Timeless Principles and Habits for Sustained Excellence in Any Endeavour

What makes some people great for decades while others reach the top only to fall away? It has long been known by researchers who study competence that continuous development is very rarely a result of talent alone. Instead, behaviours such as purposeful practice, reflection, attention, accountability and continual learning frequently have a bigger influence in long-term success. As the philosopher Aristotle is often quoted as saying, brilliance is a result of our repeated actions very much. In all industries the people who continuously assess their performance, adjust to change and hone their skills are more likely to do better than those who depend on experience or motivation alone. In this roundup, professionals across a variety of disciplines describe the habits, mindsets and everyday practices they believe help turn short-term achievement into long-term mastery.

Consistency And Deliberate Practice Drive Lifelong Mastery

Consistency and self-reflective examination are both core elements in lasting mastery. Through the process of engaging in deliberate practice as opposed to simple repetition, an individual can develop their most important skill sets. To continue to improve oneself through life-long learning, one cannot become stagnant. In order to achieve true success, a person must maintain a consistent approach toward his or her long term goals throughout the entire journey.

Shannon Beatty, Real Estate Investor, House Buying Girls

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Deliberate Practice And Mindset Sustain Daily Greatness

Sustaining greatness is based in a foundation of “deliberate practice” which is defined by practicing at a level that challenges your present skills; growing from failure by cultivating a “growth mindset”, allowing you to view failure (the natural consequence of trying) as valuable learning opportunities; and being consistent every day rather than intense every now and then.

Mike Otranto, Founder, Wake County Home Buyers

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Discipline And Systems Create Compounding Long-Term Success

Building sustained success requires an ongoing discipline in continually refining your processes and systems at the rate of a slow drip versus periodic short sprints. Developing deep self awareness can help you see the areas you are unaware of. Developing the ability to maintain emotional strength will allow for each setback as another opportunity to learn. By consistently focusing on activities that have the highest leverage (actions) and eliminating or minimizing non-value added activity, you create a compound effect that is building upon itself and ultimately transforms your daily habits into long-term mastery.

Adam New, Principal Owner, The Cash Offer Company

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Daily Ownership And Focus Forge True Mastery

To achieve mastery, you need to be totally committed to practicing each day in a way that is deliberate instead of depending on random inspiration. To build extreme ownership gives you total responsibility for your results. When you have built enough emotional strength, you can use your failures as learning opportunities (data). The most effective way to compound your efforts is by constantly focusing all your energy on what has the greatest impact with each activity you do.

Amanda New, Founder, Cash For Houses Girl

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Consistent Standards And Engagement Elevate Operational Excellence

I have discovered throughout my experience in the areas of transportation, event management, customer service, and SaaS that success or excellence is hardly ever one singular act but rather a consistent act within smaller activities.

A first-time-honored approach would be that of always making sure standards are being upheld even when no one is watching. This involves, for instance, making sure the vehicle is ready to go, making sure the logistics of the pickup were sorted out correctly, contacting the driver, and sorting any issues before it even becomes apparent to the client. Success tends to disappear if it depends on the individual’s performance only while being inspected by others.

According to Gallup, the level of performance of business divisions that are in the top quarter of engaged employees shows a difference of 18% more productivity and 23% increased profitability when compared to business divisions in the lowest quartile of employee engagement levels (source: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236927/employee-engagement-drives-growth.aspx).

Arsen Misakyan, CEO and Founder, LAXcar

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Master Attention To Sustain Elite Performance

A fundamental factor that fosters sustainable high performance is being precise with one’s focus of attention. Essentially, this means having full control over what you mentally allocate your time and effort towards and eliminating distractions. The people who achieve at an elite level recognize their attention cannot be left to chance. Instead, they purposefully filter through all their potential stimuli, minimize the unnecessary noise in their brain activity, and concentrate solely on the things that will positively impact either the quality of their short-term production or their longer-term developmental capabilities.

Josh Qian, COO and Co-Founder, LINQ Kitchen formerly BestOnlineCabinets

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Show Up Daily And Let Consistency Compound

The single habit behind more greatness than anything else I’ve seen is showing up day after day when you don’t see results.By design there were no overnight successes building my agency from 1 person to 120+. There were years of work in the same direction that didn’t look like much from the outside looking in. Everyone I’ve seen accomplish greatness has experienced this, they just showed up when things seemed to not be working.Disciplined effort is the habit you can adopt to do this. Daily wins are the measure of your day instead of the result of your day.Results ebb and flow based on things outside of your control. Effort and consistency compounded does not. Holding yourself accountable for the work you put in today versus how the results looked today will keep you going when the trends are against you.Greatness compounds interest. You don’t see the returns at first, but you can’t ignore them later.

Matt Bowman, Founder, Thrive Local

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Stay Humble And Update Beliefs Before Decline

It’s easy to say you update your beliefs when faced with evidence that contradicts them. It’s exceedingly rare to do so in reality.

We all operate with a certain set of beliefs about what works and why, based on our initial experiences that formed our world view. To reconsider those beliefs is to acknowledge that the foundation we built our knowledge on was misguided. The only professionals who continue to operate at a high level for years are those who view their current way of doing things as a hypothesis.

This is especially true in marketing. What differentiates those who remain effective as the industry shifts and changes from those who just keep throwing the old strategies at new problems? The channel you triple down on from 3 years ago may no longer be effective. The framework you used to analyze and measure success may no longer apply in a post privacy world. To remain excellent you have to remain intellectually humble about the things you feel confident about now.

A good rule of thumb is to build in time to look for data that proves your current way of doing things isn’t working as well as you think it is. Most people only change their beliefs when failure has already become transparent. Seeking out leading indicators of decline before it’s too late is what prevents performance from crumbling under the surface.

Brandon George, Director of Demand Generation & Content, Thrive Internet Marketing Agency

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Let The Gap Guide Relentless Improvement

The dividing habit between those who achieve long term excellence and those that burn hot and fade quickly is how they respond to the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

For most people the gap frustrates. For high performers over time, it informs. The gap tells you where the work is. If you can accept that and make closing the gap your practice instead of the frustration you’ll avoid, you’ll continue to improve.

This is evident every day in brand communications work. The difference between something that resonates and something that doesn’t can be slight. It’s difficult to put into words until you’ve seen enough good ones and enough bad ones to know, in your bones, when something just doesn’t feel right. And you’ll only know that if you pay close enough attention to how things actually perform versus how you think they’l perform.

The foundation of all of this is humble observation. Watch closely. Judge fairly. Improve without ego. It’s the only way your work will continue to get better long after everyone else has stopped caring as much about their work. Long-term excellence is rarely the product of pure talent. It comes from a place of wondering about your craft.

Jimi Gibson, VP of Brand Communication, Thrive Internet Marketing Agency

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Reflect Deeply To Learn And Excel

Reflection. Whether that’s self-reflection on something you’ve just done or reflection on something you’ve experienced or come across, reflection forces you to really evaluate things beyond the surface level. As a result, you learn a lot more and you can be a lot more intentional going forward about doing things that will help you excel.

Steve Schwab, CEO, Casago

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Respect Fundamentals And Build A Daily System

Keep learning and mastering the basics. No matter how good you get, you will always fail if you stop respecting the fundamentals. To prevent small errors from becoming a big cause of failure, use a brief checklist for the major tasks. Spend five minutes to debrief yourself by asking what went well and what you would change.

Seek feedback that will make you a bit uncomfortable. Once a month, you can ask a colleague what the one thing you should do differently is. Please, don’t seek compliments or praise. The most uncomfortable, honest answer is the only one that will do you good. Excellence that is sustained cannot be a single point in time. It is a daily System.

Jennifer Adams, Vice President and Lead Clinical Educator, Texas Academy of Medical Aesthetics

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Pilot Carefully And Let Data Drive Improvement

Here’s how we actually get better. We don’t just adopt every new surgical technique that comes along. We’ll test one out on a couple of hand-picked cases and see what happens. That’s what really sharpened our results. We’re also constantly looking at the data, complication numbers, what patients say about their experience. It’s not vague. The numbers show us exactly where we’re dropping the ball.

Dr. Tomer Avraham, Breast Reconstruction Surgeon, Breast Reconstruction Specialists of NYC

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Track Metrics And Pilot Small To Prevent Failures

But we got past that and started to track results and we made a difference. Watching response time and number of incidents helps identify issues sooner, to change our workflow, pilot with smaller tests first. so there are no security issues and we avoid going too much time with non functional requirements.

Lisa Clark, Director, Bell Fire and Security

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Protect Focus And Codify Decisions On Paper

Two habits actually work for us. We block out quiet hours, which was the only way we built Tutorbase’s scheduling engine without getting distracted. We also write everything down, using decision memos and postmortems for every new feature. If you are running a SaaS, guard your focus time and make writing the default. It stops people from guessing what you meant and saves so much time.

Sandro Kratz, Founder, Tutorbase

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Consistency, Humility, And Accountability Sustain Success

From my opinion, a timeless habit that yields better results is being consistent. When luck is superficial, consistency compounds fragmented efforts throughout the period and reciprocates it through the desired outcome. 

Following that, being humble and kind leads a long way to success. All the great minds you see today are remembered due to their accomplishments and innate nature of the persons they were. Even the leaders arent admired for their arrogance. It makes them look small when they cannot withhold their virtue.

Also, the higher the ladder, the more responsible leaders become in the process of inspiring. Learning is an important principle that makes you a sound speaker regardless of age and qualifications. To maintain excellence, accountability drafts the narrative. As every human makes mistakes, the key is acknowledging the errors and taking action on them.

Ankit Sarawagi, Curator, CFO Matrix

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Put Skin In The Game For Mastery

As soon as I put my own money and personal brand on the table for startup exits, the whole game changed for me. Every term became a negotiation I looked at with a fine tooth comb, and I took responsibility for how it played out-especially when a deal turned uglier than a mud wrestling contest. There is absolutely no substitute for putting your skin in the game.

Andrew Gazdecki, CEO, Acquire.com

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Prioritize User Outcomes Over Feature Obsession

Working with SaaS founders taught me one thing. Stop obsessing over features and start caring about what the user actually achieves. We messed this up at SemNexus for a while. But when we started tracking how much time and money we saved people, the product got better fast. Find the result that matters to your user and build around that.

Mike Kordvani, Founder & CEO, SemNexus

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Marry Long Vision With Ruthless Quarterly Execution

In real estate and tech, we try to look ten years ahead but work in three-month bursts. It took some arguing to get there, but quarterly reviews keep us on track. The trick is balancing patience with getting things done now. If you actually learn from each review, the work gets better with every project.

Stanislav Sadovnikov, Founder, Magnum Estate

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Teach The Why To Scale Quality Confidently

One thing that always sticks with me is something that I noticed back at my last job at Flamingo. If you help somebody understand “why” it is they are being told to do something, then everything becomes smoother. During our hiring process, I’d often take a short while to record a Loom video or type up a document to explain how things worked, and my new hire would be that much more confident immediately – and I’d also never have a decrease in campaign quality as we scaled up.

Ten minutes teaching saves me 50.

Emma Sansom, Managing Director, Flamingo Marketing Strategies

Have Your Say

What do you think?

• Which habit has helped you improve most over time?
• How do you stay motivated when results are slow?
• What practice would you add to this discussion?

Alignment with the UN SDGs

• SDG 4: Lifelong learning and skill development
• SDG 8: Productivity and professional growth
• SDG 9: Continuous improvement and innovation practices

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Note: The views and opinions expressed in the content provided on this page are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organizations mentioned. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as professional advice. Readers should consult with relevant experts or professionals for guidance specific to their circumstances. The examples used are for illustrative purposes and results may vary depending on various factors. Any external links provided are for convenience, and we do not endorse or take responsibility for the content, products, or services available through these links.

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