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

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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

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

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

Despite a campaign that was based on a very powerful promise of transparency, President Obama, and again in my view quite correctly, has used the state secrets argument in a variety of courts, as much as President Bush.

Michael Hayden

Each step of the way I'm learning. When I leave an interview, I learn whether I feel, 'Oh, that was nice,' or that made me feel like a little piece of me was taken. It's a line that is always on the edge of being crossed, and once you cross it, what's next?

Brie Larson

Everybody handles things differently.

Terry Bradshaw

Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding.

Brian Greene

I am not convinced that lack of encryption is the primary problem. The problem with the Internet is that it is meant for communications among non-friends.

Whitfield Diffie

God tipped the country and all the fruits and nuts rolled west.

Mike Royko

Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.

Gilda Radner

Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; Love me no more, but love my love of thee.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Diving into Internet speculation is like playing with the devil. It's tempting, of course.

Theo James

I'm different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man. Dying's for fools, dying's for amateurs.

Charlie Sheen

I like being challenged. That's the only way you grow.

Jason Ritter

I hated every minute of training, but I said, Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.

Muhammad Ali

As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers. You want these kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they're an escape.

Paolo Bacigalupi

I've consciously taken on material that's a bit too much for me but not an overreach. The first movie, just about performances. 'The Town,' I learned how to work broader material, develop tension, direct bigger scenes, action sequences. 'Argo,' I experimented with film stock, widened the scope of my geography.

Ben Affleck

There are lots of people I admire and respect, but I don't necessarily want to be like them. I'm to happy being myself.

James D'arcy

He who lives without discipline dies without honor.

Icelandic Proverb

Immortality Device has been tested and researched by medical researchers all over the world from time to time. They email me and told me what they found. I post their results sometimes on my site.

Alex Chiu

I have designed the most buildings of any living American architect.

Alexander Jackson Davis

I remember in high school trying to get home from water-polo practice in time so I could see Happy Days on television when it first came on, because I was so blown away by it. It was just such a cool thing.

Ted McGinley

Fathers like mothers are not born. Men grow into fathers and fathering is a very important stage in their development.

David M. Gottesman

I don't know how to play evil.

Carice van Houten

No level of border security, no wall, doubling the size of the border patrol, all these things will not stop the illegal migration from countries as long as a 7-year-old is desperate enough to flee on her own and travel the entire length of Mexico because of the poverty and the violence in her country.

Jeh Johnson

Unfortunately, I can only act; I do not have the looks, but I am very happy with what God has given me.

Dhanush