If you've met/worked with ambitious people in any capacity, then you might have realised how much contagious ambition is. I was just curious like why? What does the intersection look of being ambitious look like? What it takes to be ambitious? Of course, it's a lot more than just "working hard".
Look around and observe people who are ambitious. They are consistently doing and achieving things. For them, weekdays and weekends are the same. They are in a continuously ambitious state. And just like any other state, either they are in or not. There's nothing in between. That's why it's very hard to keep up with them. They are just constantly finding and solving problems nobody has asked them to solve.
It's funny, these are the exact set of people who are often mocked when weekend plans are discussed because they just lived a "boring" weekend. Nerds is what other people actually label them. If you ask any nerd around you, you can sense it's some fear that drives them to be ambitious. To begin with, fear of being mediocre (probably). Because in their mind, they might have made somebody a hero, want to become like them and that feeling is very strong. It may be hard to digest but some people just can't accept and live with mediocrity.
Let's spend some more time on fear. It's very hard to articulate where it comes from but it's there. Part of the reason is fear of missing out. They just don't want to miss out because they are at it continuously. More often, their huge appetite of curiosity drives this fear to understand things so that they don't miss out.
High agency is another trait ambitious people shows consistently. Simply put, they constantly find and solve problems without judging them (or at least thinking it's somebody else's problem). The reason they have high agency is that nobody told them to solve problems. True ownership emerges from that. High agency often beats talent at some point and eventually that's what makes people talented in the first place and hence ambitious. They don't accept the status quo.
Escapism drives high agency. They simply don't like being in the current state for whatever reasons and want to escape it to go on to the next level at least in terms of skills. They proactively seek feedback without judging the tone of it. Mediocre talent focuses on the tone of the feedback whereas ambitious talent focuses on the substance of the feedback itself. They don't care (much) about their reputation. They are extremely shameful about their growth.
But how to cultivate high agency? It starts from intrinsic motivation, which is hard to cultivate. Some people prefer doomscrolling while others hit the gym. It's about what you value doing with the time you have. Sadly, nobody can help induce this in you, only you can save yourself. A few tips can help. To begin with, there's no unsolvable problem, everything is solvable. If the work seems big, simply break it down into chunks using first principles and solve them first.
Even I wrote this note in chunks, iterated and refined a lot of chunks to eventually get what you're reading today. Another thing about high agency is the domino effect in curiosity. High-agency people learn something and in the process, they discover something new then they learn that as well and so on and so forth.
Ambitious people surround themselves with great people all the time. I've observed this is a bit non-negotiable for them. They are often constantly seeking great people to spend time with. They just don't affect your work, they affect you. So, be around people you want to become like because you will anyways. For such people, quality is more important than quantity here. That's why, if you observe closely great people are very choosy when it comes to hanging out with somebody (often the count is very less).
If you're unsure about whether you're surrounded by great people or not, chances are you aren't. Great people are always supportive and offer surprising insights. Sometimes what differentiates between mediocre and great work is just a handful of great people to work with.
Protect your morale because it's the root from which ambition grows. The sad part is, it's extremely fragile. The worst part is, it takes a lot of mental courage to bring it back. One bad experience working with a bad colleague can break it. Escapism from bad work or people can help protect it. Morale grows with work, high morale helps you do good work, which increases your morale and helps you do even better work. If you're not becoming more ambitious about work, it can demoralise you even more.
It's very easy for a setback to demoralise you. This is more true for highly ambitious people. It depends (mostly) on how you interpret/take setbacks. If it acts as a catalyst to accelerate ambition, it's good. Otherwise, just research why it is happening. "Never give up" is not right either. Yes, it's required sometimes but more often it's the sign for you to seek and try something else to succeed. Never let setbacks define how your morale will go.
Lastly, all the ambitious people enjoy what they work on. Because how can somebody spend 8-12 hours a day doing something they don't love. They are driven by this "shiddat" (from Urdu: passion) that they have for their work. But how do you know if you enjoy working on something? There are a couple of reasons. You've tried a lot of things. This sounds straightforward but it isn't. Even after trying lots of things, if you're still unsure then just work on personal projects to solve your own problems. The business of figuring out what you enjoy doing is hard. Neither our education system is designed to do that. Some people do this early on in their life.
Usually enjoyable work has three traits: something you're innately passionate about doing, offers scope to do great work and lastly it keeps your curiosity alive. Innate passion or natural enjoyment comes from trying a lot of things because let's be honest you can't be passionate about all things you do. That domain/problem naturally keeps your curiosity alive to do even better work given that it has scope to do so. If the scope is limited, you lose interest very early on and worse you end up doing mediocre work.
I tried to keep it as short as possible. I would like to end with one harsh truth, this may offend a lot of readers: you can't make somebody ambitious. Neither should you try this. No manager, colleague, government, parents, college etc., can make you ambitious. Only you can make yourself ambitious. Interestingly, It's easy to make somebody more ambitious than making somebody ambitious.