Working right trumps finding the right work.

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So Good They Can't Ignore You

In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion” is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed—preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work— but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.

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"Follow your passion" might just be terrible advice.

Daniel Campos

Most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do.

Daniel Campos

Self-Determination Theory tells us that motivation requires that you fulfill 3 basic psychological needs: Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important; Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do; Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people.

Daniel Campos

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives.

Daniel Campos

I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you.

Daniel Campos

The traits that define great work are rare and valuable.

Daniel Campos

Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital.

Daniel Campos

The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming "so good they can’t ignore you", is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital.

Daniel Campos

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands…. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration.

Daniel Campos

Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable.

Daniel Campos

If you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re probably stuck at an "acceptable level."

Daniel Campos

Giving people more control over what they do and how they do it increases their happiness, engagement, and sense of fulfillment.

Daniel Campos

To summarize, if your goal is to love what you do, your first step is to acquire career capital. Your next step is to invest this capital in the traits that define great work. Control is one of the most important targets you can choose for this investment.

Daniel Campos

Control that’s acquired without career capital is not sustainable.

Daniel Campos

The point at which you have acquired enough career capital to get meaningful control over your working life is exactly the point when you’ve become valuable enough to your current employer that they will try to prevent you from making the change.

Daniel Campos

"If you’re struggling to raise money for an idea, or are thinking that you will support your idea with unrelated work, then you need to rethink the idea."

Daniel Campos

Hardness scares off the daydreamers and the timid, leaving more opportunity for those like us who are willing to take the time to carefully work out the best path forward and then confidently take action.

Daniel Campos

A good career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough—it’s an innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field.

Daniel Campos

Advancing to the cutting edge in a field is an act of “small” thinking, requiring you to focus on a narrow collection of subjects for a potentially long time. Once you get to the cutting edge, however, and discover a mission in the adjacent possible, you must go after it with zeal: a "big" action.

Daniel Campos

To maximize your chances of success, you should deploy small, concrete experiments that return concrete feedback.

Daniel Campos

If career capital makes it possible to identify a compelling mission, then it’s a strategy of little bets that gives you a good shot of succeeding in this mission.

Daniel Campos

The Law of Remarkability: For a mission-driven project to succeed, it should be remarkable in two different ways. First, it must compel people who encounter it to remark about it to others. Second, it must be launched in a venue that supports such remarking.

Daniel Campos

The core idea of this book is simple: To construct work you love, you must first build career capital by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the type of traits that define compelling careers. Mission is one of those traits.

Daniel Campos

I argued that the best ideas for missions are found in the adjacent possible—the region just beyond the current cutting edge.

Daniel Campos

Rule #1: Don't follow your passion. Rule #2: Be so good they can't ignore you by acquiring enough career capital with rare and valuable skills. Rule #3: Cash in your career capital by gaining Control and other traits that make great work. Rule #4: Think small, act big - the importance of missions.

Daniel Campos

My whole family is obsessed by brandy butter. And bread sauce. Then, of course, there will be a lot of wind in the afternoon! We have never disguised the wind side of our lives as a family; we think it's hilarious.

Miranda Hart

American nuclear reactors are well into middle age. The median age of an operating reactor in the U.S. is 34 years, placing start-up in midst of the Carter administration.

Bill Dedman

How can you tell a story with one frame that, by its simplicity, manages to tell a story, a gag that evokes an emotion in you? That became my motto throughout all my life. Simplicity.

Pierre Coffin

If you can make yourself symmetrical, you're sending out a sign that you've got good genes, you've got a good upbringing and therefore you'll make a good mate.

Marcus du Sautoy

The three discrete invariances - reflection invariance, charge conjugation invariance, and time reversal invariance - are connected by an important theorem called the CPT theorem.

Chen-Ning Yang

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Andrew Jackson

Dreams are manifestation of your deepest heart desires.

Lailah Gifty Akita

I maintain that nothing useful and lasting can emerge from violence.

Shirin Ebadi

Few contemporary artists mined the space between the ordinary and the strange better than Orozco did.

Jerry Saltz

I always know I can die at any moment.

Jonny Lee Miller

Sixties models knew nothing about skin care.

Marie Helvin

I've been fat since I was seven, and being fat sets you apart.

Cass Elliot

A manifesto is different from a magazine.

Charlotte Casiraghi

Someone asked me a while back, 'Why do artists always write about love?' And I was like, 'Love is the coolest thing that's ever happened in the world.'

Kris Allen

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

T. S. Eliot

If freedom's best friends cannot unify around a realistic, actionable program of fundamental change, one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens, big change will not come.

Mitch Daniels

Before I ever start a job that I'm really excited about, I usually have some sleepless nights or weeks or months. But that anticipation for a person like me... I don't do so well with a lot of time off.

Lily Rabe

Pakistan has not recognized Israel... any such decision would be taken in supreme national interests after due consultation of the parliament.

Shaukat Aziz

I always try to bring a certain masculine presence to what I do. That is part of the dynamic.

Mekhi Phifer

Tony Orlando is one of the nicest guys I have ever met - bar none - in my entire life. I was always a fan when I was a kid - you know, huge fan. Who wasn't a fan of Tony Orlando?

Larry the Cable Guy

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for youwhere there were only walls.

Joseph Campbell

At the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security.

Jodi Rell

Composition is definitely what I'm born to do, and it came last.

David Friedman