Haha you are sharp and rightly identified that I sort of sidestepped that important question in the previous reply. Honestly it is still really hard for me to sort of put into words the mentality and the behaviour I am alluding to. "Earnestness" comes closest and I am defining it as "sincerity".
Essentially it comes down to taking a look at reality as it really is, learning things and testing what you have learnt in the real world. (e.g. I was interested in branding since I think that is a huge hack which is sort of underutilized by smaller companies, but to do it well requires studying branding and it's different variable and how to manipulate them, isolate testing each variable and seeing results which can be a mix of objective and subjective metrics vs The older way would be to read some brand books, apply a few things and call it a day because "branding takes time")
It's also about being clear what you want and making sure that the path you are on will get you there.
Most importantly it's about being honest with yourself. Asking yourself, are you really happy with the path you are going down? If you want to change, and sincerely change, it is hard work but doable. But it needs to start with being intellectually honest and doing the work, taking the notes, collating the information and really working hard.
Sorry, but to me this answer still seems to be largely full of generalities. I get the sense that what you're trying to say could simply be distilled to "I stopped skating by and started to focus on figuring out what works." Am I wrong? Is there more?
Another way of looking at this is: putting the reps in vs making sure every rep counts. The former does help but the latter is really where everything changes.
Essentially it comes down to taking a look at reality as it really is, learning things and testing what you have learnt in the real world. (e.g. I was interested in branding since I think that is a huge hack which is sort of underutilized by smaller companies, but to do it well requires studying branding and it's different variable and how to manipulate them, isolate testing each variable and seeing results which can be a mix of objective and subjective metrics vs The older way would be to read some brand books, apply a few things and call it a day because "branding takes time")
It's also about being clear what you want and making sure that the path you are on will get you there.
Most importantly it's about being honest with yourself. Asking yourself, are you really happy with the path you are going down? If you want to change, and sincerely change, it is hard work but doable. But it needs to start with being intellectually honest and doing the work, taking the notes, collating the information and really working hard.