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The 90/10 Rule: What Elite Athletes Know About Growth That You Don't

We’re busy. Relentlessly busy. Back-to-back Zoom calls, Slack notifications pinging, emails flooding in, and somehow we’re supposed to be “always on” whether we’re in the office or working from our kitchen tables. We’re putting in the hours, the effort, the hustle. Yet here’s the uncomfortable truth: we’re not actually getting better at the things that matter most.

Our leadership skills? Stagnant. That strategic thinking we know we need to develop? Still on the someday list. The meaningful relationships with our teams or families? Running on autopilot. We’re working harder than ever, but we’re not improving. And we’re in this together.

The Plateau We Don’t Talk About

Research reveals something startling: after about two years in any endeavor, our improvement plateaus. We stop growing. We become competent enough to get by, then we cruise. It’s not because we lack ambition or intelligence. It’s because we’ve confused being busy with getting better.

In his brilliant TED Talk, “How to get better at the things you care about,” Eduardo Briceño asks a question that should make all of us pause: How much time do we spend in the learning zone versus the performance zone?

Think about our typical workdays. We’re presenting to clients, leading meetings, making decisions, putting out fires, delivering results. That’s all performance zone activity. Essential, yes. But here’s what’s missing: when are we actually learning? When are we deliberately practicing? When are we stretching beyond what we already know how to do?

Briceño, who devotes his career to creating more learning-oriented organizations, argues that most of us spend nearly all our time performing and almost none of our time genuinely learning. We’re so focused on looking competent that we’ve stopped the very activities that would make us more competent.

What Athletes Know That We’ve Forgotten

Here’s where it gets really interesting. For 25 years, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, authors of The Power of Full Engagement, worked with world-class athletes to help them perform under the most intense competitive pressure imaginable. What they discovered turned conventional wisdom on its head.

The performance demands that most of us face in our everyday work environments are actually tougher than what professional athletes face. Not because our individual moments are more challenging, but because of how we structure our time. Athletes train 90% of the time to perform 10% of the time. They spend the vast majority of their energy in deliberate practice, recovery, and skill development. Then, when game time comes, they’re ready.

We’ve flipped the equation. We perform 90% of the time and train maybe 10% of the time, if we’re lucky. We’re in the game every single day, without adequate preparation, without recovery, without the focused practice that actually creates growth. Then we wonder why we’re exhausted, plateaued, and stuck.

The Post-Pandemic Reality

If this dynamic was problematic before 2020, it’s become critical now. The pandemic obliterated the boundaries between work and life. The “always available” culture that was creeping in became the norm overnight. We jumped from our beds to our laptops, performed all day on video calls where every micro-expression was visible, and collapsed back into bed, only to repeat the cycle.

Hybrid work promised flexibility, but for many of us it delivered fragmentation. We’re constantly switching contexts, never fully present, always partially performing. The mythical “time to think” evaporated. The space for genuine learning disappeared. We’re running harder on a treadmill that never stops.

The result? Widespread burnout, quiet quitting, the great resignation. These aren’t just headlines. They’re symptoms of a fundamental problem: we’ve lost the rhythm between performance and renewal, between executing and learning, between output and input.

Managing Energy, Not Just Time

Loehr and Schwartz discovered that managing energy, not time, is the fundamental key to high performance and personal renewal. We can’t manufacture more hours in the day, but we can manage our most precious resource differently.

This isn’t about productivity hacks or doing more faster. It’s about recognizing that sustainable excellence requires oscillation. Athletes don’t train at maximum intensity 24/7. They cycle between stress and recovery, between pushing their limits and letting their bodies adapt. They build capacity by honoring both zones.

The same principle applies to our careers, our leadership, our creativity, our relationships. We need time in the learning zone, deliberately practicing skills that don’t come naturally yet, getting feedback, experimenting, and yes, making mistakes where the stakes are low. Then we need genuine recovery, not just scrolling our phones while half-watching Netflix.

Here’s My Take

The research is clear: sustainable excellence requires alternating between the learning zone and the performance zone. Most of us spend 90% of our time performing and 10% learning. World-class athletes do the opposite. The power of full engagement isn’t about doing more—it’s about managing your energy intentionally, creating space for genuine growth, and honoring the rhythm between stress and recovery.

We don’t need to overhaul our entire lives. Let’s start with these practical shifts:

Protect learning time. Block one hour weekly for deliberate practice of a skill that matters to our future, not just our present. No emails, no multitasking—just focused development.

Name our zones. Before each activity, ask: “Am I performing or learning right now?” This awareness alone changes behavior.

Build in recovery. Real recovery isn’t scrolling social media. Let’s take actual breaks. Walk outside. Disconnect completely. Our brains need genuine rest to consolidate learning.

Practice where stakes are low. Seek feedback on smaller projects. Experiment with new approaches in team meetings. Create safe spaces to stretch beyond our comfort zones before the high-pressure moments.

Start tomorrow differently. Instead of diving straight into email, spend 15 minutes reading something that challenges our thinking or practicing a skill we’re developing.

The people we’ll become in five years are being shaped by how we invest our energy today. We’re capable of so much more than maintenance mode. The question is: are we willing to shift from constant performance to purposeful growth?

Because on the other side of that shift is not just better results, but better, more engaged versions of ourselves.