how to be a super-achiever: the 10 qualities that matter

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How To Be A Super-Achiever:The 10 Qualities That Matter

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The Most Common Practices Of Super-Achievers

This is an update of a story by Jenna Goudreau.

What do actor Alec Baldwin, game-show champion Ken Jennings and

baseball icon Yogi Berra have in common?

That’s what husband-and-wife duo Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield set out

to discover. For their book The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What

They Do and How They Do It So Well , they interviewed 36 star performers

who climbed to the tops of their fields.

“We didn’t want to theorize about success,” says Gosfield. “We went straight

to the source, finding the most amazing people in all fields and asking them,

‘How do you do what you do?’”

In interviews with top achievers, including actress Laura Linney, Zappos CEO

Tony Hsieh and crossword mastermind Will Shortz, patterns emerged. No

matter how diverse their goals or crafts, these super-achievers shared many of

the same habits. How can you follow in their footsteps? These are the 10

qualities that will set you apart, say Sweeney and Gosfield.

1. Dedication to a Vision

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“Every great success starts with inspiration, but not every inspiration leads to

success,” says Gosfield. “The most common thing we found was these people’s

devotion to the day-to-day struggle.” Glossy magazine success stories often

don’t show the dark moments, the daily grind or flagging energy that super-

achievers endure to realize their goals.

2. Intelligent Persistence

One thing successful people know: Dedication and blind persistence are two

very different things. “You can work hard but not smart,” says Sweeney.

“When something’s not working, you’ve got to tweak it. Some people just keep

banging their heads against the wall.” Instead of doggedly using the same

ineffective tactics, super-achievers pivot and try to tackle the problem from a

different angle.

3. Fostering A Community

Star performers know they can’t achieve success on their own. Instead, they

must galvanize a group of people around their idea or goal. Teamwork, or

having an ecosystem of supporters, turns out to be essential. It doesn’t just

include partners and coworkers. It might also mean employees, customers,

investors, mentors, fans and social media followers. The authors quote

business guru Guy Kawasaki: “First you have to create something worthy of

an ecosystem. Then pick your evangelists.”

4. Listening and Remaining Open

“You don’t normally think of hard-charging, action-oriented leaders as being

good listeners,” says Sweeney. “These people’s ability to practice the art of

listening helped them learn what they needed to know about the world

around them.” For example, Zappos’ Hsieh asked all his employees to share

their personal values so that he could incorporate them into the company’s

culture. Likewise, Linney says she never accepts a role unless she has read and

reread the script so many times that she fully understands it.

5. Good Storytelling

Stories have the ability to transport people to your world, where they’re more

likely to invest in you and your brand. Philippe Petit, famous for his high-wire

walk between New York City’s Twin in the 1970s, believed other wire-walkers

were trying to make it look hard. “But he wanted to be a poet in the sky and

seem effortless,” Sweeney says. “His narrative wasn’t in words, but it was a

story he was communicating.”

6. Testing Ideas in the Market





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“Everybody has a bias to think their own idea is brilliant,” says Gosfield.

“[Achievers] roll it out in an environment that’s as close as possible to the

market.” Bill Gross, serial entrepreneur and founder of Idealab, always tests

before he invests. When he had an idea for an online car dealer, CarsDirect,

no one was sure if it would work. He decided to put up a test site to see what

would happen. Before he had any inventory, he’d sold four cars and had to

shut down the site. On the upside, Gross then knew for a fact there was amarket for the service.

7. Managing Emotions

“We found that managing emotions is a key element to success,” Sweeney

says. “It’s so easy to be derailed by them, but these people are able to channel

anger and frustration into their work.” This was an important lesson for

Jessica Watson, the Australian sailor who circumnavigated the world alone at

only 16 years old. While at sea, when loneliness or negativity set in, she would

acknowledge her emotions and remind herself that she could get past them.

“You can’t change conditions—just the way you deal with them,” she said.

8. Constantly Evolving

Successful people never stop learning and adapting. Tennis champion

Martina Navratilova realized this when her game suddenly started sliding.

She transformed her training routine and diet, and soon was back on track to

become an all-star athlete.

9. Practicing Patience

Inaction, or stillness, can sometimes be just as useful as action. The

importance of patience was a primary theme among the super-achievers,

whether it’s strategically waiting for the best time to make a move or

continuing to pursue a larger vision despite a lack of immediate rewards. Jill

Tarter, a director of the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial

Intelligence), has been searching for life on other planets for the last 50 years

without any guarantee of success.

10. Pursuing Happiness

Success fuels happiness, and happiness in turn fuels greater success. Jeopardy

champ Jennings, said that once he became a contestant on a game show, it

filled his entire life with passion. That happiness helped him win, and winning

ended up giving him the confidence he needed to pursue a career he loved:

writing. Seeking happiness in your life and work turns out to be a win-win.

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