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Julia Arndt: Increase Your ROI With The Peak Performance Method
Julia Arndt
INCREASE YOUR ROI WITH THE PEAK PERFORMANCE METHOD
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Today’s fast paced work environment has left us pushing our own limits, sacrificing after-hours to get work done and deprioritizing our own needs to help others.
But something, Julia Arndt has recognized, is that people haven’t learned why it is so vital to take care of their well-being, learn how to deal with acute stress, manage their time effectively, set boundaries and not get drowned in negative thought patterns and habits.
Arndt is a stress management trainer, international speaker and the creator of the Peak Performance Method (PPM). She worked for Google for over seven and a half years while the company grew from 30,000 to 100,000 employees and after a 3-month medical leave, recovering from burnout and anxiety in 2018, she
experienced first hand the need for a more preventative program.
When she returned to work, she offered internal stress management training through a few email channels and received over 300 replies in two days from colleagues all over the world who shared their own story: struggling from workload, disconnecting after hours and a non-existing work-life balance.
“I now help businesses and individuals learn peak performance tools to thrive at work and in their personal life. I show them that they can live and feel better while still being a peak performer.“
In only 18 months since she started her own business, she has trained over 3000 people at companies such as Google, Microsoft, Swisscom, Zalando, Uber and many more on understanding the effects of stress on body and mind, moving beyond burnout and building a lifestyle that delivers focus, high energy and productivity.
“I work mostly with tech companies, consulting companies and startups globally - in short with people that are working in high-pressure, competitive, quickly changing environments where people are expected to always bring their best, hit targets and are evaluated on a regular basis.”
Arndt’s passion for what she does flows through to her clients and the results are real. In a first pilot study that she ran with a research team at BrainTap, a performancebased application, she was able to prove that implementing Peak Performance tools into their lives through a 10-week program significantly reduced the participants stress and anxiety levels, improved sleep quality and increased productivity scores. She is committed to ensuring people never get to the burnout stage that she experienced.
“Living a 24/7 work life is not the new normal. It can (and should) be different. I love helping people understand that they create their own lives and happiness. They have the control to have a different life but it’s on them to make actual changes,” Arndt says.
Burnout impacts employee performance, retention, career growth and even family life. It is not inevitable, and it should never be celebrated as part of the socalled “hard-working culture”. The World Health Organization
“During my burnout, there were plenty of resources in place to help me: EAP programs, paid time off and countless internal resources. However, no one ever told me how to not get there in the first place, how to take care of myself, what signs to look out for, how to say no or even that it’s ok to say no. That’s where I really want to help tech and consulting companies to change!”
officially declared burnout as a diagnosable condition in 2019, so it makes sense that employers who implement processes to get ahead of the burnout curve will have an advantage over their competitors. Gallup.com, a global analytics and advice firm, reports that a staggering 67% of employees say
they are sometimes, very often or always burned out at work.
“During my burnout, there were plenty of resources in place to help me: EAP programs, paid time off and countless internal resources. However, no one ever told me how to not get there in the first place,
how to take care of myself, what signs to look out for, how to say no or even that it’s ok to say no. That’s where I really want to help tech and consulting companies to change!”
Arndt deeply believes that companies should invest in onboarding and continuous learning programs to help their employees develop well-being tools overtime, rather than short term investments which tend to be ineffective.
“Well-being initiatives, such as a single 60-minute workshop are a nice gesture, but people tend to forget about what they learned. Without a big investment from their company and leadership team in required peak performance programs, their well-being scores decrease,” Arndt says.
A crucial part of that investment is taking on a business coach to look across processes and operations. Arndt says we all have our blind spots and a coach is such an invaluable step for a business.
“Show me one professional athlete that has no trainer. Bill Gates said “Everyone needs a coach” and I totally agree with that. Hiring a business coach helps to validate certain tools that a company is trying to implement and increase credibility and foster (culture) change.”
Arndt’s process is quite different to the average coach. She has created her very own Peak Performance Method, which combines critical productivity, mindfulness and leadership tools with neuroscientific research on emotion regulation, habit-building and change management as well as coaching techniques to help each employee thrive in the workplace and develop the next workplace superpower.
“I want companies to invest in the long-term health of their employees and not just tick a box. I encourage companies to focus on their onboarding programs and help employees develop tools at the beginning of their journey to prevent mental and physical exhaustion,” she says.
“Well-being tools need to be a required part of an employee’s journey, a reactive one-off investment is not enough.”
