Baldrige.com focuses on information that can help you build the organization you want. As a result, nearly all of the articles address elements that contribute to an excellent management system. This one is different: It looks at how you can become excellent at your heart’s desire.

In “Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything” (HBR, August 24, 2010), Tony Schwartz quickly dismisses the myth that greatness is determined by our genetic inheritance. He analyzes current thinking about building personal capacity as well as his company’s experience working with executives to state that how hard we are willing to work determines our level of excellence. The minimum level of practice required to be expert in something, according to people who have studied this, seems to be 10,000 hours. That’s about seven years of practice at 4.5 hours per day, six days a week (this will make more sense when you read Tony’s list).

Schwartz offers six keys to achieving excellence:

1. Pursue what you love. Passion “fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.”
2. Do the hardest work first. Great performers delay gratification and do the most difficult first.
3. Practice intensely – for 90 minutes without interruption. Then take a break. And great performers practice no more than 4.5 hours a day.
4. Seek expert feedback in intermittent doses. The feedback should be simple and precise.
5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing allows time to rejuvenate, metabolize, and embed learning.
6. Ritualize practice. Build specific, inviolable times to practice. As Schwartz notes, “will and discipline are wildly overrated.”

I know a very successful leader who could have written this list. I figure he’s put in about 200,000 hours of practice (okay, he “practiced” far more than 4.5 hours a day) and he’s still learning, growing, and building.

Try keeping up with that.

By the way, you can apply these six attributes to an organization, as well.

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