Whatever your craft, chances are that there are a lot of people who are excellent at it. Excellent is no longer enough of a differentiator. Excellent rarely helps you stand out.
Excellent is table stakes.
Beyond excellence, we all have unique value to offer. The combination of attributes, skills, competencies and temperament that makes us, us. And that unique value will be precisely what people are looking for in some contexts, and not at all in others.
So perhaps we need to think less about excellence, once we’ve achieved it, of course, and think more about fit. Fit between you and an employer, fit between you and your customers.
Step one in knowing where you’ll fit is knowing yourself, knowing your unique value, and knowing the contexts in which you’re likely to thrive.
Knowing these things, and just as importantly, being able to tell that story, that’s the work for most people.