Striving Towards Excellence

–Karthik Gurumurthy

1. Always Have a Place to Jot Things Down Keep a notebook on you so you can capture good ideas when they hit. Use downtime—waiting in line, commuting, whatever—to brainstorm and think through your plans.
2. Know What You Want Before You Figure Out How Get crystal clear on what you’re actually trying to accomplish before you dive into the how. When you know your end goal, it’s way easier to figure out the best way to get there.
3. Do More of What Only You Can Do Figure out what you’re uniquely good at—the stuff that’s hard to replace you on. Then make sure you’re spending most of your time doing exactly that.
4. Stick to What You’re Good At Focus on the things you need to do and are actually skilled at. If someone else can do something better than you, let them handle it.
5. Don’t Outsource Your Creative Work Get input and bounce ideas off people all you want, but keep the actual creative work in your hands. Your best ideas need your personal touch.
6. Think Before You Commit Don’t rush into decisions. Take the time to really think things through—it’ll save you from wasting time and resources on stuff that doesn’t pan out.
7. Work With Your Natural Rhythm, Not Against It Set up your schedule around when you work best and how you naturally operate. Fighting your own rhythm is exhausting and counterproductive.
8. Do What Matters, Not What’s Easy Choose your tasks based on what’s actually important, not just what’s convenient. The meaningful stuff is usually the harder stuff.
9. Keep Your Focus Tight, But Your List Complete Only focus on a few main things at once, but keep a running list of everything else you need to do. This way you’re not overwhelmed but also not forgetting stuff.
10. Write It Down Right Away When you have an idea or think of something you need to do, write it down immediately. Don’t trust yourself to remember it later—you won’t.
11. Only Say Yes to Real Opportunities Stop doing things just because you feel obligated. If it’s not genuinely worthwhile or aligned with what you care about, drop it.
12. Check In With Yourself Daily Start each morning asking what really needs to get done today. End each day looking at what you actually did and what you learned.

Basically, it’s all about being intentional with your time, playing to your strengths, and staying focused on what actually matters.