Prabodh Kumar Enumula

There is this talk by Harsha Bhogle which i had watched in 2007 (ya, that youtube video i linked is from 2014, but this talk was delivered in ~2005) which had pretty big impact on me. He talks about excellence a lot in that talk. One of thing which remained with me was this part of the speech
A lot of us place a lot of emphasis on talent, don’t we? I mean we often look at someone who’s talented and say wow. Talent does that to people, it dazzles you. And yet you find that excellence is not about talent alone, in fact, a major part of excellence has nothing to do with talent. And in course of time, once you go beyond a certain level, ability or talent is the most useless virtue to possess. It’s what you do with the talent that matters. Beyond a point, it is an attitude that counts for far more than talent because talent breeds any ego and talent never solve problems beyond a point
Harsha bhogle extends that point beautifully with examples from sports world. I agree with that line of thought and i want to write down couple of fundamental things which are essential for excellence other than talent.

Curiosity and Routine.

When i look at my kids, I realize how extremely curious kids are and consequently their rate of learning is extremely high. I feel curiosity just goes down as we age. The trick is to remain curious in fields where we want to excel. That will drive initiatives and enables to learn more things. It is very easy to get confused between wanting to do something and curiosity. Wanting to do something is more of a wish list which we maintain a distance with usually, but curiosity ensures you take the first step in what you want to do.

And the other fundamental thing helps to excel is Routine. It feels like a basic thing, but routine makes sure we show up. Starting point of the excellence many times just starts with showing up everyday and keep doing things. It is easy to get distracted for the shiny new thing or not having motivation to show up after a hard day – but once we start showing up no matter what, magic starts to happen.

What are the fundamental traits which you believe are necessary for excellence