This piece originally appeared on AllBusiness.com.
Everyone has different skills and talents, but work ethic is one of the few things you can actually control. Ted Arison, the founder of Carnival Cruise Lines, famously said, "The guy that works the hardest wins."
While this is a bit of an oversimplification, the takeaway is pretty clear: if you work hard, very few people will keep up the same pace and overtake you.
1. Identify Goals
If you want to avoid being outworked, then you need to set very specific goals; they should be challenging, yet attainable. By setting these goals, you'll force yourself to work hard and accomplish new things.
"Focus requires clarity concerning the desired results and the relative priority of each step that you need to take to achieve those results," writes Brian Tracy, sales training and personal success authority. "When you think of focus, think of a photographer adjusting his lens to keep the key subject sharp in the center of the picture."
In order to become a hard worker, you have to continually adjust your lens to ensure you're focusing on what's important. Landscapes may change, but you always have the ability to refocus.
2. Always Ask Questions
There's a funny misconception among many professionals that asking questions is equated to being weak-in fact, the very opposite is true. Asking questions is a sign that you're willing to learn and adapt.
If you're not asking questions, you're likely doing the same things over and over again. And once you get stuck in this rut, you'll have a tendency to remain stagnant and become complacent with your current approach.
3. Be Flexible
Think about the hardest working individual you know and you'll notice they're very flexible. While they may prefer to work standard hours, they're completely willing to shift their schedules in order to do what's necessary to accomplish the task before them.
In your career, being flexible could look like a willingness to work nights and weekends. Or it could look like being willing to take on new job duties to earn the opportunity to get in front of new people. Flexibility is vastly underrated, but wholly important.
4. Surround Yourself With the Right People
Hard workers understand how to walk the line between surrounding themselves with the right people and remaining totally self-reliant. You should aim to surround yourself with people who are equally hardworking-as this keeps you motivated and agile-but you never want to become so close to other people that you start shifting blame.