The Key to Success.

Success can be described and measured in countless ways. To some, it may be cars, social acknowledgement, net worth, or even by the price of that diamond piece around your neck. The truth is, there’s not a single way to objectively quantify success.

When successful people are asked how they did it, most, if not all of them would give you answers like: “I worked hard.”, “I persevered.”, “I put the time in.” And while all of these are one hundred percent true, there’s just an extra dimension to the way people achieve their goals.

As legendary football coach Anson Dorrance said, “The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when no one else is watching.”

There are deeper, more intense elements to success. Here’s what i think makes someone a virtuoso:

Obsession.

When you have your goal in mind, it becomes a clear ending point. All the things that you are about to do next will be based on the idea of getting to that point and being able to see a manifestation of that idea. When most people have real goals, they commit to them, and this is not uncommon to see. Once committed to it, you put in a little work toward getting to that goal every day. This is good as it creates a habit of making that goal a part of your daily life. But for the people who come along once in a generation, this simply isn’t enough. You need to be obsessed with it. You need to live and breathe the desire to accomplish what you want. As a basketball fan, the best example of this is Kobe Bryant, and his famous idea of the Mamba Mentality,

which he explains as “Mamba Mentality is a constant quest to find answers. It’s that infinite curiosity to want to be better, to figure things out. Mamba mentality is you’re going, you’re competing, you’re not worried about the end result. You’re not worried about what people may say. You’re not worried about disappointing others. You’re not worried about any of that, you’re just focused on being in the moment. That’s what Mamba Mentality truly is.”

Kobe is one of, if not the most competitive athlete to have ever lived. He had the clear goal of becoming the best athlete he could be, and he went out and did it without ever complaining about how hard he had to work or how long the process would take him. This is a man who claimed he could function on 6 hours of sleep a night and would start every day of his training days in the offseason by waking up at 4 a.m. and heading to the gym while getting in three workouts a day. He was the epitome of being about it, and not just talking about it.

Know What You Don’t Know.

One of the most important aspects of a successful individual is that constant desire to get better. The most effective way to get better is to learn, and what drives people to learn is when they know that they don’t know everything. The whole point of improvement is for you to continually add something to your arsenal of knowledge and experience, and if you sit around already thinking that you’re smart enough to achieve your dreams, ask yourself, why aren’t you there yet?

Like Aristotle said, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”

Don’t just limit yourself to reading about one or two topics, either. Don’t be afraid to read about things you have no idea about. If you’re a business student, go read an article or two about advancements in medicine. If you’re a graphic designer, go read something about your country’s economic policies. Get out of your comfort zone and learn something entirely new every day. If you’re reading something you already know about, chances are you’re reading the wrong thing.

Form The Right Habits.

When most people think about habits, it could be something like a routine, like stretching in the morning or putting the left shoe on before the right. While they are considered habits as well, these aren’t the ones that you’ll be needing to develop for you to get to where you want to be as a person. There is one quote in particular that i live by when it comes to forming habits:

“Are the habits that you have today on par with the goals that you have for yourself in the future?’

Ask yourself that question every single day. Normally, the answer would be no, because it’s always easier for us to talk about our big dreams instead of actually putting the work in to get there. Each day that the answer is no, you should do something that will put you on track for you to be able to say yes to that question. Don’t use the answer no as something to weigh you down though, as it should be something that makes you even hungrier and more driven for you to realize your vision. It could be a small addition to your habits, like dedicating 20 minutes a day to reading success stories from entrepreneurs around the world, but even doing something as small as that every day for a year would compound into 7,300 minutes a year of giving yourself a look into the minds of people who have actually been there and done that. Imagine the amount of knowledge and inspiration you could take from all that time, and how much that would help you learn how you want to go forward from where you are now.

Attention To Detail.

Just like forming small good habits, you should pay attention to all the small details of your work. You shouldn’t leave a single bit of your product or idea as vague or done haphazardly. It is very important to have both a top-down and bottom-up view on anything that you do.

As a project manager at work, I was assigned to begin development of the company newsletter, which would be sent to clients every so often. I spent so much time looking at good examples of newsletters, design templates, and customer experience strategies in order to make my product as good as i possibly could. While all the thoughts, theories and ideas seemed so good in my head, the product i had to show for it still lacked in certain areas. After working on it for around a week, i brought the product to the COO of the company, and he literally stopped reading after ten seconds, turned to me and said “There’s a typo on the third line.”, told me to fix everything and returned to his work. He must have realized that I was disappointed by this after all my hard work, because he pulled me aside during lunch to tell me “Imagine if you get a notification from Facebook, and it has a typo in it. What the hell would you think of Mark Zuckerberg then?” And it instantly made sense to me why he reacted to my work the way he did. If I don’t pay attention to even the smallest details of my work, then how is it going to be excellent, or even remotely good?

As people say, it’s not just enough to work hard. You should be able to work smart as well, and it’s through being obsessive, having the thirst for knowledge, forming the right habit and paying attention to detail. Add all of these into your work ethics, and watch your skill level go up over time. It would be a shame for anyone’s dream to be held back by a lack of drive or knowledge, so equip yourself with what you need to reach your dream, and start being about it instead of just talking about it.