Excellence is caring about the outcome after everyone else becomes ready to move on.

There is a moment on most projects when everyone is finished with it and ready to be finished with it. Continuing to care past that point, checking the last details, making the final correction, is where much of the difference between competent and excellent gets made. It is lonely work because the general attention has already moved.

After the point where a thing is officially done, give it one more pass. Look for what got waved through in the final rush. That last hour, unsupervised and unnoticed, tends to be worth more than the several before it.