The Fastest Way to Improve Is Closer to Burnout Than You Think

Most rules only make sense after you break them.

Rules are not bad, but they are simply approximations. Think about it for a second. They’re someone else’s experience, averaged out, written down so you don’t have to think too hard. Rules exist simply because someone had the thought before you. And if you never test them, you never really know where the edge actually is.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about myself. I test limits. I always have.

• Rules.

• Training.

• Diet.

• Work.

• Relationships.

• Seeing how far you can lean a motorcycle before it loses grip.

For a long time, I didn’t know why I did this. I thought it was impatience. Or arrogance. Or just being bad with authority.

While there’s truth to the latter, it’s not just that.

I’m actually trying to find the edge before things break, so I can live just inside it. Because once you know where damage begins, you can be incredibly precise.

And I didn’t realize this was a thing I did automatically, until it clicked in the most random way: Tanning.

Yeah. Tanning.

This week’s random (most would call useless) knowledge rabbit hole: finding the most efficient way to tan relative to skin aging and DNA damage.

I won’t bore you with the details about UVA vs UVB, time of day, reflective surfaces, angles, etc. The point is, before you can optimize anything, you need to understand the constraint.

I’ll give you the answer I came up with in a little while, because it’ll only make sense after what comes next..

What is important here, is that I realized the actual rule at play: Growth happens best right below the damage threshold.

Everything has a point where stress stops helping and starts hurting.

The problem isn’t that people don’t work hard enough. The problem is that most people don’t know where that line is, so they live on the wrong side of it.

If you’re below it, life feels comfortable but dull. You’re bored. You overthink. You tell yourself you’re being patient or “strategic,” but really nothing is moving. You can stay there for years. Safe. And quietly most likely miserable.

If you’re above it, the signal is obvious. You burn. On your skin, it’s sunburn. At the gym, it’s injury. At work, it’s burnout. In life, it’s doing something stupid at 2 a.m. and wondering how you ended having to get bailed out from Broward County Jail.

Different domain. Same mechanism.

The sweet spot (the only place where things dramatically improve) is right under that breaking point. That’s where effort turns into adaptation instead of consequences. But you can’t operate there by guessing. And you can’t copy someone else’s rules. You have to find the line first.

The other half of the equation

There’s one more piece that makes this work. And without it, the whole thing falls apart.

Finding the threshold is only half the equation. The other half is what you do after you touch it. Because adaptation doesn’t happen while you’re pushing.

Your skin doesn’t adapt while it’s being stressed by the sun. Your muscles don’t grow while you’re lifting. Your brain doesn’t rewire while you’re forcing input.

All of that happens after, when the system has space to reorganize. This is where biology and neuroscience agree:

Stress sends the signal. Rest does the work. That’s why pushing nonstop doesn’t make you faster; it just makes you inflamed, tired, or stuck. And that’s why spacing things out feels slower in the moment, but compounds much faster over time.

Once I saw this, a lot of things I was already doing suddenly made sense. Including why that tanning rabbit hole felt so familiar, and why it connected immediately to chapter 5, How to Think Less and Lean Faster. I’d already been using the same mechanism. I just hadn’t named it yet.

So let’s name it, together.

The Universal Law of Maximum Efficiency.

Every system has two reactions to stress. One part gets stronger from it. Another part gets worn down by it. Too little stress, nothing changes. Too much stress, things fall apart.

And Somewhere in the middle, growth is fast and damage is manageable. That’s the only place where progress compounds. The graph below is just a picture of that idea.

The straight line is the signal to adapt: the harder you push, the louder the message to change.

The curved line is the cost: how much that stress is wearing the system down in the moment.

The shaded area is the only place that matters: where the signal helps more than it hurts.

Think of this like heat on a stove: Too low, nothing cooks. Too high, it burns. There’s a narrow range where food cooks fast without burning.

Why this matters.

If you want to move faster in anything without burning out or getting bored, it looks like this: Short periods of very high intensity. Followed by real breaks. Repeated consistently.

This is universal, because any system that adapts (cells, brains, identities) follows the same efficiency curve.

Biology. Cognition. Behavior.
Different systems. Same curve.

Same pattern. Same failure modes, and same sweet spot (the maximum efficiency zone).

Which is exactly why, after digging through UVA/UVB ratios, DNA repair windows, and reflection physics, the most efficient tanning protocol I could find turned out almost disappointingly simple, and perfectly aligned with the law we just named:

Between about 9 and 10:40 a.m., 10-minute exposures. Then off for 20. Ideally near a reflective surface, like water, because the lower angle + bounce gives you more usable signal (melanin production) without cranking total damage.

Once I saw this pattern everywhere, a lot of things I already do suddenly made sense, and now I do them deliberately.

Writing/Work — I don't grind all day. I do 40–45 minute blocks of total lock-in (no notifications, no multitasking, binaural beats in my ears). Then I stop completely: leave the room, walk, do something unrelated. The ideas reorganize themselves during the break.

Training — No 90-minute annihilations. I do 8–12 minute sessions of hyper-controlled, near-failure bodyweight work. 3–4 times a day, spaced out. Intense push, full recovery, repeat. Maximum gains without inflammation.

You can run the same experiment in your life. Here are a few places this law shows up powerfully:

Learning a skill: Dive in for 45–60 minutes of deliberate practice (full focus, pushing edges), then step away for 15–30 minutes. Your brain consolidates during the break. Skills stick faster than endless grinding.

Creative projects: 90-minute deep dives on writing/art/code, followed by a real break (no scrolling). The subconscious does the heavy lifting in the off-time — breakthroughs often hit after you stop forcing.

-

And now that you understand this, you can apply it to whatever you care about right now.

The question isn’t “how long” or “how hard” anymore.

It’s: How much signal does this system need, and how much space does it need after?

That’s the blueprint.

Until next time,

Benoit.