If you’d asked me a year ago to name two things I’d never do, I would have told you write a book and have a baby.
We all have high demands in our lives as high performers, but at least 4 times a year, more is required in the moment. This can range from a big project at work, a campaign, or a parenting event. Our cognitive load is consumed by these moments, and we make room for it by putting our health and well-being on the back burner. Next thing you know, you’re on the verge of a breakdown.
This is entirely avoidable.
With more than 15 years of experience working with elite athletes, executives, and military personnel, I applied those tools and skills to this high-intensity period of writing my book, For The Long Run.
In this episode I share:
- The story behind writing For the Long Run
- Why I initially said no to writing a book
- How becoming a parent shaped the message I wanted to share
- Why rhythm matters more than balance during busy seasons
- The framework behind my Daily Operating System
- The five rhythms that underpin sustainable high performance
- How I wrote a book while raising a one year old
- The recovery strategies that helped me maintain focus and energy
- Why working in performance pulses improved my cognitive output
- The importance of brain breaks during intense work periods
- Why sustainable performance sometimes includes short, intentional sprints
- How to recognise when it’s time to deload and recover
- Why preparation is often years in the making
- The power of asking for opportunities
Key Quotes
“You can achieve a lot more than you think when you get your rhythms right.”
“Sometimes sustainable high performance includes short periods of intentional intensity.”
“The goal isn’t to avoid busy seasons. It’s to move through them well.”
Episode Resources
PRE-ORDER For the Long Run by Jess Spendlove 👉 https://amzn.to/4t33BPh
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess Spendlove (00:00:05)
If you’d have asked me a few years ago what are two things you will never do, ⁓ I probably would have said I’m never gonna write a book and I’m probably not gonna have a baby. And here I am very grateful to have been proven very wrong ⁓ and that I’ve done both of those things within 12 months of each other. Today’s episode is a behind-the-scenes story of how for the long run came to be. ⁓
And I’m gonna be sharing some pretty candid thoughts and stories around it, including ⁓ something I nearly wasn’t going to say out loud, which was how long the book took me to write. Now, all up, I spent about a month, maybe four to six weeks at most, writing the book. And I was worried that if I said that out loud, you would think I rushed the book, or that it wasn’t substantial, or that AI wrote it.
But the truth is honestly the exact opposite. And despite only writing it over a condensed timeline, I’ve spent years and years thinking about my message, refining my IP, refining the stories, the case studies, and everything that’s gone into it. And so today’s episode is really about this whole process. ⁓ I’m gonna take you through how it all started. So when a publisher initially reached out to me because there was a gap in the market.
I’m gonna take you through what had to go in it and also what my life actually looks like while riding it with a baby and a business and a pretty short timeline ⁓ in this particular season of life and why the speed of how I wrote the book is proof of everything that went into it. ⁓ I basically think about it as the pressure cooker or the pressure tester for all the principles that I speak about on this podcast.
and that I share within the book. ⁓ because at the end of the day, if you get your rhythms and the foundations and your priorities right, you can achieve a lot and you can do a lot, probably a lot more than you think. And so there’s gonna be a lot of tips in today’s episode that that will help you get through ⁓ particularly busy or full seasons of work and life.
Jess Spendlove (00:02:38)
So, in terms of how a book came to be, I initially had a publisher reach out to me a few years ago, and at that time the book was going to be a nutrition-specific book. If you’ve been following along for a while, you will know that my background is as a performance dietitian, working largely in elite sport and special operations.
And over the last few years my work has evolved more into the corporate arena, working with leaders and founders and emerging leaders and organizations ⁓ to achieve sustainable high performance. And so when this initial book ⁓ and this opportunity came, ⁓ I didn’t pull the trigger on it straight away. And look, to be honest, there were a few reasons around that.
One was I’d had COVID and I had long COVID and it just didn’t have the capacity. ⁓ But the other was ⁓ deep down I had felt there was a shift happening in me and that while I’d spent the last 12, 13, 14 years working as a dietitian, as a performance dietitian with these specific individuals, I felt a shift. I felt I was evolving ⁓ and ⁓
Look, a book is something which once you put it out there, you’ve really put a flag in the ground as to what you stand for. And now look, I mean I could have written a nutrition book and now brought this one out, but I really do think there was an element of timing ⁓ and the universe and needing to go through a few things in my own probably personal life, my own burnout experience, becoming a parent, which has opened my eyes to the application of this work.
For parents. And I think even though I’m very pragmatic when I work with my clients, I really try to understand their lives when I work with teams and organizations. Unless you really go through it, ⁓ it is ⁓ not the same. And so I do think there was an element of the right time, the right message, the right lived personal and professional experience that needed to happen ⁓ for me to write this ⁓ specific book.
Jess Spendlove (00:04:45)
The other thing to note is there were a lot of, I don’t know, I’m gonna call it book energy. There was a lot of book energy coming at me, probably six to nine months after I gave birth to Millie. So I ⁓ have spoken about here, I’ve spoken on here before about how I didn’t really have maternity leave, my personal decision. ⁓ I had said yes to some work opportunities before having Millie that were quite soon after.
Some keynotes in Melbourne and keynotes in Queenstown 10 to 14 weeks after. And so I was needing to work through my keynotes and my slides, and I needed to work through a few things, so I wasn’t I didn’t have complete maternity leave. ⁓ But to be honest, for the first 12 months of Millie’s life, she was at home either with me, you know, probably for four months or so. She could just sit in her little, I call it her day bed, but her little
bed and I would work or the bouncer under the desk and then when she figured out how to crawl and roll over then you know there was ⁓ my mother in law or a nanny ⁓ and so I had some extra support but I was able to work at home and have her and have the cuddles and feed her and you know to me that honestly felt like the best of both worlds ⁓ but I do think going through this and now
When this kind of second opportunity to write a book appeared, which to be honest, I sought out initially. So I reached out to the previous publisher who had initially reached out to me at Murdoch, who I’d stayed in touch with, and we had a catch-up. And then at the same time, ⁓ I had been given a ticket to go to South by Southwest from ⁓ Jess Campanaro, who is a communication and speaking coach I do some work with.
And then there was just a chain of events that happened off the back of that. You know, ⁓ serendipity, I guess is what you call it. So she gave me a ticket. I went along for half a day because I didn’t clear my calendar to go to South by Southwest. I just got the ticket a few days before and looked at when I could go. ⁓ And ⁓ I went to a podcast, live podcast recording, and I looked who was going to be in ⁓ on the recording. It was a panel.
Jess Spendlove (00:07:08)
And this person that I know that I ran into who was on the panel wasn’t on the menu. So I didn’t even see his name and and that wasn’t the reason I went to that recording. But I turned up, ⁓ and Glenn James, who hosts Money Money, Money, who is a friend and someone I know very well, he was on the panel. I spoke to him after. I’m pretty sure I was meeting the the publisher later that week and I told him about it, and he said, Hey
My editor from Wiley was actually in the room and I saw you both and I thought I should connect you. And off the back of that, he connected me with Lucy at Wiley, and the rest was history. That’s where the book landed. ⁓ Lucy really helped me shape what the manuscript would be with my message and my IP. But what we landed on was this concept that I was talking about in my proposal of a daily operating system.
Because there from her end, there was a gap in the market on ⁓ practical tools and strategies that fit real life, that are easy to integrate, that are science-backed, that deliver energy, help people recover and manage their health and performance now, as well as for decades to come. And so together ⁓ you know, with my IP, my work, my proposal that went in this gap in the market that was identified.
for the long run ⁓ and the shape and the structure of it was born. And as I said at the start, ⁓ the thinking and the messaging and the experience and the stories and the case studies and the clients and the analogies and the ref like all of this has been gathered ⁓ over the last fifteen, ⁓ sixteen, seventeen years of working. But there are also stories from growing up. Because this experience for me has been shaped from
back when I was nine, ten years old, swimming before and after school, swimming at state, you know, winning nationals, winning state, all of that. ⁓ that’s how far back the lived experience part of this book goes.
Jess Spendlove (00:09:31)
So when it came to structuring the book, I mean for me I had a really clear understanding of the areas I wanted to talk about: nutrition, exercise, stress and recovery, sleep and connection. ⁓ and I also wanted to talk about the biological rhythms because ⁓ our wiring has been built from thousands of years ago. ⁓ And even though the world is very different now, if we can leverage these
biological rhythms and biology which is exists within us. If people can understand that and try and design their days around that, then ⁓ that will help them have more energy, recover better, give them some structure, but give them guardrails without feeling it’s rigidity and a protocol and you know it has to be this ten steps in this exact order or it doesn’t work.
The other thing is there is a key framework throughout around building your daily operating system. Now, the five rhythms that I’ve just spoken about, and I have in I did intentionally choose the word rhythms over areas or pillars, because ⁓ rhythm to me implies consistency, but it implies flow and it implies structure. So it implies all of the things that matter structure, flexibility, adaptability, but consistency. So ⁓
There’s that part also because I talk about biological rhythms like your circadian rhythm and your ultradian rhythm as brain breaks. ⁓ rhythm felt really like a great use ⁓ of terminology for the book. But I did really want to have a framework. So the operating system with the five rhythms feeding into it, but the purpose of the operating system is three key functions, and this is a key framework in the book. I call it the three C’s.
So the first is charge up. What do we do to create and sustain energy at the start of our day and across our day? Capacity. How do we manage stress and build resilience to expand our capacity to everything we need to hold? And charge down, which is about effectively recovering, which is a really important part of rebuilding our energy and being able to continue to sustain that. So ⁓ those three functions.
Jess Spendlove (00:11:51)
It’s important to understand the habits that feed into those rhythms and that helps us get clarity on what are we doing and why. ⁓ And it’s also not about just adding and stacking more and more things. ⁓ For me, it’s path of least resistance, minimum amount of things that give you the biggest bang for buck. And when we can attach those decisions and behaviors to those outcomes, you start to get that.
Now in terms of the timeline when the book had initially come up and we started talking about it in October, November last year, there were three ⁓ due dates. One was February, one was April 13th. I remember that specifically because it was my birthday, and one was May. And I thought April feels good. It’s six months away. It’s my birthday. That feels like a good omen. And so I said, okay, yeah, April, that’s when I’d like to submit the manuscript.
And then Wiley came back to me and said, you know, if you can get it in February, there’s a spot, you know, from a timing perspective, it will come out before spring. And anyway, there was a whole bunch of reasons why February was ⁓ a good idea. But to be honest, I just didn’t think I could deliver it in that period of time. And I remember we had a few calls, and at the time I’d said
Look, I’m taking some time off. I’m going to Thailand. I I won’t be working over there, which is two weeks. And then I’d plan to take January off. I guess a bit of delayed maternity leave. ⁓ so I had the time in my diary. I just wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do that. I just felt I needed a reset. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know what, I c
I think I can do this. And so I agreed to it, thinking the first draft of the manuscript was due on the 9th of February. ⁓ And then once the contract got issued, I realised the first two chapters were due within a week, just before Christmas. And the first round of the manuscript was due early to mid-January. And the final full completed manuscript was due on the 9th of February.
Jess Spendlove (00:14:02)
And so I worked with on those dates, the first two chapters I delivered, the first round of the draft manuscript was able to push back ⁓ about five days. ⁓ And when that came to be, I would say the manuscript was 75-80% complete. So all of the chapters were mapped out, some were incomplete. ⁓ but that process of working with an editor an editor who was fantastic, she asked the right questions, she
helped me shape my IP. ⁓ she just really honestly asked me the right questions to really get me to think. And if I even just think about the first round of that manuscript compared to where I got it to, I’m so proud of how it evolved. ⁓ it really improved, it deepened, my message got clear and I’m so happy with the final product. ⁓
I really hope it brings a lot of value to people. I really want it to be practical, science-backed, but real-world application. I want you to read it and feel that it’s speaking to you, that these are these are tactics, ⁓ it’s very practical, it will fit your life. I want you to feel empowered. I want you to feel that you can get huge gains in your life with upgrades and not overhauls. And I want you to feel that no matter where you’re starting from, ⁓ no matter if
You feel like you need ⁓ to look at everything, if it’s time to start putting yourself first, if you feel like you’re ticking most things off and you just want to be more sustainable, whatever that might be, ⁓ I want you to feel that this book is for you because it is. ⁓ you know, having worked with thousands and thousands of people, I’ve really been able to see ⁓ what moves the needle and I’ve been able to see what the principles are and the insights, and I’ve been able to see the same mistakes.
And so this book is really my way of giving you a framework or a playbook or a guide, but also saying customize it to you. It’s not Jess’s 10 steps to more energy or just as 10 steps to recovery. It is a practical guide to help you achieve sustainable high performance. ⁓ And then when it comes to actually writing the book, ⁓ as I mentioned, I did it over a pretty short period of time. ⁓ I’m actually so grateful.
Jess Spendlove (00:16:27)
the first two chapters would do ⁓ before I went to Thailand. I think that gave me the opportunity to nearly close the tabs in my brain while I was away. I actually thought, you know what, I’m probably gonna spend the whole time thinking about the book, but I really didn’t. I wrote the two chapters before I went. I basically did that over a weekend. ⁓ and I’d worked with Lee on the outline and the chapters. So
When I came back, I flew into Sydney New Year’s Day and from the second of February until I think it was about the twelfth or the thirteenth, it could have been the fifteenth. I should have probably looked before I jumped on here. ⁓ But it was basically ten ten or twelve days of nonstop riding. First thing in the morning, across the majority of the day, at night, you know, it was intense, but it needed to be. I’d committed to a very short timeline.
And the only way I was going to do that was to go all in. I also didn’t lose all my habits, you know. As I said, this really allowed me to pressure test what worked. And the one thing I’m so crystal clear on is recovery. Intentional, stimulant free time built into your day with a brain break allows you to work smarter and not harder. Working in pulses of 90 minutes or so, I was
Militant, I had a timer I would set 90 minutes and then I would have 10, 15, 20 minute break doing a range of things. You know, it might have been a walk, it might have been meditation, it was sometimes contrast therapy. Where I wrote the book, it had ice baths and saunas, and so ⁓ I learned l, ⁓ you know, ⁓ love the pain of an ice bath ⁓ after lunch in the afternoon.
when I would typically do my lighter, less cognitively taxing work, but over that, you know, one month period of writing the book and improving the manuscript where I really needed that afternoon cognitive block, that was the best brain break I could have. That woke me up. It improved that cognitive output. And I got an extra ninety minutes, even two hours in the afternoon where I would typically struggle. ⁓
Jess Spendlove (00:18:44)
Some days I would go to the gym, ⁓ it was really hot. I did this over summer in January, so if it was too hot to go outside, ⁓ I would go to the gym, either go on the bike or the treadmill or something like that. So I really went all in. ⁓ and maybe it’s ironic that the way I wrote a book about sustainable high performance was in an intense sprint, ⁓ which done over a longer period of time would have been unsustainable. But this is the thing.
Prioritizing your well-being and living a life of sustainable high performance doesn’t mean balance, it doesn’t mean doing the same thing every day, it means rhythm and it means protecting what works. ⁓ And this is the thing I think that’s really going to speak to people listening to this episode ⁓ is that if you’re in a busy season or a busy block or you’re pushing for a project or a deadline, you need to first of all acknowledge what that season is, but you need to prioritize yourself and you need to protect.
what you need to do to be able to do that. And having done this my whole life, I’m very across the tools, the tactics, the habits, what works for me. ⁓ And as I’ve said, it nearly was like a pressure cooker situation, which allowed me to see what would work in this season of life. Writing a book over a month with a one year old where I only had a certain amount of time and I really needed to squeeze the maximum cognitive capacity out of my days.
⁓ I should also say that first kind of ⁓ 10, 12 day block where the 75 or 80% was written, I then had a week off where the manuscript was reviewed. And then I remember having about two and a half weeks to finish the manuscript and elevate it and improve it. And even knowing that I had those pulses, you know, the first two chapters and then I went to Thailand for two weeks, that next 10, 12 days, that was definitely by far the hardest.
I think I took one day off within that period of time because I recognized I was starting to really ⁓ drop ⁓ in my ability to focus. But by taking that day off and cognitively resting allowed me to get back in and get the most out of it that day. And that’s why I talk about recovery so much. And the tools that I used to actually write the book were leveraged from the book. ⁓ and if anything, it just made me double down and see.
Jess Spendlove (00:21:11)
That sometimes things ⁓ that feel impossible, that shouldn’t work, ⁓ can still work. And I think, you know, for me, writing the book with a one-year-old with a short timeline was something which I was pretty terrified to say yes to. But right now, sitting here one week out from launching it into the world, I’m so very proud I did. And I nearly think that’s even part of the message around the book.
It’s about making time for what’s important. And for me, this book and this message and helping more people is important and finding a way to do that with what you’ve got. ⁓ I also think there’s a thing that’s ⁓ what is it? The par I think it’s Parkinson’s Law, which is like you take the time that you’ve got. I’m sure if I had six months to write the book, I would have taken six months, but because I had really six weeks, ⁓ which included a two-week holiday in there.
I took six weeks and now I did nothing else in that time. I didn’t do any other work, any other clients. I’d carved that time out. ⁓ I was meant to be having that time to rest and reset. ⁓ luckily, I still had the two weeks in Thailand, ⁓ but I used that time to write the book, and that one one and a half weeks in between the main writing and then the reviewing and elevating those two weeks.
I took that week off. You know, I spent the time with Millie. I I did some creative work in the background. I didn’t just get back into normal operating. ⁓ And I really believe operating in those performance pulses and recovery pulses allowed me to write the book. And I think that’s gonna be one of the main things. If you buy the book and listen to the book or read the book is one of the main messages you’re gonna take away.
Jess Spendlove (00:23:08)
You know, as I sit here talking about the timeline that I wrote the book in, like part of me still feels a little embarrassed and that I need to justify that just because I did it in a short timeline, you know, I took four to six weeks rather than four months or four years, you know. I some pe see people talking about I’ve been working on a manuscript for four years and I hear you, like I understand that. And probably in some ways I was working on my manuscript for four years, you know. I think if anything, I was working on my manuscript for
For thirty years because this book is thirty years of personal and professional lived experience. And so while I may have only been writing the book for four to six weeks, it was ⁓ years and decades of professional experience, client stories, lived experience on my own that has gone into this book. ⁓ And ⁓ you know, this isn’t about shortcuts, ⁓
What this is about is preparation and refining your message and knowing your craft and having clarity and relying on ⁓ energy and habits ⁓ and capacity and getting the most out of yourself and sometimes sustain your s your sustainable high performance will have periods of intense short sprints that are unsustainable. But as long as they are periods of time.
where there is an endpoint where you have strategies within there where you’re still prioritizing yourself, where you’re protecting yourself. You might be resting and recovering before that project or before that season starts. Having moments throughout and then also at the end, that was the thing that got me through. And it got me through in a way which felt manageable. Now I’m not gonna lie, at the end of that manuscript submission I deloaded my week. ⁓ but ⁓
I didn’t feel as refreshed as what I thought I would. And a few weeks after that I had to take a little bit more time off and I had to deload a little bit more. And I guess this is the thing ⁓ when you’ve operated unsustainably before, like I have, you know the warning signs. ⁓ but I don’t want you to think that this was easy, that I just, you know, moved through it. It doesn’t ⁓ that’s not the message, and that’s not the message for you either. But it’s about having practical tools and
Jess Spendlove (00:25:35)
and systems and strategies and prioritizing yourself ⁓ to help you get through those seasons because you can do it. Now look one of the things I’m most proud of about the book is the people who have endorsed it. I ⁓ you know I’m not good at the ask and I need to get better at the ask in business. Trying to build my business, grow my business, pivot my business, you know, into the more corporate space, wanting to do more speaking and workshops and
programs with teams and leaders and emerging leaders and organizations. You know, I need to get better at the ask. But I thought to myself, when it comes to the endorsements, this is my opportunity to practice getting better at the ask. And so I reached out to quite a lot of high profile business people or ⁓ media personalities or athletes ⁓ or people that I really professionally respect.
And I just asked, would you be happy to endorse me or the book? ⁓ And yeah, I’m very grateful and very humbled by the people who have endorsed me, my work, or the book. It’s it’s ⁓ you know yeah, very proud of it. ⁓ very proud, very humbled, ⁓ and ⁓ I’m so glad I asked because if I didn’t have the courage to ask, ⁓ the answer would have been no.
And that’s something Dr. Joe Lucins has said on stay at the top before. If you don’t ask, the answer is no. And that really resonated with me when it came to the book. And now I just need to take that mindset and I need to apply it into other areas of my business life.
Jess Spendlove (00:27:24)
And so as we come to the end of this episode, ⁓ hopefully you can take something away for this to apply to your own life, whether I said it’s an intense season, a busy period, prioritizing yourself, figuring out a way to withstand the intensity, the sprints, the things that feel unsustainable in a way that is sustainable. And for me, that’s the whole message with the book. Sustainable high performance is about a rhythm.
It’s about not just looking at the sprint but the marathon and finding a pace and an intensity and a rhythm that works for you. And it doesn’t have to be the same every single day, every single week, every single month. Maybe it’s like what I did. Maybe it’s an intense sprint, but having rest either side of it and throughout to make it manageable. ⁓ when something is unsustainable and it goes on for a long period of time.
that’s when we start to get into the red and that’s when things become dangerous. But over a short period of time, it can be manageable. And so I really hope that there’s something within this episode and within this book that has resonated with you. And if it has, ⁓ for the long run, is being released Wednesday the 29th, next Wednesday, that’s ⁓ wild and exciting and all of the things. But for the long run goes deeper on all of this.
It is really about helping you build a full system for your life, customized to your life, to give you more energy, better recovery, and well-being. And most importantly, that holds up on your busiest days, not just your best ones. So you can order it on Amazon or Booktopia, it’ll be in bookstores from the 29th. ⁓ And ⁓
I have a very exciting competition that I’m going to be announcing, but I will announce that in next week’s episode. ⁓ I ⁓ should also note that next week’s episode will not go out on Tuesday the 28th. It is going to go out on Wednesday the 29th because that is the day the book launches. So next week’s episode will be going live Wednesday the 29th, not Tuesday the 28th. But tune in, it’ll be all about the book, QA’s.
Jess Spendlove (00:29:40)
practical applications you can take away and I will be sharing there a very special giveaway. Yes, a competition, an amazing just think ⁓ luxury wellness. That’s all I’m gonna say for now. Luxury wellness ⁓ competition to ⁓ celebrate the launch of for the long run. ⁓ And you’ll be able to go in the competition to win that prize.
If you’ve purchased a copy of For the Long Run. So make sure you tune into that. Otherwise, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Stay at the Top. I can’t wait to be back with you next week celebrating the launch of my book for the long run. ⁓ Otherwise, that’s all I’ve got for you all this week. ⁓ I ⁓ can’t wait to see you all again next week to not only help you reach the top, but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you then.