The 3 underestimated habits that lead to excellence

The way to excellence is long.

One must focus on a few things and spend the infamous 10,000 hours to become a master.

While I still have a long way ahead, I observed 3 underestimated habits that every champion uses to excel in highly competitive fields.

Habit 1: maniacal cure for details.

The details are the things no one notices when they are there, but everyone sees when they are missing.

For example, imagine you are building a 20-story palace, but you forget a small detail: the elevator. Everyone will notice. In smaller ways, every big project you work on requires extreme attention to detail. Fawlty Towers is considered one of the greatest sitcoms in history. The secret to its success was that every 30-minute episode’s script had between 60 and 140 pages of directions for everyone involved in the episode.

Start noticing the love for details in excellent work and start emulating it.

Habit 2: love the process of challenging yourself.

Michael Jordan loved to challenge himself all the time.

When you reach a very high level, the challenges the world throws at you become boring and predictable. But by challenging yourself, you create your own edge.

And that’s the only way to really push yourself to reach new heights.

Habit 3: always keep on learning.

This is what was said about Tom Brady in 2021: “He shows up to meetings early, he sits in the front of every meeting, and he always has his notepad, whether it’s a five-minute team meeting or a 30-minute team meeting.

Someone at his level of success could have stopped caring. He is the kind of person who, in 2021, could easily skip boring meetings and never take notes. And yet, even after so many years of success, he still loved the process of learning and improving.

And yet, most people who are less successful reach a level where they think they can ignore this essential habit.

July 11, 2024