The Pursuit of Excellence

What does it actually mean to live excellently rather than merely successfully? Ryan Hawk’s The Pursuit of Excellence: The Uncommon Behaviors of the World’s Most Productive Achievers asks you to reimagine what achievement looks like—and why most of us stop short. Success, Hawk argues, is comparative; it’s measured against others. Excellence, in contrast, is measured against your own potential. Excellence is the fanatical commitment to getting just a little better every single day.

Hawk’s central claim is disarmingly simple yet incredibly demanding: to pursue excellence is to adopt an infinite mindset of improvement. His guiding metaphor—borrowed from Simon Sinek—is that this is not about climbing one mountain but finding the next taller one, over and over. This pursuit requires deliberate intention, disciplined action, and the willingness to embrace discomfort.

Success Versus Excellence

In one of the book’s most memorable contrasts, Hawk shares the wisdom of basketball coach Brook Cupps: “Success is based on comparison with others; excellence is measured against your own potential.” Success can feel fleeting, a momentary win. Excellence is enduring—a commitment to progress rather than perfection. If today you are a little wiser, stronger, kinder, or more prepared than yesterday, you are living excellently. Cupps’s observation reframes the entire achievement mindset away from competition toward self-mastery.

The Infinite Game and Purposeful Action

Hawk interprets excellence as an “infinite game”—a continuous, never-finished chase for growth. Your goal is not victory but sustained play. In this sense, excellence demands endurance and curiosity. The book draws from a vast array of stories—from marathoner Eliud Kipchoge’s disciplined simplicity to Steve Prefontaine’s refusal to “sacrifice the gift” of effort—to show that greatness is rarely about dramatic triumphs. It’s about showing up, consistently hammering away, even when no immediate reward appears.

Hawk’s own journey—from collegiate quarterback to corporate leader to podcaster and author—serves as case study and confession. He describes learning from hundreds of leaders through his podcast, The Learning Leader Show, searching for patterns among those who sustain excellence. What he discovered is that excellence is built through curiosity, discipline, humility, and generosity. It’s a practice, not a destination.

A Framework for the Pursuit

The book’s architecture reinforces this concept through three parts—The Build, The Fuel, and The Chase—each focusing on a stage of personal evolution:

• The Build: establishing core disciplines like purpose, mindset, focus, resistance, and relationships. You can’t grow without self-awareness and integrity at the foundation.
• The Fuel: discovering what lights you up, harnessing community (“the power of others”), and building genuine confidence. Motivation comes from love of the craft, not willpower alone.
• The Chase: making long-term commitments, building your band or team, and realizing excellence is a lifelong journey rather than a finish line.

Why This Matters

In a culture obsessed with external status—titles, awards, income—Hawk’s message is revolutionary in its humility. He insists that living excellently means returning to the basic disciplines of mastery: caring deeply, preparing meticulously, listening with presence, and giving generously. It’s not glamorous, but it’s incredibly effective. His examples—John Chambers’s “hold onto the fishing pole,” Admiral McRaven’s story of the sugar cookie, or Jim Collins’s “trust wager”—reflect that the uncommon behaviors of top performers are surprisingly human ones: they persist, adapt, and help others rise.

If success is fleeting applause, excellence is the quiet satisfaction of mastery. Hawk invites you to redefine greatness as growth—the infinite pursuit of small, smart, purposeful actions that compound over time. The pursuit doesn’t end with achievement; it continues with curiosity. As Michelangelo put it centuries ago, “Yet, I am learning.”

Ryan Hawk begins by showing how purpose—not passion alone—is the true starting line for excellence. He rejects the popular advice to “follow your passion” (as Cal Newport and Scott Galloway also argue). Instead, he teaches you to cultivate purpose through disciplined mastery. Passion often follows performance, not the other way around.

Finding Purpose in Any Work

After Hawk’s dream to play pro football ended, he took an uninspiring sales job making seventy cold calls a day. Yet he discovered the spark of fulfillment not in the job’s glamour but in the challenge it posed. By applying his athlete’s competitive spirit to mastering sales conversations, he built competence and found meaning. His eventual passion emerged because he got good at something and saw its positive impact on customers and peers.

Purpose as Health and Longevity

The link between purpose and well-being is not just psychological—it’s biological. Hawk cites research from Stanford and The Washington Post showing that people who live with a clear sense of meaning have lower cortisol levels, healthier gene expression, and even reduced mortality risk. Purpose lengthens life because it energizes engagement. Even if your work feels routine, pursuing mastery and service within it transforms your daily experience.

Growth Mindset and Self-Audit

Hawk ties his purpose philosophy to Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset: intelligence and skill are not fixed traits but expandable capacities. He urges you to praise effort over results and to ask reflective questions such as “When was the last time I was wrong?” and “What triggers me into a fixed mindset?” To stay intentional, conduct self-audits—ask trusted peers how they describe you when you’re not around (as real-estate mogul Ryan Serhant famously did). Their perceptions can become mirrors for deeper awareness.

Discovering Your Process

Everyone needs their own creative process for sustained excellence. Through Billy Joel’s method of rewriting entire song drafts rather than crossing out lines, Hawk demonstrates the value of respecting your subconscious flow rather than judging mistakes too early. The point is not to copy Joel’s process but to find yours—and commit to it with integrity.

Transformation Through Relationships

Purpose is amplified in community. Hawk distinguishes transactional relationships—focused on short-term gain—from transformational ones, built on trust, vulnerability, humor, and gratitude. With examples from leaders like Brent Beshore and Bert Bean, he shows that surrounding yourself with growth-minded allies multiplies your potential. Transformation happens when people “make your trust marrow deep.”

When you root your life in purpose, you stop chasing fleeting motivation. You build steady momentum through clarity, curiosity, and connection. Excellence starts not when you follow what excites you, but when you make what you do worth loving.

If purpose gives direction, focus ensures progress. Hawk’s section on focus and discipline unveils the paradox that discipline doesn’t constrain—it creates freedom. Drawing from world-class performers like Eliud Kipchoge, Mike Trout, and Michael Phelps, he illustrates how the greatest athletes and leaders obsess over small details rather than results. The disciplined person, Hawk writes, is “free from moods and distractions.”

Discipline = Freedom

Kipchoge, the Kenyan marathon legend, practices monastic simplicity: eat, train, read, rest, repeat. He believes undisciplined people are “slaves to their moods.” Hawk argues that adopting this mindset in your daily routines—especially around your work and growth habits—releases you from emotional volatility. The disciplined person is not rigid but liberated from distraction.

Learn the Small Stuff for the Big Stuff

Through military analogies, Hawk demonstrates that mastery begins at the granular level. His conversation with former Army Ranger Jeff Estill reveals that leaders who know the mechanics of their team’s jobs command respect and clarity. Like generals who must understand how to fire and maintain an M-16, you can’t direct strategic excellence without operational knowledge.

Consistency and Resistance

Steve Martin’s insight—“It’s easy to be great; hard to be consistently good”—anchors Hawk’s view of progress. He connects Martin’s stand-up career with the persistence of stonecutters and the patience of marathoners: improvement compounds invisibly until one decisive “hundred-and-first blow” splits the rock. You don’t achieve excellence by extraordinary effort once, but by ordinary effort continuously.

No Cheap Tricks

Creativity and leadership have no shortcuts. Photographer Chase Jarvis calls his secret “ruthless discipline.” Basketball coach Brook Cupps sums it up as “Chop Chop”—just keep working. This conviction mirrors Angela Duckworth’s concept of grit—perseverance born of enthusiasm. For Hawk, discipline is the bridge between dreams and results.

Once you embrace discipline as freedom, routine becomes a sanctuary, not a cage. By showing up consistently, studying fundamentals, resisting panic, and doing the hard things first, you gain the true liberty of knowing your progress is within your control.

Resistance—mental, physical, emotional—is the defining obstacle in any pursuit of excellence. Hawk explores this theme through vivid examples: Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile, Admiral James Stockdale surviving years in a POW camp, and Alison Levine finding courage one step at a time on Mount Everest. The unifying truth? Growth happens precisely when life feels uncertain and progress hurts.

The Pain Is the Point

Borrowing from writer Steven Pressfield’s idea of “The Resistance,” Hawk affirms that discomfort is proof of real progress. Writing, training, leading—they all demand that you transform fuzzy ideas into structured results. As essayist Kaleigh Moore notes, clarity emerges only through the uncomfortable process of structuring thought. Hawk’s advice: embrace the friction rather than flee from it.

Balance Optimism and Realism

From James Stockdale’s stoic endurance in captivity, Hawk extracts the “Stockdale Paradox”: never lose faith that you’ll prevail, but relentlessly confront the brutal facts of reality. Excess optimism kills resilience; excessive pessimism kills hope. The lesson for everyday challenges—set ambitious goals, but maintain a sober awareness of what’s hard.

Small Steps and Environmental Design

Citing Atomic Habits by James Clear and research by Benjamin Hardy, Hawk teaches habit design as the antidote to resistance. Start with micro goals (“Write 100 words today”) and craft environments that trigger desired behavior—create friction for bad habits, remove friction for good ones. Progress isn’t about motivation; it’s about ritual and environment.

All Progress Happens in Uncertain Times

Ozan Varol, former rocket scientist, tells Hawk that “all progress happens in uncertain times.” Waiting for perfect conditions is self-sabotage; excellence grows in ambiguity. The antidote to fear, Hawk emphasizes, is curiosity—ask “What’s the best that can happen?” instead of “What if I fail?”

Resistance doesn’t mean you’re off track—it means you’ve arrived at the point of transformation. Life’s toughest conditions are the training grounds for your most determined self.

Hawk insists that excellence is not a solo pursuit—it’s collective intelligence multiplied by trust. Through stories of Hewlett-Packard’s mentorship of a young Steve Jobs, Ryan Serhant’s friendships, and his own growth through podcast conversations, Hawk shows how curiosity and humility toward others accelerate mastery.

Ask and You Shall Learn

Steve Jobs as a 12-year-old called Bill Hewlett to ask for parts to build a frequency counter—and ended up with a summer job. Hawk calls this “the simple courage to ask.” Most people never move forward because they don’t ask for help or opportunity. Whether you’re new or experienced, the difference between dreaming and doing is a single ask.

Humility as a Learning Lever

Hawk’s conversation with Navy SEAL Jay Hennessey reveals that humility enables curiosity. When leaders think they “have it all figured out,” learning stops. True excellence—what Jay calls a “learning organization”—requires continual dialogue and openness. This mirrors Peter Senge’s concept of team learning, where ideas flow collectively through conversation rather than command.

Listening to Comprehend

Most people “listen to respond,” Hawk warns, instead of “listening to comprehend.” Drawing from stories of Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer and psychologist Judi Brownell, he reminds us that real listening starts with curiosity—“How can I help understand this person?” By listening like a trampoline—amplifying and energizing others—you deepen trust and wisdom simultaneously.

Turning Feedback into Fuel

360-degree reviews, Hawk explains, are essential mirrors for self-awareness. Like consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman’s feedback model, they teach leaders to ask what to start, stop, and continue doing. Reflection without action wastes potential. Excellence requires the vulnerability to hear hard truths—and the discipline to act on them.

To pursue excellence, surround yourself with teachers, mentors, and peers who challenge you to grow. Build your own “learning leader” community—a circle grounded in trust, curiosity, and reciprocal generosity. Together, you rise higher than any one individual could alone.

Confidence, for Hawk, is not ego—it’s preparation meeting integrity. Drawing from Sheryl Sandberg, Beyoncé, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, he explores how inner self-talk shapes outer presence. Confidence is a muscle that strengthens through practice and risk-taking; charisma is its outward expression.

Do the Hard Stuff First

Instead of procrastinating, Hawk begins his days with a run-sprint-walk ritual. He adapts physical challenge as metaphor—doing the “hard stuff” early creates momentum and creative freedom later. The discomfort upfront builds resilience and clarity. Similarly, he tracks small wins (“100 words per day”) to maintain confidence that compounds.

Creating Sasha Fierce

Before big presentations, Hawk recalls advice from his father—enter the stage thinking, “I’m the baddest dude in this room, and I’m about to put on a show.” Beyoncé did the same by inventing her alter ego, Sasha Fierce, until she merged performance and authenticity. Purposeful self-talk transforms fear into presence.

Charisma Through Care

Charisma isn’t charm—it’s attention. Hawk draws from The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane, listing habits of magnetic people: smile first, ask deep questions, listen without distraction, and make others feel intelligent (as Benjamin Disraeli did). Presence is empathy performed: you show others they matter.

Act When Others Are Scared

The real test of confidence is action under fear. During the uncertainty of the pandemic, Dell’s leadership chose to invest in people while competitors froze. Courageous movement amid chaos distinguishes high performers. Hawk urges you to “stay ready so you don’t have to get ready”—a reflection of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fearless White House debut performing Hamilton.

Confidence grows from preparation; charisma grows from care. When you combine both, you meet the moment—not through arrogance, but through mastery and presence.

The final section circles back to Hawk’s central thesis: excellence has no finish line. It’s a lifelong chase toward mastery and contribution. Like sushi chef Jiro Ono, who at ninety-five still dreams of improving his craft, true performers live by the mantra of endless refinement.

Mastery over Arrival

Jiro immerses himself in his work, massages octopus longer for better texture, and expects ten years before an apprentice can cook an egg. Excellence isn’t about fame—it’s about the commitment to improve bit by bit. “I’ll continue to climb, but no one knows where the top is,” he says. Hawk aligns his philosophy with Jiro’s shokunin spirit—work as social obligation and joy.

Beginner’s Mind

The mindset of the master mirrors that of the beginner: open, curious, humble. Citing Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki and Nassim Taleb, Hawk celebrates the “good fortune of knowing nothing.” Arrogant experts plateau; lifelong learners remain adaptable. As J.J. Redick reminds him, “You’ve never arrived. You’re always becoming.”

Personal Mastery and Storytelling

Personal mastery is a verb, not a title. You grow by writing, teaching, reflecting, and sharing stories—becoming, as Hawk’s grandfather advises, a griot who passes wisdom forward. From Theodore Roosevelt reading until his dying day to Richard Feynman simplifying complex physics into human stories, Hawk teaches that mastery means turning knowledge into comprehension and contribution.

The Compound Effect of Small Actions

Excellence, Hawk concludes, compounds through micro actions—daily choices that accumulate like interest. Wake early, write, move your body, show gratitude, nurture relationships. Small things done consistently create massive transformations over time. Excellence is slow; destruction is fast.

To live excellently is to turn life into a perpetual classroom—one where curiosity never ends, generosity never ceases, and growth never stops. As Hawk’s mantra closes: to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.