This article is based on the closing keynote I delivered at the The Securities and Investment Management Association (SIMA)’s Annual Leadership Conference on October 15, 2025.
As a senior executive, a lifelong practitioner of judo, a student of martial arts philosophy, and an executive coach, I’ve spent decades observing what truly drives effectiveness and efficiency in professional and personal life. I’ve also seen the toll that modern work takes on high-achieving professionals. My goal today is to share insights drawn from the wisdom of judo—the Gentle Way—that can help you and your teams dramatically increase the time you spend in your Zone of Maximum Effectiveness.
My journey in judo spans 45 uninterrupted years. I estimate that over the years, I’ve logged something like 6,750 workouts for a total of 17,000 hours on the mats; I’ve been thrown at least 150,000 times, and I’ve taught judo to over 700 students. I’m known for tenacious discipline, and for a demonstrated ability at forming and maintaining habits. I’ve learned in this time that the core lessons of judo are universal, applying to every single aspect of life. Today, I’m inviting you to explore some of those learnings together.
The Efficiency Illusion: Maximum Effort, Minimum Efficiency
In my practice, I often hear from senior professionals and executives about their challenges and frustrations. Our professional lives are defined by constant motion: jumping from meeting to meeting, being pulled in every direction, and having no time for important things such as focused work, thinking through business challenges and opportunities, or even just recharging. This lack of focus often manifests through unhealthy habits like skipping meals or eating at our desks; toggling incessantly between Teams, email, and whatever you happen to be working on; not getting enough sleep or failing to maintain good personal boundaries.
We work long hours and we work hard. However, the critical question is: Is that time spent at work truly effective and efficient? Far too often, we push ourselves way past the point where we can deliver quality output. We expend significant energy—far more than the quality of the resulting output would ever justify. We are living a life of Maximum effort, Minimum efficiency – the very opposite of judo’s central principle.
This can be a real problem for strong, highly resilient professionals. If you have been successful so far using a brute-strength approach – pushing through things with stamina and resilience –, letting go of that kind of approach can be extremely difficult. It’s like trying to get the biggest and strongest student in the class, the one who can throw others at will, to focus on good technique. How do you make them see that there’s a better way?
Seiryoku Zenyo: The Law of Maximum Efficiency
So, what exactly is judo? Judo practitioners (judokas) are wrestlers, belonging to the category of martial artists who wrestle rather than kick and punch. I often joke, “You throw balls? That’s cool. I throw people”.
Judo is often referred to as the Gentle Way. But if you watch a major tournament, you might struggle to see anything “gentle” about it. “Gentle” refers to the concept of being flexible and adaptable, rather than rigid. The idea is to flow with the energy, give way when needed, and use timing and leverage to secure an advantage. As sensei Kyuzo Mifune wrote, “Ju” is natural and free, without rigidity or hardness”.
At the heart of judo lies the principle known as Seiryoku Zenyo, the principle of Maximum Efficiency. This principle is about finding the appropriate means to achieve any objective in the most efficient way possible. It’s about using the most efficient application of energy of mind and body. In judo, a throw executed with brute strength won’t earn you the admiration of your peers. What impresses us is a technique executed effortlessly, with perfect timing and flowing elegance.
So, how do you throw an opponent who is significantly bigger and stronger than you? Obviously, brute strength simply won’t work. What you need is to neutralize the opponent’s advantage by breaking their balance (create Kuzushi), utilizing speed and leverage instead of pure strength. This is the essence of Minimum effort, Maximum efficiency.
I recall an important open tournament where I fought for the bronze medal, many years ago. I was fighting in a weight category above my own (-81kg instead of -73kg) against a very strong and highly decorated opponent. People expected a short fight ending in a spectacular throw—and they got it, but the winner was not who they anticipated. Why did I win? I was rested and the fittest I’d ever been, certainly. But more importantly, my mind was completely calm and open, devoid of fear, anxiety, or rigidity: neither obsessed with winning nor afraid of losing. I countered my opponent’s attack in the very instant he launched it, and the fight was over in just a few seconds. I never even broke a sweat. That’s the very essence of judo.
We can’t always be in that perfect state, that zone of maximum efficiency and effectiveness, but we can strive to increase the time we spend there and there are things we can do to help.
Kuzushi: When Life Knocks You Off-Balance
Balance is a fundamental concept in judo. We strive to maintain our center while breaking our opponent’s balance (creating Kuzushi) to set up the opportunity for a throw. Conversely, when you’re off-balance, you’re easy to knock over and you can’t apply your own strength. Being off-balance neutralizes any advantage you might have in terms of weight or strength.
Just as in judo, we are all easy to take down when we’re off-balance in life.
Life constantly throws challenges at us—culture wars, tariffs, layoffs, RTO, inflation, AI, workplace transformations—things we have no control over. But we also put ourselves off-balance through unhealthy behaviours such as:
- Lack of sleep.
- Unhealthy eating habits.
- Lack of exercise.
- Cognitive overload, including multitasking (rapid switching) and decision fatigue.
Cognitive overload is a major problem for many senior professionals. As Daniel Levitin explains, “Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline”, leading to scrambled thinking or mental fog. (Levitin, 2015) Furthermore, decision-making, even concerning small decisions, is very hard on our neural resources. Decision fatigue can lead to the loss of impulse control, which can rapidly spiral into making truly bad decisions about important matters. (Levitin, 2015) As Roy F. Baumeister noted, “decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at their colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket, and can’t resist the car dealer’s offer to rustproof their new sedan.” (Baumeister, 2012) All these things point to a highly inefficient use of mental resources.
Building Willpower and Discipline
A huge part of the answer to maximizing our time in the Zone of Maximum Effectiveness is willpower, also known as discipline or self-control—one of the 8 core values of judo. But perhaps not in the “hard” way you’ve been thinking about it.
The challenge is that our stock of willpower is limited. As Baumeister writes, experiments have consistently shown two lessons: First, “you have a finite amount of willpower that depletes as you use it.” and second, “you use the same single stock of willpower for all manner of tasks”, whether dealing with frustrating traffic, resisting tempting food, or being nice to demanding colleagues. (Baumeister, 2012) You might think that you have different stocks of willpower for work and home (and other parts of your life), but you don’t.
There’s some good news, however: willpower, it turns out, can be developed over time. (Baumeister, 2012) But how you choose to deploy whatever store of willpower you do have matters a lot when it comes to outcomes. So, there are two matters to address: 1) How to develop willpower or self-control and; 2) How to deploy it in the most efficient and effective way possible. That is what we’ll be exploring in Part 2 of this article.
Sources:
Baumeister, Roy. F., and Tierney, John. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. The Penguin Press, New York, 2012, 304 pages.
Kano, Jigoro. Mind Over Muscle: Writings From the Founder of Judo. Kodansha International, Tokyo, 2005, 155 pages.
Levitin, Daniel J. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. Penguin Canada, 2015, 528 pages.
Mifune, K. (2004). The Canon of Judo: Classic Teachings on Principles and Techniques. Translated by Françoise White. Tokyo, Kodansha International, 224 pages.
