked out the plan she’d been putting off in 1 hour. After two weeks she called told me she was ending the experiment and making it a permanent fixture.
Taking Care of Your Emotional Health
Finally, Attia covers emotional health. He includes a very personal chapter where he describes his own battles with mental health and the journey he went on to resolve them.
He’s not alone. According to the CDC, more than 50% of people in the US will be diagnosed with a mental health challenge at some point in their lives. And many others have months of lower level depression or anxiety.
Mental challenges like these sap your energy and ability to do almost everything, including lead your team or take charge of your career. So safeguarding your emotional health is both good for your life and good for your leadership.
It’s going to be a lot easier if you don’t try to go it alone. However, not everyone asks for help. “For many people it's very hard to get to the point where you say you need help or help is possible,” Attia said.
He added: “I also think there's a misconception out there that I certainly felt that was some of my resistance to change, I thought that the downside of my problems was well worth the upside. The upside was the drive, the discipline, the motivation, the perfectionism. I had achieved a lot on the back of those things, so it seemed that the collateral damage they were yielding was totally worth it. I don't think that's right. I don't think you have to give up in its entirety the good too, to address the bad.”
That’s familiar to many startup founders. One of my clients once told me that he felt tortured at times by his constant self-criticism, but he felt it gave him his edge. It took a while, but by working with a therapist he was able to find ways to release his intense inner critics while maintaining his drive.
In Outlive, Attia suggests specific tools to help you handle your emotional health, including talk therapy as well and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
The most important thing is to recognize that you have some issues and to address them. “There’s no point living longer if you’re miserable,” Attia said.
Outlive is not a traditional handbook for leaders, but in many ways it’s the most important leadership manual you need.
