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The Way of Excellence

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The Way of Excellence

A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World

HarperOne,

15 min read
11 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Mastery takes time. Build excellence through consistent routines and behaviors, and let your journey be its own reward.

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Editorial Rating

9

getAbstract Rating

  • Applicable
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

If you think excellence is reserved for the gifted few, think again. According to executive coach Brad Stulberg, the gap separating you from the top performers isn’t as insurmountable as you might imagine. Excellence develops, he explains, when you cultivate a process-over-outcomes mindset and commit to activities that spark joy and curiosity — focusing on the work itself rather than measuring yourself against others. Stulberg’s insightful guide shows how to design routines that align with your values and help you steadily close the divide between good and great.

Summary

Excellence is a journey, not a destination.

The pursuit of excellence — defined as a combination of “mastery and mattering” — is not something reserved for an elite few; it’s your birthright. Many equate excellence with a single, perfect result, an obsession with achievement, or the optimization of your work; in truth, it’s intentional engagement: charting a continuous growth path that injects your life with meaning and zest and setting the stage for you to flourish.

Likewise, people often confuse excellence with flow. However, you can achieve a flow-like state — when you become so engrossed in a task that you lose track of time — doing menial work like answering work emails or gambling at slot machines. By contrast, the pursuit of excellence means engaging in activities that align with your values and support your goals. And while flow is effortless, excellence requires sustained effort.

Tap into your innate drive for excellence by building “situated cognition.”

The impulse to excel is innate. A biological process known as “homeostatic upregulation” compels all living creatures — even single-cell bacteria — to not merely survive but thrive. When a person...

About the Author

Executive coach Brad Stulberg is the author of Master of Change and The Practice of Groundedness. He’s a University of Michigan faculty member, a New York Times contributor, and the co-host of the podcast Excellence, Actually.

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