Train For Ambition

Ambition alone doesn’t guarantee results. This piece sets out what neuroscience actually reveals about sustainable ambition, why your brain is far more trainable than most leaders realise, and why rest is one of the most productive things you can do.

If you’re serious about realising your ambition, the simple fact is you need to train for it. Nobody wins Olympic gold just by virtue of wanting it badly enough. They win because they apply themselves, intentionally and consistently, despite the fact there is no guaranteed outcome. That’s where thinking of yourself as a cognitive athlete comes in - what we now know about the brain means you can commit to training your mental performance just like an Olympian would focus on their body.

The challenge is that your most valuable asset is also the least understood. The brain is your control hub - it determines how you think, feel and act. It has one magic ingredient that any Changemaker needs to understand - neuroplasticity. This is the brain’s lifelong ability to adapt, learn and rewire. So armed with the knowledge that change is always possible, where do you start?

Establish Your Foundation

How you sleep, move and eat have a huge impact on your cognitive health and performance. Sleep in particular isn’t just physical rest. Think of it like a nightly dishwashing cycle, where metabolic waste is removed from the brain (neuroscientists call this the glymphatic system) and memories are filed away neatly. Better sleep equals sharper mental performance. Invest accordingly.

Build Your Cognitive Capacity

Do hard things. Do them often. Trying new skills and adapting new behaviours will forge new neural pathways in the brain - but understand that repetition is key to ingraining them. Daniel Chambliss, the sociologist behind the ‘Mundanity of Excellence’ study, spent years embedded with Olympic swimmers. He found that what allowed them to realise their ambitions was showing up time and time again, doing the fundamentals well. Consistency compounds.

Master Periodisation

Your cognitive load is finite so you need to be intentional about how and when you deploy it. That starts with understanding your own data. Phrases like “I’m brain-fried” and “I can’t think straight” are signals that you’ve burnt through your cognitive capacity. Just like an Olympian, you need to work out the right schedule to ensure you show up at your best when it matters most. As an example, look no further than Jeff Bezos who stated: “I like to do my high-IQ meetings before lunch. Anything that’s really mentally challenging is a 10 o’clock meeting, because by 5pm I’m like, I can’t think about that today.”

If you try and mentally sprint all day, every day, you’ll end up in the killzone of ambition termed the ‘Simmering Six’ - that 6 out of 10 ‘tired but wired’ state, where you’re trying your best but know you’re far from your best.

Be Intentional About Rest

The cognitive athlete understands that rest and recovery are among the most productive things you can do. Rest can be active as well as passive, with sports and social connection being prime examples. Not only does this allow you to recharge mentally, it also activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the state where the brain is freed up to make connections your conscious focus rarely will. This is crucial for creativity and innovation (see my earlier article on Why Ambition is Critical in the Era of AI).

Rest is also vital for managing stress effectively. Contrary to popular opinion, not all stress is bad - being able to tap into good stress (eustress) is critical for those bursts of energy that propel you forwards. However, if you try to maintain that pace for too long, you enter acute and eventually chronic stress. That’s where too much ambition can end up being corrosive.

Use Purpose As Fuel

Purpose as a phrase is thrown around like confetti in the marketing space, so I want to offer you a different understanding of it. Victor Strecher, a professor of health behaviour at the University of Michigan, draws a distinction between self-transcending purpose (ambition tied to something beyond yourself) and self-enhancing purpose (ambition aimed only at your own advancement). In his research, people primed toward self-transcending values showed increased activity in the brain’s reward circuits when faced with a demanding challenge, and that response predicted whether they actually followed through and stayed committed to the ambition. No training programme survives without a strong ‘why’.