Be Your Own Scientist

It takes, on average, around 17 years for a verified medical breakthrough to find its way into everyday clinical practice.

Seventeen years.

Seventeen years where knowledge already exists, yet hasn’t fully translated into how people actually live, perform, and feel day to day.

I think about that a lot.

Not just from a medical perspective, but from a performance one.

Because if it takes that long for knowledge to reach clinical settings, how long does it take for it to meaningfully shape how we understand our own bodies, our energy, and our ability to perform?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this as I navigate perimenopause. Like many women, I’ve found myself asking what feel like very practical performance questions, about energy, sleep, mood, recovery and consistency, only to discover how little clarity exists for something that will affect more than half the population.

That has brought moments of rage.

Rage that, with all our medical technology, we still know so little about a condition that shapes the wellbeing of so many women.

Rage… but also agency.

Agency because I realised that waiting for a definitive answer from a system that has historically underinvested in women’s health might not be the most effective strategy.

So I stopped waiting for someone else to tell me what I should do to improve how I feel and perform.

I became curious instead.

That shift has changed how I approach human performance.

We often look for the answer. The supplement. The protocol. The perfect routine.

But the human body doesn’t operate like that.

Each of us carries the same biological systems, yet they express themselves differently depending on genetics, environment, sleep, stress, hormones, nutrition, movement, relationships and previous experiences.

Performance is not linear, and it’s not always predictable.

No research paper can tell me exactly how my body will respond. It can only point me towards a possibility. So I began treating my own performance as an experiment.

I became my own scientist.

That doesn’t mean chasing every new trend or trying to optimise everything at once. It means understanding where you are starting from, building a baseline that reflects your real life, and then making small, deliberate changes with intention.

I track my sleep, my resting heart rate, my exercise, my menstrual cycle and my mood. I pay attention to particular foods or supplements, not with the expectation that they will transform everything overnight, but with curiosity about whether they might shift something within the system.

Then I change one thing, and I give it space.

I watch how my body responds over time. I notice whether my sleep deepens, whether I wake feeling clearer, whether I carry more steadiness into demanding situations or recover more easily after a busy week.

Some changes show up clearly in the data, like the way magnesium before bed consistently improves my sleep, or how reducing alcohol supports both recovery and clarity the next day, with around a 15% improvement in recovery.

Others are harder to measure, but no less important. I notice I become less reactive, more patient, more optimistic when I meditate daily, even for five minutes. When I spend time in the ocean, I think more clearly. I respond rather than react. I carry less tension into the next conversation. These are not always things that appear on a graph, but they shape performance in ways that matter deeply.

In my work, those small shifts are not trivial.

Flying an aircraft is not just about technical skill. It’s about sustained attention, precise decision-making and the ability to remain calm and responsive in an environment where conditions can change quickly.

There is very little margin for distraction or fatigue. The difference between feeling slightly foggy and fully alert affects how quickly I process information, how accurately I interpret what I see, and how confidently I act.

When my system is well supported, when I’ve slept deeply, recovered properly and managed my energy, everything feels sharper, more fluid, more controlled.

That awareness has made these small experiments feel less like optional self-improvement and more like a performance strategy. Performance, I’ve realised, is built from thousands of small conditions interacting every day. It isn’t about collecting data for the sake of it, or chasing optimisation as an abstract goal.

It’s about understanding which small inputs create meaningful changes in your system, and then quietly building those into your life.

That’s one of the reasons I spend so much time reading performance science. Because every idea or study offers a possibility I can explore.

Morning light, breathing protocols, time in nature, strength training, protein intake, recovery habits, these are not interesting simply because they are backed by research, but because they give us something practical to test.

Some will work beautifully for us. Others won’t. And that’s not a failure of the method. It’s the point of it.

If there’s one idea I’d encourage you to borrow, it’s this: be your own scientist. Decide what effect you’re trying to create in your performance. Perhaps you want more energy in the morning, better focus in the afternoon, or calmer decision-making under pressure.

Start there.

Then learn what the science suggests and choose one intervention that feels both meaningful and manageable. Build it into your day with intention, and give yourself enough time to observe what happens. Notice the obvious changes, but also the quieter ones, the shifts in clarity, in patience, in how you show up when it matters.

Keep what works.

Let go of what doesn’t.

Allow the process to unfold over time.

I have. And I am a far more effective, happier human being than I was five years ago. The protocols and practices that work for my system emerged through curiosity, observation and a willingness to keep experimenting. Performance doesn’t improve simply because we have more knowledge. It improves because we apply that knowledge, observe the response, and refine how we support our own system.

In a world overflowing with advice, becoming your own scientist may be one of the most powerful performance strategies there is.