Simone Biles became a better gymnast by watching Netflix on Sundays.
That's not a metaphor. In Tokyo 2021, she walked out of the Olympic finals. Overtrained. Stressed. Her body wouldn't cooperate. She was criticised for it. Some people called her a quitter.
After that, she rested. She went to church. She watched TV. She slept. She came back in 2023 and won four gold medals. Most decorated gymnast of all time.
Sébastien Page told me that story on this week's episode, and it landed differently than I expected. Because Seb isn't a sports coach. He's the Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price, managing over $500 billion in assets. And he nearly died because he ignored the same lesson Simone Biles learned.
Early in his career, Seb was running hard. Traveling constantly. Not sleeping.
He went for a run with cuts on his toes, picked up a bacterial infection through wet terrain, and spent a week on death's bed. The doctors told him afterwards: if we'd had this case three years earlier, before these new antibiotics existed, you wouldn't have made it.
That experience sent him down a rabbit hole of sports and positive psychology. Five years of research. A book. And one idea that I think every CEO needs to hear.
Goal-induced blindness.
It's what happens when you're so fixated on the target that you lose sight of everything else. Your health. Your relationships. Sometimes your ethics. Seb pointed to Wells Fargo, where employees created fake bank accounts just to hit metrics. Volkswagen cheating on emissions testing. World-class companies, brought down by the obsession with the number.
He ran an experiment with a thousand finance students. Gave them a scenario: there's a jar with 100 gummies. Four are poisoned. They'll kill you. How much money would it take for you to eat one?
At one million, half the room had their hands up. At ten million, almost everyone.
A 4% chance of dying. The same odds as summiting Everest. And a room full of smart people willing to take it for money they don't need.
That's goal-induced blindness. And it's everywhere. In every boardroom where the quarterly number has become the only thing that matters. In every CEO's calendar where strategic thinking keeps getting pushed to "next quarter." In every leader who hasn't taken a proper break in two years because slowing down feels like losing.
Seb's advice is simple:
The career is a marathon. Rest is part of performance. The leaders who last aren't the ones who push hardest. They're the ones who know when to stop pushing.
Sleep well.
Eat okay.
Exercise.
Go find someone you love and tell them.
Everything else will take care of itself.
🎧 Full conversation with Sebastien on The World Class Leaders Show: link below.
One idea a week on how top CEOs lead when the stakes are high, from inside rooms most people never enter. Free, and you can leave any time.