Being exceptional is less about rare talent and more about the choices you make every day. It’s a set of habits that quietly outwork everyone else. Below are five habits for anyone who wants to be exceptional.
Show extreme care
Care is visible. It shows in the neatness of your file names, the tone of an email, the frame you set for a meeting. Care is not a performance. It’s the internal standard that makes you check one more time, tidy one more thing, and refuse to ship sloppily. Example: if you send a report, open the PDF yourself on another device before you hit send. If you build a product, use it for a week as a user. These micro-actions are cheap and they compound.
Know your first solution is probably terrible; rethink it
Your first idea will often be the easiest to reach for. It’s the surface answer. Treat it as a draft, not a final. After you map out the obvious path, force a second pass. Ask: what would a cautious skeptic change? What would a rookie miss? Rethinking can be quick. Wait an hour. Sleep on it. Sketch three alternatives in twenty minutes. Real creativity is iterative, keep refining until what you have resists being improved by a small tweak.
Pay extreme attention to small details
Most excellence lives in the parts people call boring. A single misplaced decimal, a misleading label, or an awkward transition in a talk breaks trust. Pick one domain and obsess over its details. If you design interfaces, polish the microcopy. If you manage accounts, make reconciliation painless and on time. Small details mean fewer errors, faster feedback loops, and a reputation that travels: people notice precision and tell others.
Always follow up
Promises are worthless unless they’re kept. Follow-up is the bridge between intention and result. When you say “I’ll get back to you,” put a time on it and follow through. Use simple systems: a short to-do list, calendar blocks, or a single follow-up folder in your inbox. Follow-up includes returning calls, reminding teammates of deadlines, and circulating outcomes after meetings. Do this consistently and you become the person others rely on when things matter.
Own up to your fuck-ups
Mistakes are inevitable. Hiding them ruins trust. Own the mistake quickly, state what happened, and outline how you’ll fix it. Avoid long justifications. People forgive competence and candor faster than clever excuses. Owning up also speeds learning. When you name the error, you can prevent it next time. Example: if a launch fails, write a one-page post-mortem with facts and a single corrective action. Distribute it. Move on.
Practice these habits together, they reinforce each other. Care makes follow-up credible. Rethinking minimizes the size of failures. Attention to detail reduces the number of things you need to own up to. Owning up builds the trust you need to take bigger swings. Start small: pick one habit this week and do it deliberately. Measure one concrete outcome. Repeat.
A final, blunt point: being exceptional is boring in the short run. It looks like repetition, patience, and low-glory choices. If you want the outcome, accept the work. The payoff is simple: fewer surprises, fewer fixups, and the ability to do bigger work with fewer people. That is where exceptional lives.