When winning race car drivers are blitzing down a track at hyper speed, they aren’t keeping their eyes on the competition or the lines on the track.

The winners are forging ahead so fast that all they can pay attention to is the finish line.

In a recent study published in her book, The Creator’s Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Amy Wilkinson found that over 200 exceptionally successful entrepreneurs — including the founders of Yelp, Chobani, and Zipcar — had the same mentality when it comes to success in business.

Wilkinson studied these incredibly successful entrepreneurs and found that they all had a very unique way of focusing on the future rather than relishing (or wallowing in) the past. Similarly, psychologists at the University of Chicago conducted a study indicating that people who are committed to a goal have two ways of thinking:

“To-go” thinkers, like the successful entrepreneurs studied by Wilkinson, are motivated by what remains to be done.

“To-date” thinkers, on the other hand, solely focus on how far they’ve already come and only find motivation by looking at the past, and are often less successful.

So which one are you? To boost your success; you need to act as a to-go thinker, so that you can constantly evolve your success with laser focus.

Here are a few easy ways you can incorporate this success framework into your own life:

Scan the Periphery

“Comparison is the thief of joy” — Theodore Roosevelt

Entrepreneurs don’t become successful because they do what everybody else is doing. Instead, they often break the mold and create something entirely original. You want to be the threat that comes out of left field, but the only way to get there is to remain committed to your business, rather than worrying about everyone else.

AirBnB co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, for instance, started their company by renting out an air mattress in their living room to help finance their expensive San Francisco rent. While the competition was focusing on one-upping each other’s continental breakfasts, AirBnB’s “crazy” idea was eventually valued at a whopping $25.5 billion.

Rather than constantly scrambling to mimic the entrepreneurial Joneses, shift your perspective. Each one of us is walking through life with an incredibly unique set of gifts and skills. Comparing that to someone else’s skill blueprint is a waste of time and drain on your success.

Don’t Look Back

Piggybacking on the importance of looking at others, Wilkinson drives home the point that it’s inherently counter-productive to look back. This includes past triumphs and failures of your business.

If you rest on the laurels of your previous successes, you’re likely to miss opportunities for fresh ideas that can move your business ahead even further. Whether it’s after their first quarter, or decades down the line, positive entrepreneurs never stop improving.

This mindset helps you to not only avoid complacency, but it also helps to keep a leg up on the competition and, most importantly, keeps you happy. And if you’re already improving, it’s a good idea to sit down and re-evaluate how you can reach even higher.

Similarly, if you’re waking up every morning thinking about what went wrong the day before, you’re probably doing entrepreneurship wrong.

Corcoran Group founder and Shark Tank mogul Barbara Corcoran spoke the truth when she said, “The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves.”

Learning from your mistakes is Success 101. But the ultra-successful take it a step further by remembering the lessons and then forgetting the rest. Their philosophy and your new one: the past is the past and it cannot be undone. Learn from it and move on.

Stay Focused

While it’s important to remain nimble in the wake of new opportunities, it’s also imperative that you keep the finish line in sight.

Even though racecar drivers are moving incredibly quickly, as anyone who has seen a NASCAR event can attest, the path to victory can be very long sometimes.

Look no further than Steve Jobs — we all know how unique his vision was, and how successful it eventually turned out. However, that same unique vision Jobs had resulted in him getting fired from Apple (his own company nonetheless) when he created the first Macintosh. But that didn’t stop him. He went on to found NeXT, NeXT was acquired by Apple, and the rest, as they say, is history.

While Apple got distracted with cheaper computers (and other competitors followed suit), Jobs kept his eye on the prize, and eventually did get ahead again to leave the competition choking in the dust.

If you believe in overnight success, you may as well believe in Santa too. I’ve seen it time and again: entrepreneurs will scramble to get a sloppy product out as fast as possible, only to be replaced by a disciplined competitor with a better creation. That’s why having a great product, company, or team means doing your best and final work constantly by focusing on your long-term goals: even when you’re racing to the finish line. I always ask my team to do this (and am understanding if they have to push a deadline back), and you should do the same for yourself.

So remember, keep your eyes on your prize, not on others. It won’t be an easy race, but you’ll wind up being the winner you always were in the end.

How do you frame your goals for success? I want to hear from you!

If you enjoyed this column, you can see more of my advice at my latest project Love The Hustle and my column for Inc. Magazine.