The Pursuit of Excellence: The Uncommon Behaviors of the World's Most Productive Achievers

by Ryan Hawk

“Success is based on a comparison with others. Excellence is measured against your own potential.” His answer is so simple, yet so true. The only comparison I should be making is with myself. Will I be better tomorrow than I am today? Will I be more thoughtful, more intentional, more purposeful in the future than I am right now? Do my habits, routines, rituals, and actions match my intention to be better tomorrow than I am today? These questions are the gateway to excellence because living a life of excellence is about the fanatical pursuit of gradual improvement.

I like the way author Darren Hardy describes the compounding effect of gradual improvement: “It’s the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE.”

What are you doing to be better tomorrow than you are today? Who are you surrounding yourself with to ensure that? What habits are you creating to consistently improve over time?

While a healthy diet full of whole foods and regular exercise increase our odds, there is one key element that science shows we often overlook: finding purpose. According to the Washington Post, “Research reveals that people who believe their existence has meaning have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and more favorable gene expression related to inflammation.

As I embarked on my new path as a telephonic sales rep, I learned that implementing a similar work ethic from my playing days to the world of professional selling would be helpful. I realized that my love for competition could still apply by competing against both my own prior performance and the performance of my peers. I discovered that I enjoyed helping my customers and that I got fulfillment out of helping my teammates and my manager. Did I love the actual job? Was it my passion? Not necessarily. But there were many elements of the work that I came to love.

When asked for advice, Professor Scott Galloway said, “The worst advice given to young people is . . . follow your passion. If someone tells you to follow your passion, that means they’re already rich. Your job is to find something you’re good at. And then spend thousands of hours and apply the grit and the sacrifice and the willingness to break through hard things to become great at it. Because once you’re great at something, the economic accoutrements of being great at something, the prestige, the relevance, the camaraderie, the self-worth of being great . . . will make you passionate about whatever it is. Here’s the problem with believing you should follow your passion: Work is hard. And when you run into obstacles and you face injustice, which is a common guaranteed attribute of the workplace, you’ll start thinking, ‘I’m not loving this. This is upsetting and hard. It must not be my passion.’ That is not the right litmus test. Jay-Z followed his passion and is a billionaire. Assume you are not Jay-Z .”3

Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work: “‘Follow your passion’ is bad advice for a few reasons. The first is that most people don’t have a clear predefined passion to follow. This is especially true if you consider young people who are just setting out on their own for the first time. The advice to follow your passion is frustratingly meaningless if, like many people, you don’t have a passion to follow. The second reason is that we don’t have much evidence that matching your job to a preexisting interest makes you more likely to find that work satisfying. The properties we know lead people to enjoy their work—such as autonomy, mastery, and relationships—have little to do with whether or not the work matches an established inclination.”

Be aware that doing something the hard way will benefit you (and your children). Fixed mindset leaders have a deep-seated insecurity. “They have to keep showing that they’re a genius.” People with a fixed mindset are afraid to find out that they aren’t very smart. Ask yourself, When was the last time I was wrong? (This is healthy. Do it often.) Sharing credit or taking it all for yourself? It shows a lot about your mindset. Growth mindset leaders share credit with others because nobody is self-made. We’re all community made. Do not reward children for getting straight As. Instead, focus on their willingness to push themselves with classes outside of their comfort zone and the attitude they bring to the class. I learned from Carol to read the teacher’s comments first and talk with my children about those comments before looking at the grades. Give positive reinforcement to growth mindset characteristics like effort, attitude, and willingness to take on a challenge. “Don’t praise intelligence. Praise the process.” Don’t declare that you have a growth mindset. Instead, figure out what triggers you into having a fixed mindset. Start there.

At this point, Ryan told me, he did what he calls a “self-audit.” He went to his closest friends and colleagues and asked them one question: “When I’m not around and you’re describing me to someone else, what do you say?” He explained, “How they describe you to others (when you’re not around) is the real perception of you, your character, and your brand.”

According to Robert Sapolsky, professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, we tend to perform the process of gathering evidence and forming opinions in reverse. “We first come to a desired conclusion—often based on things as fleeting as group affiliation or life experiences. Only then do we look for evidence, and only the kind that supports our ready-made position.”15 It is because this trait is such a fundamental aspect of human nature that its opposite—the ability to change one’s mind when the stakes are highest—is a real differentiator. In 1983, Guy Kawasaki was hired by Apple to serve in a role that the tech world now would call Chief Evangelist. After four years of working in the world Steve Jobs had created, Kawasaki ventured out on his own to start several of his own companies. By 1995, he was back at Apple as an Apple fellow, working closely with Jobs, as he had before. “One of the most important lessons that I learned from Steve Jobs is that changing your mind, changing what you’re doing, reversing yourself at an extreme,” Kawasaki told CNBC Make It at the Synergy Global Forum, “is a sign of intelligence. It’s a sign of competence.”

“When you figure out you’re doing something wrong, don’t try to bluff your way, don’t try to perpetuate a mistake. You’ll actually do yourself a favor, probably the organization you work for, probably your boss, too, by changing your mind, by reversing—by fixing what’s broken.”

“You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.” The ability to think and rethink what you know to be true is a superpower. The ability to change your mind will make you a better decision maker. The ability to ask, “What is a better way to do this?” will help you perform more optimally in the long term. We’ve all heard, “We’ve always done it this way” from a boss before. Don’t be that person. Be the one who says, “Wow, I’ve never thought of it that way. Thank you for opening my eyes to something new.” It doesn’t mean the new way will be right. It just means you will be open to it being right.

If someone is willing to break the rules to win or to help you, they’ll be willing to do it to hurt you at some point.

“What excites you most about your work?” or “What’s your secret ambition?” I also love the “champagne question,” which I learned about at an event hosted by Jayson Gaignard. “If we were to meet up 365 days from now with a bottle of champagne, what are we celebrating?”

I have long advocated for what consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman call “listening like a trampoline.” Here is how they describe it: “While many of us have thought of being a good listener, being like a sponge that accurately absorbs what the other person is saying, instead, what these findings show is that good listeners are like trampolines. They are someone you can bounce ideas off of—and rather than absorbing your ideas and energy, they amplify, energize, and clarify your thinking. They make you feel better not merely passively absorbing, but by actively supporting. This lets you gain energy and height, just like someone jumping on a trampoline.”

The common denominator of success—the secret of every person who has ever been successful—lies in the fact that they formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do. —ALBERT E. N. GRAY

Discipline = Freedom. “Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.” I know it feels counterintuitive, but for Kipchoge, discipline is his path to freedom.

There is a formula: 100% of me is worth nothing compared to one per cent of the whole team. And that’s teamwork. That’s what I value.”5 From the outside, most people view running as an individual sport. Not Kipchoge. His training sessions are always with a team. He surrounds himself with other disciplined runners, trainers, and coaches to help him improve. He understands the value of being surrounded by others who lift him up. It is notable that he celebrates the excellence of his friends. When one of his training partners, Geoffrey Kamworor, won the New York City Marathon, Kipchoge was there at the finish line to congratulate him. Kamworor would later share that he was motivated by Kipchoge’s presence at the finish line. “I knew my training partner and mentor Eliud was waiting at the finish. I was concentrating because I did not want to disappoint him.”

Mike Trout has been one of baseball’s best players from almost the moment he broke into Major League Baseball (MLB) as a 19-year-old. Over the course of his nine full seasons, Trout has been an All-Star eight times, the American League’s Most Valuable Player three times, and MVP runner-up four times. In fact, Trout finished either first or second in the MVP race in each of his first five years in the majors and has never finished lower than fifth.7 In other words, every single season Trout has played he has been among the top of his sport. He is an all-time, transcendent talent. But none of these accomplishments are what he wants to be known by. In a recent interview with baseball writer Peter Gammons, Trout talked at length about the oddest of statistics: the time it takes to run to first base. A scout with the Toronto Blue Jays had scouted Hall of Fame Milwaukee Brewer Robin Yount in 90 games over a five-year period. During that time, the fastest the scout ever timed Yount running from home to first base was 3.9 seconds; the slowest was 4.0 seconds. Trout loved that. He loved it when his idol Derek Jeter once asked Gammons to never again praise him (Jeter) for running hard to first because “what’s so hard about running hard four times a day?”8 Trout had his coach with the Los Angeles Angels go through all of his recorded home-to-first times. It took the coach a few days to gather the data. When he did, the results were identical to the legendary Yount: consistently betwe...

‘When you get into real trouble . . . you’ve got to be very careful not to let panic set in. And you can’t just say be calm. You have to be able to focus on what you can control and influence. You’ve got to deal with the situation. You’ve got to size up how serious it is. And then you’ve got to be able to work your way into calmer waters.’” “That was pretty dangerous,” his dad summarized, “and your mom is going to kill me when I tell her what happened. But this is how you do it.” “I think I got it,” John said, assuring his dad. “Are you comfortable?” John’s dad asked him. “Yes, I am,” John answered. And at that, his dad put him back into the river and “down the rapids I went again!” John told me. This time, however, John could follow his dad’s advice with understanding and intention as his dad walked along the bank. “I did exactly what he said. I got calm. I put my feet out in front of me in the rapids because that way you could hit off the rocks with your feet. And when [I got] pummeled, I didn’t panic; [I] just came back up and got more air. And then I waited for a slow spot where I could swim out. I had that lesson in life forever. It was one of the best teaching moments about dealing with stress, dealing with crisis management, and being realistic that there will be a tendency in all of us—no matter how brave you think you are—to panic. And that’s what gets you into trouble.”

High achievers who hit what they are aiming at do so because they fall in love with the process, not an outcome. If you don’t love the process and the daily actions required to excel, your odds of achieving what you’ve set out to accomplish are very low. Before setting a goal, think about the daily actions it will take to achieve that goal. Are those actions something you can fall in love with? If not, rethink your goal, for down that road lies not excellence but drudgery.

“You should keep your goals to yourself. Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.”16 In his TED talk on this topic,17 he stresses the context: “These studies are only about identity goals: goals usually related to personal development, that would make you a slightly different person if completed. This does not apply to things like starting a company, or other pursuits where it would be useful to corral a bunch of people to support your project.”18 When it comes to the ambitious project of improving yourself and pursuing excellence, keep your focus on what matters: the work to be done. Be the type of person who just does the work, not the one who wastes time and energy telling people what you’re about to do. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Well done is better than well said.”

We were low-middle class. You just had to work. My dad would get up every day, whether he was sick or healthy. It didn’t matter. If it was a weekday, he got up and went to work. Chop Chop is that connection back to work. When things are good, you work. When things are bad, you work. Trusting that that process will eventually pay off.

It was a recognition that life’s not fair. There were some guys who went through training and thought that if they finished first on the run, somebody oughta pat them on the back and tell them how great they were, and when that didn’t happen, they didn’t understand. But that was the lesson. “Hey! Life’s not fair. Get over it.”

This is one of the important life lessons my wife and I try to impart to our children. We tell them, “You can control two parts of your day today: your attitude and your effort. Focus on showing up with a great attitude. Bring positive energy to the rooms you enter. Be a value-add for the others you’re with. And give maximum effort. You can control how hard you try. You can control the attitude you have while doing it. If you’re going to do it, then you might as well give it 100 percent. If not, then don’t do it. Better yet, do it with a smile. Bring positive energy to the room. If you focus on those two things, your attitude and your effort, you’ll find yourself in a better position day after day.”

The proof that the impediment to a sub-four-minute mile was psychological rather than physical lies not with what Bannister accomplished that soggy May morning in Oxford but with what happened after. Just 46 days after Bannister’s historic feat, John Landy, an Australian runner, not only followed Bannister past the four-minute barrier, he bested it by over a full second: 3:57.9.5 Before a calendar year had passed after Landy’s record, three more runners broke the four-minute mark in the same race. The current world record time for the mile sits at 3:43.13, set in 1999.6 In their book, The Power of Impossible Thinking, Wharton School professors Yoram Wind and Colin Crook devote an entire chapter to Roger Bannister’s feat in which they pose the following questions: “Was there a sudden growth spurt in human evolution? Was there a genetic engineering experiment that created a new race of super runners? No.” The answer to what Bannister had achieved was not physical. “What changed was the mental model. The runners of the past had been held back by a mindset that said they could not surpass the four-minute mile. When the limit was broken, the others saw that they could do something they had previously thought impossible.”

“New goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is not an outcome, it is a process. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better rituals, not chasing better results. If you want a new habit, you have to fall in love with a new ritual.”

“What that mountain taught me is that everybody has that voice in their head that tells them they can keep going even when they feel like they can’t,” Alison told me. “When I was on that mountain feeling dehydrated, sick from the altitude, I thought, I’ll just take one more step, one more step again, maybe one more? And then that voice kept saying one more, one more. I kept taking one more. And eventually I was at the summit. Everybody has that voice in their head. You just have to find it.”23 It’s a message she reiterates to her audiences over and over. “You don’t have to be the best, fastest, strongest climber to get to the top of a mountain,” Alison writes. “You just have to be absolutely relentless about putting one foot in front of the other.”24 “When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing,” says Pabbie, the wise old Troll King in Disney’s Frozen 2.

Maybe you’re out on a run and you feel like you can’t go any farther. Set a shorter landmark and get there. When running a marathon, instead of thinking about all 26.2 miles, think about the next marker to hit. “The cups of water are 300 yards from here. I can make it there.” Once you get there, set another landmark, and get there. Then do it again: continue setting short-term markers to hit, and then hit them. The same is true for your business, your relationships, and your life. Focus on taking your spouse on an excellent date this Friday. And then the next one. And the next. String together the excellence. After a while, you’ll look back and see the benefits of doing it consistently. Breaking down large goals into smaller pieces creates a better system for progress: think, “What can I do today to move toward it?”

Frances is an award-winning professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You. In 2017, Uber hired her to be the company’s first ever Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy,

Book club

It turns out that the tenured HBS professor was originally rejected by Harvard, and not just once! She told me, “I’ve been rejected by Harvard five times in my life . . . as an undergrad, grad student, and as a professor multiple times. But I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to let mere mortals determine my fate.’ They are not going to define my life.”26 Frances didn’t hold a grudge. She didn’t say, “Screw them, I’ll go somewhere else.” She wanted to be at Harvard and didn’t take it personally when decision makers rejected her. She thought, “Well, I must not be telling my story in a compelling way.” And she resolved to do the work, to get better, and not let other people’s decisions seal her fate.

One day, a young person whom Howard was mentoring asked him, “What does the world need me to do?” And before he’d finished his question, Howard interrupted: “Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who come alive.” It is a shift in thinking. Needs get filled and problems get solved. These are examples of what Simon Sinek describes as “finite games”—those pursuits that have a defined end point at which “winning” is possible.2 But people giving their life to the work that makes them “come alive” is a resource without limits. It is playing an “infinite game” in which being “ahead” or “behind” replaces “winning” and “losing,” and the competition is not another person, company, or market—it is only themselves in the past. The pursuit of excellence requires operating the same way.

Legendary comedian Jerry Seinfeld described this well in a conversation with radio icon Howard Stern. Howard said, “I thought, you know, it is possible to will yourself, maybe not to be the greatest in the world, but certainly to get what you want.” Jerry responded, “I’m going to adjust your perspective a little bit. That was not will. What you were using, what Michael Jordan uses, and what I use is not will. It’s love. When you love something, it’s a bottomless pool of energy. That’s where the energy comes from. But you have to love it sincerely. Not because you’re going to make money from it, be famous, or get whatever you want to get. When you do it because you love it, then you can find yourself moving up and getting really good at something you wanted to be really good at. Will is not like not eating dessert or something—that’s just forcing yourself. You can’t force yourself to be what you have made yourself into. You can love it. Love is endless. Will is finite.”

This question made me think of how I picture my work being consumed. Who gifts my book to someone? Why? What do I hope they feel? What connections are being formed by my work? How does it bring people together? How does the sharing of my work build community? Will two completely different people love my work so much that it brings them together? That is powerful. That is inspiring.

Book club

“I believe the most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. Because in the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, all of the untaken risks, all of the unlaunched business, all of the unexecuted ideas, all of the unreconciled relationships, basically all of the stuff we carry with us our entire lives that we never put into the world. We think, ‘Well, tomorrow I’ll get started, tomorrow’s the day I’m going to take the first step,’ so we push it into the future until one day we reach the bookend of our lives, and all of that value is buried in the ground, never to be seen by human eyes. That’s why it’s the most valuable land in the world. Because all of that unexecuted value was buried with us in the ground.” That day, Todd Henry went home and wrote two words on an index card and hung it up in his office. Those two words have defined the last two decades of his life: “Die empty.”

David was 71 years old. He told me, “I would give all of my money away to be just one year younger.” “Really?” I said, “You’re a multibillionaire.” “Yes, of course! Everyone would. All we have is time. Time is everything. I would give everything for more time.”

“You’ve never arrived. You’re always becoming.”10 Instead of asking children what they want to be when they grow up, we should be focused on instilling the belief that there is no end to growth. There is no official “grown up” and finished stage in life.

I asked him whom he chooses to have in his life, given that he can essentially hang out with whomever he wants. He told me, “When you’re 81 years old, you need four or five young mentors. They can help you navigate and understand the twenty-first century. You have to have the willingness to be vulnerable to the way they think. I have four or five of those people that could be my sons, but they are my teachers. I would say to all of those modern elders out there: if you really want to accelerate your growth, get four young dudes and let them be your mentors.”

Take a moment and think about the people who have played this role in your life. Who believed in you before you believed in yourself? Who lifted you to levels higher than you thought you could reach? Call them. Tell them.

I recently went out to dinner with my high school football coach, Ron Ullery. I’ve written a lot about the impact that Coach Ullery has had on me. His work ethic, attention to detail, and overall preparedness for every aspect of coaching a team inspired me to try to be more like him. His willingness to push me beyond what I thought I was capable of was driven by his love and care for my teammates and me. It meant everything. Our wives joined us for a night out. At dinner, I looked him in the eye and told him the impact he had on me. I thanked him. And I told his wife, Lara, that her husband had changed my life. Coach Ullery gave that knowing nod of approval and gratitude. Even in this moment, at a dinner table so many years later, I still wanted to make him proud. It’s amazing the impact mentors and coaches can have on your life. Be that person for others. As Tyler Cowen said, it may cost you relatively little, but it could mean the world to others. Be intentional about whom you can help. And encourage them to aim a bit higher.

This framework of collecting new ideas, refining them through practice, processing what that reveals, and then distributing this to others keeps me constantly focused on both the theory and the practice of an idea.

Humility is understanding that you’re but one person with one perspective and that the world is a vast place.

He was known for his penchant for “walking around” the various offices and labs where work was being done, a practice later immortalized by Tom Peters as “MBWA”: Managing by Wandering Around. Hewlett led by being accessible and connected to people in his employ, in large part because that was how he was outside of work.

“Most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I’ve never found anybody who didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help,” Jobs would tell the Santa Clara Historical Association in 1994. “I’ve never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked. And when people ask me, I try to be as responsive and pay that debt of gratitude back. Most people never pick up the phone and call, most people never ask. And that’s what separates the people, sometimes, who do things from the people who just dream about them. You gotta act. You gotta be willing to fail. You gotta be willing to crash and burn. With people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

“To this day, after 45 years of coaching high school football, those four hours were the most beneficial learning experience I’ve had to help me in the coaching profession. Not just because it helped me learn about the offensive line position and the techniques and details that allow you to be successful as a player at this position, of which I had very little previous knowledge. But even more because of how it taught me the importance of the little things. The details, none too small to be unimportant, that are really what make the big things even remotely attainable.”

Jeff Immelt understood that he needed to share his vision with optimism, make a very specific ask that could be easily understood and decided upon, and justify his ask by explaining the benefits to his customers (and thus to the company at large and his boss as well). “I need $45,000, and we won’t lose orders if you give it to me.” Over the course of Immelt’s career, a series of moves like this ultimately led him to the role of CEO of GE. The legendary GE CEO Jack Welch chose Immelt to succeed him when Welch retired. It isn’t enough to be known as someone who can identify opportunities. You must be able to consistently make a justifiable ask. Helping those around you understand what you plan to do and how it will be mutually beneficial will increase your odds of receiving what you want. It will be fruitless to make demands of your boss, your peers, or your team without first proving your value to them.

the Dunning-Kruger effect. It describes the propensity of people with lower-than-average ability at a given task to overestimate their ability at that task. Their research involved studies assessing participants’ actual and perceived abilities in humor, grammar, and logical reasoning. Their paper, titled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” described how across domains, the least skilled are often the most overconfident

“I think there’s a virus that plagues a lot of people—I find especially in tech, especially in white males—this virus that infects us is that we conflate luck with talent.”

Your who. Intentionally surround yourself with those who are willing and able to tell you the truth, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. This is the steady drumbeat of pursuing excellence. Whom you surround yourself with has as big of an impact as any other action you can take.

A 360 review is designed to gather specific feedback from employees above (boss, senior leaders), beside (peers), and below (direct reports). When I work with clients, I interview coworkers from the three buckets (above, beside, below) and ask them a series of questions to get a full view of the person’s strengths and weaknesses. One question that I always ask is an offshoot of the “Start, Stop, Continue” exercise that I’ve run with teams I’ve led in the past. I ask, “What is something your colleague should start doing? What is something they should stop doing? What is something they should continue doing?”