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.

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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

Working right trumps finding the right work.

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

I was encouraged to stand for Parliament by David Cameron, and he has given me the opportunity to serve in what I believe is a great, reforming government. I think he is an outstanding Prime Minister.

Michael Gove

But my attitude about it is I have miles to go before I sleep.

Peabo Bryson

Every role affords me something different in the way of understanding, and that's really why you take these roles, not to show that thing that people talk about of showing what you can do - that has nothing to do with anything.

Phylicia Rashad

Riding a motorcycle on today's highways, you have to ride in a very defensive manner. You have to be a good rider and you have to have both hands and both feet on the controls at all times.

Evel Knievel

But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Stephen King

I'd rather write a check than make myself look ridiculous.

Rocky Wirtz

The product, abortion, is skillfully marketed and sold to the woman at the crisis time in her life. She buys the product, finds it defective and wants to return it for a refund. But, it's too late.

Carol Everett

I always hated the part when I had to look pretty. I love that I don't have to look pretty.

Marsha Mason

I am the actor that I am. I do what I do. I've been a 'leading man' playing romantic leads for a long time now.

Pierce Brosnan

Scandal dies sooner of itself, than we could kill it.

Benjamin Rush

To me, Valentine's Day is not merely limited to a lover but speaks of universal love.

Dimple Kapadia

I think what's cool about a body-switching movie is, 'The grass is always greener:' the idea that someone else has a better life than I do.

Jim Rash

I do have siblings, but I don't have any brothers.

Sonequa Martin-Green

Money can't buy poverty.

Marty Feldman

One of the fundamental discoveries I made about myself - early enough to make use of it - was that I am driven to seize life and to understand it. The motor that pushes me is propelled by more than scientific curiosity.

Craig Venter

You dont have to be crazy to be my friend but it sure helps

Unkown

I thought I was going to school to be other people, but really, what I learned was to be myself - accepting myself, my strengths and weaknesses.

Lupita Nyong'o

If I don't have friends, then I ain't got nothing.

Billie Holiday

Choose to experience peace rather than conflict.

Gerald Jampolsky

Jimi was a good guy 'til he got into drugs. That's the way it is. I just tell it like it is.

Dick Dale

If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make plenty when he gets to college.

John Gardner

Honestly, I'm on the road so much that I never really get a chance to go to baseball games.

Young Jeezy

When I wrote my cookbook, 'I Love Crab Cakes,' I asked some of my best chef buddies to contribute recipes.

Tom Douglas