Habits Matter More Than Genius

Ordinary people achieve genius outcomes through commitment to doing the work.

Most of the work I do is one-on-one. It’s fun and fills me with energy.

In my previous career, I worked with boards of directors of professional associations to design, fund, and build certification programs. Three big lessons came from more than 30 years of working with high-achieving professionals who obsess over standards and, later, show up in a confidential, one-on-one consultation talk as someone who struggles to achieve as much as ordinary people.

Lesson One: The Standards Trap

When a profession strives for recognition, respect, and dominance over all who would enter and practice in their profession, they create certification programs, exams, and methods of enforcement, all in the name of public safety. From thousands in their profession, they select the ones they deem the smartest and most successful to form a board and set standards. These folks identify as high achievers.

High-achieving professionals often set exceptional standards for themselves. They read extensively, understand complex concepts, and know exactly what “good” looks like. Yet many find themselves stuck in a peculiar paradox: The higher their standards, the harder it becomes to take action.

This happens because high standards, while essential for excellence, can create paralyzing pressure. When every attempt must be perfect, we’re less likely to begin at all.

Some of these professionals who became personal friends in the standards business asked for private consulting. Most were past 45 and looking to make a change in their own entrepreneurial company or finally start a different business where they could do what they love and prosper.

Credit Edoardo Bortoli on Unsplash

Lesson Two: The Hidden Territory of Progress

Professionals who spend too much time obsessing over perfection, standards, and designing the whole system, for years and years, before trotting out the program, seem to forget who they were as beginners. The irony is that we are beginners constantly because the individual is no match for new information, new skills, technology, and customer preference changes.

The highest achievers are not always the most gifted. The people who make progress show up day after day and understand the difference and dynamics of standards and habits.

Consider the difference between standards and habits:

• Standards are the rules we measure ourselves against.
• Habits are the automated behaviors that create results.
• Standards are like rules, which you can follow or not. They do not dissolve. Humans set standards, and humans can amend or replace standards.
• Habits can dissolve. This is why all scientific evidence shows that excellence or mastery always starts with tiny beginnings. The smaller the steps, the more likely the habit will stick and grow with you.

Those who achieve extraordinary results start with embarrassingly small steps. The individual is the master of habits. Others, not always you, are creators and standard bearers.

What separates legends from everyone else is their relationship with difficult beginnings. Where others see overwhelming challenges, they recognize temporary obstacles that yield to persistent action. We call those habits.

This is the core of my work and my passion—to work with professionals and communicators who are tapping into my fizzles and successes to find the breakthrough result that hides just beyond our usual stopping point. My usual stopping point felt like just about the end of the road, but it was the beginning of a hidden, hyper-rewarding territory where exceptional results happen. That’s when I co-founded the community for Gifted Professionals and Communicators, and my concierge consulting, only one-on-one work.

You cannot create obstacles or procrastinate any worse than I already have. Every excuse you might offer, I’ve already heard and dealt with. This is why I advanced to one-on-one work and four-week sprints. We cut the crap and bring out the best in you with better questions and filters on the many distractions that seem easier than doing the work.

This Stuff Works. Impossible to Fail.

In communication and writing, the best result emerges after pushing past shitty drafts and “good enough” articles, to a few more tiny repetitions, including asking two others to review and critique your work. Sometimes it’s doing one more interview to make the context clear and the evidence strong.

In business, the game-changing innovations appear after others have given up. If we break that big opportunity into smaller habits, then even smaller habits, we create momentum that comes only from doing. Thinking about it or planning it is not doing. Doing the tiny hard parts—that’s doing the work.

In relationships, the deeper connections form when we push past surface-level interactions. The connections we crave come from getting past transactions and putting our ego and emotions into helping someone else transform.

This is totally about beginnings, consistency, and showing up daily to do the work. It’s not about will power, motivation, or that noise. It’s about getting clear and honest with yourself about what you want. That’s a huge process, and some people work on the What Do I Want question for too many years. Instead of getting to a simple truth, such as I want to be free, healthy, included (not alone), and valued (not ignored or dismissed).

Credit Google DeepMind on Unsplash

Lesson Three: Build Systems That Work

The key to bridging the gap between standards and results isn’t motivation—it’s systems. Here’s why: 1) Motivation is finite and fluctuating, 2) Systems continue working even when enthusiasm wanes, and 3) Small, consistent actions compound over time.

The most effective system is counterintuitive: temporarily lower your standards to build tiny habits, then stronger habits. This means: 1) Starting smaller than you think necessary, 2) Focusing on consistency over intensity, and 3) Measuring progress by actions taken, not only results achieved.

The sooner you learn the big lie and big lesson about systems, the sooner you get everything you want in life.

The big lie — The system that someone else created or is trying to sell you never works. Best practices are also a joke and an enormous waste of a lifetime if you follow someone else’s practice. The paradigm-shifting moment is when you discover that your system for both your effort and your results is just someone else’s minimum standard. What is “extra” effort to you might be considered necessary to others, and what’s an exceptional result to you might be the minimum they’d accept.

The big lesson — You need systems, and you are the only one who can create the system that works exactly like your brain gets and gives information, creativity, and the genius that is only you. There is no AI for this. You can observe other systems as you create and work on your own. The path forward isn’t about having higher standards—most high achievers already have those. It’s about building robust systems that turn those standards into daily actions.

You can have everything you want in life if you understand yourself, push through beginnings, and show up day after day to do the work. Even when you think there is a day off or a rest day to renew, that’s still a commitment to a consistent promise to yourself, such as physical health, mental health, or building a relationship.

The gap between knowing and doing isn’t bridged by knowledge or willpower. It’s bridged by systems that make showing up inevitable.

Here’s Me. Here’s You. This Works.

These days, I focus on being me. It’s a process that never ends because I’m working to undo the effects of 30 years chasing after the standards and habits that worked for others.

The way to know whether your usual standards and habits are serving you is to surpass them regularly and see what happens. Each of us has our standards and habits for everything: How much sleep is enough, how much screen time is okay, how much effort at work gets to launch or delivery of service, how proactive to be in your friendships, how much or little to eat, how much news to consume, and how much effort is right for household order and cleanliness.

When you work with me in my role as communications concierge, you find out why some people do so much better in a given endeavor. It can seem like people getting wildly better results are built differently, or enjoy advantages that are unattainable to you. That might be true, but are you maxing out your gifts and advantages? It’s easy to attribute someone else’s success to luck, nepotism, or natural talent when the most likely explanation is that they’re doing something you’re not.

Ordinary people achieve extraordinary outcomes not through superhuman abilities but through their unwavering commitment to the systems they create just for themselves, tiny habits, and doing the necessary work.