You know what I’ve noticed after years of studying successful people and working with entrepreneurs, business owners, and high achievers?
The habits that actually separate successful people from everyone else are not the ones you read about in most success books. They’re not waking up at 5 AM, or meditating for an hour, or reading 50 books a year—though those habits are fine if they work for you.
The real habits that create extraordinary success are far more unexpected. They’re often counterintuitive. Sometimes they even seem like they would hold you back rather than push you forward.
But here’s the truth: these unusual habits are what allow certain people to achieve results that seem impossible to everyone else. While most people are following the same conventional advice and getting conventional results, successful people are doing things differently.
I’m going to share seven of these unexpected habits with you. These are patterns I’ve observed consistently in people who’ve built significant wealth, created thriving businesses, and achieved goals that others said were unrealistic.
These habits might surprise you. Some might even make you uncomfortable. But if you’re serious about separating yourself from the crowd and achieving extraordinary results, you need to pay attention to every single one of them.
Habit 1: They Embrace Boredom Instead of Chasing Excitement
This is going to sound completely backwards, but successful people don’t constantly chase excitement and stimulation the way most people do.
While everyone else is jumping from one shiny opportunity to another, constantly looking for the next exciting thing, successful people have mastered the art of doing boring, repetitive work consistently.
They understand that building real wealth and success is boring most of the time. It’s showing up and doing the same fundamental tasks day after day, week after week, month after month, until those boring actions compound into extraordinary results.
Most people can’t handle boredom. They need constant novelty and excitement. They start a business, get bored after three months, and jump to a new idea. They commit to a strategy, get bored when results don’t come quickly, and switch to a different approach.
Successful people do the opposite. They find one strategy that works and they stick with it even when it becomes mind-numbingly boring. They run the same type of ads, make the same sales calls, create the same type of content, follow the same business model—because they know that consistency over time is what creates massive results.
Why This Works
Boredom is actually a sign that you’ve found something worth sticking with. When an activity becomes boring, it means you’ve done it enough times to remove the excitement of novelty. This is exactly when most people quit, and it’s exactly when successful people double down.
The magic happens after the excitement wears off. The real results come from doing something long after it stops being fun or interesting. Anyone can do something when it’s exciting. Very few people can do something when it’s boring but necessary.
You should learn to embrace boredom as a good sign, not a signal to change direction. When your business activities start feeling repetitive and boring, that’s when you’re actually building the foundation for long-term success.
Habit 2: They Regularly Do Things They’re Bad At
Most people spend their time doing what they’re already good at. It feels comfortable. It boosts their ego. It gives them a sense of competence and confidence.
Successful people intentionally put themselves in situations where they’re terrible at something and have to struggle to improve. They’re not afraid to be the beginner. They’re not afraid to look foolish while learning something new.
I’ve watched successful entrepreneurs hire coaches for skills they know nothing about. I’ve seen wealthy business owners take courses where they’re the least experienced person in the room. I’ve observed high achievers deliberately enter fields where their expertise means nothing.
This habit keeps them growing. It keeps them humble. It prevents them from becoming stagnant and relying only on their existing skills.
Most people avoid situations where they might fail or look incompetent. They stay in their comfort zone where they already know what they’re doing. This feels safe, but it limits their growth dramatically.
Why This Works
Your comfort zone is also your growth-limitation zone. Everything you want that you don’t currently have exists outside your current skill set. To get it, you need to become someone who can handle challenges you currently can’t handle.
When you regularly do things you’re bad at, you expand your capabilities. You build confidence that you can learn anything. You develop the mental toughness to push through the awkward beginner phase that stops most people.
Successful people understand that being bad at something is temporary if you persist. Everyone who’s now an expert was once a struggling beginner. The difference is that they were willing to go through that uncomfortable phase while others gave up.
You should deliberately seek out opportunities to be a beginner. Take that course where you’ll be the least knowledgeable person. Start that project where you don’t know what you’re doing. Learn that skill that feels completely foreign to you.
Habit 3: They Celebrate Other People’s Success Without Jealousy
This habit might be the most unexpected one on this list, but it’s also one of the most powerful.
Successful people genuinely celebrate when others in their field achieve success. They don’t feel threatened. They don’t get jealous. They don’t make excuses about why that person succeeded. They study what worked and feel inspired by the possibility.
Most people do the exact opposite. When someone in their industry or social circle succeeds, they feel jealous. They minimize the achievement. They look for reasons why it doesn’t count or why that person had unfair advantages. They use other people’s success as proof that opportunities are scarce.
I’ve watched this pattern destroy countless people’s potential. They see a competitor’s success and instead of thinking “If they can do it, so can I,” they think “They took my opportunity” or “They got lucky” or “It’s not fair.”
This mindset keeps them stuck because they’re operating from a scarcity mentality. They believe that someone else’s win means there’s less opportunity for them.
Why This Works
Celebrating others’ success does something powerful in your psychology—it programs your mind to believe that success is possible and abundant, not scarce and limited.
When you genuinely celebrate someone else’s achievement, you’re telling your subconscious mind “Success happens. People in my situation can win. Opportunities exist.” This keeps you motivated and looking for possibilities instead of making excuses.
Additionally, successful people understand that celebrating others creates powerful relationships. The person whose success you celebrate will remember your support. They’ll be more likely to help you, refer clients to you, or share strategies with you.
Jealousy and resentment isolate you. Celebration and support connect you to successful people who can elevate you.
You should make it a habit to genuinely congratulate people who achieve things you want. Study what they did. Ask them questions. Let their success inspire you instead of discourage you. This single mindset shift can transform your trajectory.
Habit 4: They Make Decisions Quickly and Change Them Slowly
Most people do exactly the opposite of this, and it costs them dearly.
The average person takes forever to make a decision. They overthink. They analyze. They wait for more information. They consult everyone they know. They create elaborate pros-and-cons lists. Meanwhile, opportunities pass them by.
Then, once they finally make a decision, they change it at the first sign of difficulty or doubt. They pivot constantly. They jump from strategy to strategy. They never commit long enough to see results.
Successful people flip this entirely. They gather enough information to make an informed decision, then they decide quickly—often within hours or days, not weeks or months. They trust their judgment and move forward.
But once they make a decision, they commit to it fully. They don’t second-guess themselves constantly. They don’t abandon their strategy when it gets difficult. They give their decisions enough time to work before they consider changing course.
Why This Works
Quick decisions capture opportunities that disappear while others are still thinking about it. The best business opportunities, the best partnerships, the best investments—they don’t wait around for you to finish your year-long analysis.
Successful people understand that making a good decision quickly and executing it well beats making a perfect decision slowly. Speed of implementation often matters more than perfection of strategy.
At the same time, changing decisions slowly prevents the scattered, unfocused approach that keeps most people from ever building momentum. When you stick with a decision long enough to see it through, you actually learn whether it works. When you change direction every few weeks, you never learn anything because you never gave anything enough time to produce results.
You should practice making faster decisions on things that are reversible or low-risk. Build your decision-making muscle. Then, once you decide, commit to that path for a reasonable timeframe—usually at least 6-12 months for business strategies—before you consider pivoting.
Habit 5: They Spend Money to Save Time, Not Time to Save Money
This habit represents a fundamental mindset difference between successful people and everyone else.
Most people will spend hours trying to save N5,000. They’ll drive across town to find the cheapest price. They’ll spend their evenings doing tasks they could pay someone N10,000 to handle. They’ll waste weekends on DIY projects that a professional could complete in a fraction of the time.
They’re proud of how much money they saved. But they never calculate how much time they wasted—time they could have spent on activities that generate income or build their business.
Successful people do the opposite. They view their time as their most valuable asset. They’re willing to pay for services, tools, and help that save them time, even when they could technically do it themselves for less money.
They hire virtual assistants to handle administrative work. They pay for software that automates repetitive tasks. They outsource anything that’s not their highest-value activity. They order food instead of cooking when they need time to work. They pay for convenience without guilt.
Why This Works
Time is the only truly non-renewable resource. You can always make more money. You cannot make more time.
When you constantly choose to save money by spending time, you’re making a trade that keeps you poor. Your time is worth something—and if you’re building a business or career, your time should be worth far more per hour than the cost of hiring help for low-value tasks.
Successful people understand that their job is to focus on high-leverage activities that generate the most value. Everything else should be delegated, automated, or eliminated.
Every hour you spend on a task that you could pay someone N3,000 to do is an hour you’re not spending on activities that could generate N50,000 or N100,000 in value. The math is simple, but most people never do this calculation.
You should start tracking how you spend your time and what it’s worth. Identify tasks that consume your time but don’t generate much value. Find ways to pay others to handle these tasks so you can focus on the activities that actually build wealth and success.
Habit 6: They Say No to Good Opportunities
This might be the most counterintuitive habit on this list, but it’s absolutely critical for extraordinary success.
Successful people regularly turn down good opportunities. Not bad opportunities—good ones. Opportunities that would make sense for most people. Opportunities that could make them money or advance their career.
They say no because they understand that good opportunities are the enemy of great ones. Every good opportunity you say yes to takes time, energy, and focus away from the few great opportunities that could genuinely transform your life.
Most people can’t do this. They can’t turn down a good opportunity because they’re afraid another one won’t come along. They say yes to everything that seems promising. They end up scattered across a dozen different projects and ventures, doing okay at all of them but excelling at none of them.
I’ve watched people destroy their potential by saying yes too often. They had one business that was starting to take off, then they started two more businesses because the opportunities seemed good. Now they have three mediocre businesses instead of one exceptional one.
Why This Works
Success requires focus. Extraordinary success requires extreme focus. You cannot achieve exceptional results in any area if your attention and energy are divided among multiple pursuits.
The most successful people I know focus on one major opportunity at a time. They go deep instead of wide. They master one thing before moving to the next. They’re willing to say no to 90% of opportunities so they can say yes to the 10% that really matter.
This is hard because it requires you to trust that better opportunities will come. It requires you to believe that focusing on one great thing will produce better results than pursuing multiple good things. It requires patience and discipline.
But the results speak for themselves. People who focus on fewer things achieve more than people who scatter themselves across many things.
You should develop the habit of evaluating every opportunity against your primary goal. If it doesn’t directly advance your most important objective, you should say no—even if it’s a good opportunity. This is how you protect your focus and create room for exceptional results.
Habit 7: They Review Their Failures More Than Their Successes
Most people love to celebrate their wins and quickly forget their losses. They replay their successes in their mind and avoid thinking about their failures because failures feel bad.
Successful people do something unexpected—they spend more time analyzing their failures than celebrating their successes.
When something goes wrong, they don’t just move on quickly. They dig into what happened. They identify exactly where things went off track. They figure out what they could have done differently. They extract every possible lesson from the experience.
When something goes right, they certainly celebrate, but they don’t obsess over it. They acknowledge the win and move forward. They don’t spend excessive time congratulating themselves or resting on their achievements.
This seems backwards to most people. Shouldn’t you focus on your successes and try to repeat them? Shouldn’t you avoid dwelling on failures because it’s depressing?
Why This Works
You learn far more from failure than from success. When something works, you often can’t identify exactly why it worked—there could be multiple factors, including luck and timing. But when something fails, you can usually pinpoint specific mistakes and decisions that caused the failure.
Successful people understand that failures are expensive lessons. If you paid for the lesson through your failure but didn’t learn anything from it, you wasted that failure. But if you extract every possible insight from that failure, it becomes one of your most valuable investments.
Additionally, reviewing failures keeps you humble and realistic. It prevents you from becoming overconfident after successes. It keeps you sharp and aware of what can go wrong.
Most people avoid analyzing their failures because it’s uncomfortable. It forces them to confront their mistakes and take responsibility. But this discomfort is exactly what drives growth.
You should create a habit of conducting a thorough review after every failure or setback. Write down what happened, why it happened, what you could have done differently, and what you’ll do differently next time. Keep a failure journal where you document these lessons.
Over time, your failure journal becomes one of your most valuable assets. It’s a personal handbook of what doesn’t work, which helps you avoid repeating the same mistakes and guides you toward what does work.
How These Habits Work Together
These seven habits might seem disconnected, but they actually work together to create a powerful system for success.
When you embrace boredom, you develop the patience to stick with strategies long enough to see results. When you regularly do things you’re bad at, you expand your capabilities and confidence. When you celebrate others’ success, you create a mindset of abundance and build valuable relationships.
When you make decisions quickly and change them slowly, you capture opportunities and build momentum. When you spend money to save time, you protect your most valuable resource. When you say no to good opportunities, you create focus. When you review your failures, you learn faster than your competition.
Together, these habits create a person who thinks differently, acts differently, and achieves different results than the masses. These habits separate the successful from the struggling.
The Truth About Adopting Unusual Habits
Let me be honest with you about what it takes to adopt these habits.
These habits are not easy to develop. If they were easy, everyone would do them and they wouldn’t separate successful people from everyone else. These habits require you to think differently than most people around you.
Your friends might not understand why you’re celebrating a competitor’s success. Your family might not understand why you’re paying someone to do something you could do yourself. People might think you’re strange for deliberately doing things you’re bad at or saying no to good opportunities.
But here’s what’s also true: following the same habits as everyone else will give you the same results as everyone else. If you want extraordinary success, you need to be willing to adopt extraordinary habits—even when they seem counterintuitive or make you uncomfortable.
The successful people who demonstrate these habits didn’t develop them overnight. They built them gradually over time. They started with one habit and mastered it before adding another. They made mistakes. They had setbacks. But they persisted.
You can do the same thing. You don’t need to implement all seven habits perfectly starting tomorrow. You just need to choose one, commit to building it, and stay consistent until it becomes automatic.
Your Next Steps
I’ve given you seven unexpected habits that separate successful people from everyone else. You understand why these habits work and how they create extraordinary results.
Now you need to make a decision. Will you continue following the same conventional advice that produces conventional results? Or will you adopt these unusual habits that successful people use to achieve exceptional outcomes?
You should choose one habit from this list—just one—that resonates with you most. Maybe it’s embracing boredom and committing to boring, consistent work. Maybe it’s learning to celebrate others’ success. Maybe it’s making faster decisions. Whatever speaks to you, that’s your starting point.
For the next 30 days, focus on building that one habit. Practice it deliberately. Notice when you’re falling into old patterns and correct course. Track your progress. See how this single habit shift affects your results and your mindset.
After 30 days, evaluate what happened. Most likely, you’ll notice changes not just in your results, but in how you think and approach challenges. Then you can add a second habit from this list.
Remember that successful people are not superhuman. They don’t have access to secret information you don’t have. They don’t have advantages that make success easy for them. What they have is different habits—habits that compound over time to create extraordinary results.
These seven habits are yours now. You know what they are. You understand why they work. You have no excuse to keep following the same patterns that produce mediocre results.
The question is: will you use this knowledge, or will you let this be another article you read and forget about?
Successful people don’t just consume information—they implement it. They take what they learn and immediately put it into practice. They understand that knowledge without action is worthless.
Start today. Choose your habit. Begin building it into your daily routine. Give it time to compound. Stay consistent even when it feels uncomfortable or unnatural.
Six months from now, a year from now, you’ll look back and realize that adopting these unexpected habits was the turning point that separated you from the crowd and put you on the path to exceptional success.
The habits are here. The choice is yours. Make it count.