Hyper Self-Awareness - The Art of Catching Yourself

Read time: 6 minutes

Hey internet friends,

Last week, we explored embodied abundance and why opening our hands—literally and metaphorically—creates space for receiving.

​You can read that (and all past issues, here).

By the way, if you're finding these insights helpful, I've started collecting all these tools, resources, and one-sheets in the ever-growing 'Science of Success' vault. Check it out here for additional materials on today's topic and more.

Today, I want to dive into what might be the most underrated competitive advantage in business and life:

Hyper self-awareness – the ability to catch your counterproductive thoughts and behaviours at lightning speed.

The Gap Between Thought and Action

Here's something I've observed consistently across the hundreds of founders I've interviewed and worked with:

Everyone deals with distraction, overthinking, and self-sabotage. But the most effective people have developed an almost supernatural ability to catch themselves in the act.

The difference isn't that successful people don't have negative thoughts or unproductive tendencies. It's that they recognize them faster and course-correct before those thoughts become actions.

The Landing Page Problem

Let me give you a concrete example.

A few years ago, Heights needed a new landing page. My team came back with an elaborate design featuring animations, parallax scrolling, and a colour palette that would make Pixar jealous.

It was beautiful. And it was completely wrong for our purpose.

At that moment, a voice in my head asked: "What's the actual goal here?"

The answer was simple: get visitors to take one specific action – subscribe to our brain health newsletter.

Everything else was distraction. We scrapped the fancy design for something much simpler that directed attention to the single action we wanted. Conversion rates doubled overnight.

This isn't just about landing pages. It's about the human tendency to overcomplicate almost everything we touch.

The Cost of Low Self-Awareness

When we lack hyper self-awareness, we pay enormous taxes in every area of life:

We add unnecessary steps, features, or processes that dilute our impact. We allow our attention to fragment across too many priorities, diminishing our effectiveness at all of them. We get caught in cycles of worry, rumination, or second-guessing that drain our mental energy. We get paralysed by options or make decisions based on ego rather than evidence.

Most people are paying all these taxes simultaneously without even realising it. They wonder why they're exhausted and frustrated when the real issue is that their internal operating system is running dozens of unnecessary background processes.

The Art of Catching Yourself

So, how do you develop this superpower? The practice is deceptively simple yet profound.

First, create mental triggers that interrupt autopilot thinking. Specific questions that become habitual when you're making decisions or taking actions. Questions like "What's the actual goal here?" or "Is this essential or just interesting?" act as pattern interrupts, creating a moment of clarity before you proceed.

Next, learn to recognise your personal complexity triggers. We all have specific situations that activate our tendency to overcomplicate. Some people do it when they feel insecure. Others when they're trying to impress someone. My personal complexity trigger is excitement – when I'm enthusiastic about something, I tend to add unnecessary features or layers.

Perhaps most importantly, schedule time for reflection. Not vague contemplation, but structured self-auditing. Dedicate just 10 minutes daily to review where you overcomplicated things, got distracted from your primary goal, or let emotion cloud your judgment. This isn't self-criticism – it's reconnaissance. You're gathering intelligence on your own patterns.

At Heights, we took this principle and extended it to our entire operation. We developed clear guides for decision-making: "Efficacy first, experience second, everything else third."

These constraints didn't limit our creativity; they channelled it toward what actually mattered.

The Return on Self-Awareness

The benefits of hyper self-awareness compound over time. You'll make decisions faster with fewer regrets. You'll experience less friction between intention and action. You'll waste less energy on unproductive thought patterns. You'll build solutions that actually solve the core problem.

But perhaps the greatest benefit is peace of mind. There's a profound tranquillity that comes from not being constantly hijacked by your own thoughts.

A Question to Carry Forward

As you move into your week, I invite you to consider:

What's one area where you're currently overcomplicating something important to you?

And what would it look like if you reduced it to its absolute fundamentals?

Until Thursday,

Dan

P.S. If you experiment with any of these self-awareness practices this week, I'd love to hear what you discover. The most valuable insights often come from these moments of honest self-observation.

SOS (Science of Success) Curated:

LinkedIn of the week: How To Actually Transform Your Life.​

Podcast of the week: Brain Health or Mental Health? - Neuroscience & ADHD.​

My Tweet of the week: Most change fails because we try to create new habits with old beliefs.​

The Metacognition Advantage

Recent research from Stanford's Metacognition Lab reveals why the ability to observe your own thinking processes creates such a significant competitive advantage.

In a comprehensive study tracking entrepreneurs over three years, researchers found that high metacognitive ability (the capacity to think about your thinking) was a stronger predictor of business success than traditional factors like prior experience, education, or even IQ.

Particularly striking was the finding on decision quality. Entrepreneurs with high metacognitive scores made decisions of similar quality to their peers – the difference was in how quickly they recognised and corrected poor decisions. The high-metacognition group identified flawed strategies 4.2 times faster than their counterparts, resulting in 60% less resource wastage.

This aligns with neuroimaging studies showing that metacognitive training increases activity in the prefrontal cortex while reducing activation in the amygdala during decision-making, effectively strengthening rational processes while dampening emotional reactivity.

The implications extend beyond business. In health contexts, patients with strong metacognitive skills were 218% more likely to maintain long-term behaviour changes. Why? They caught themselves slipping back into old patterns before those momentary lapses became complete relapses.

This research suggests that the ability to observe and adjust your own thinking in real-time isn't just a nice-to-have psychological skill – it's a fundamental competitive advantage in any complex endeavour.

​https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2022/09/metacognitive-awareness-important-study-skill​

Dan

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1-1 Coaching with Dan

In my goal to help more entrepreneurs/people who are looking to level up their careers, I've just started taking 1-1 consulting calls (only 1 a week)

Why book a call? Some of my expertise/success:

I've built 5 startups. 1 win, 1 fail, and 3 still going.

E-Commerce: Heights — with revenue over $15M a year.

Community: Foundrs, one of the UK's top founder communities

Podcasting: Leaders Media - bootstrapped media company that makes the UK's top business podcasts, Secret Leaders, with over 50M downloads.

Health/Mental Health: Managed to overcome burnout, insomnia, depression & anxiety in pursuit of success as I talk about in my interview with Steven Bartlett on Diary of a CEO​

Angel Investing: I've invested in over 90 startups

Coached & Mentored: Certified coach & done lots of mentoring

Personal Brand: Have grown to 178k on LinkedIn and X (Twitter) in the past 12 months

So if you're interested in booking a session with me to talk all things business or building a personal brand, book for 30-minutes or 45-minutes. (limited spots).

Science of Success Vault

I'm building a vault of valuable tools, resources, and one sheets that I hope help you succeed.

These will be stored in the ever-growing 'Science of Success' vault — you can always access that here

Want to take your success (even more) seriously? 👇​
🧠 Fuel your brain and feed your gut, try Heights here (use code 'SOSDMS' for 15% off your first month of any subscription

🎧 Check out my podcast Secret Leaders here​

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