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.

"Follow your passion" might just be terrible advice.

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.

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.

Working right trumps finding the right work.

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.

The traits that define great work are rare and valuable.

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

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. 

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.

Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable.

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

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

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.

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

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Employees can make happiness when they maximize their brainwork voluntarily and enthusiastically. Management should focus on setting up an atmosphere.

Dont give up on the people you love. Your patient love and faithfulness may be exactly what they need to make a complete turn around.

Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: 'After a heavy rainfall, poems titled 'Rain' pour in from across the nation.'

Including my nine years as a student, the majority of my life has been at Hokkaido University. After my retirement from the university in 1994, I served at two private universities in Okayama Prefecture - Okayama University of Science and Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts - before retiring from university work in 2002.

I cannot get into cottage cheese, and I've tried a lot. Yogurt is hard for me to eat, too. I have to hold my nose to get it down. There's something wrong with that.

You can find hope in despair. Dwell on positive thoughts.

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

I think as a business it would be amazing if the euro was to collapse, but financially and economically I think that would be a bit of a tsunami for everybody to cope with.

People often ask why comedy is harder for women, and the reason is because a tampon will sometimes fall out when you're on stage. Blokes don't have that worry.

If anyone wants to ask a question or to suggest something, I'm always open.

Selling records is fantastic. But if you're not loving what you do, and if everybody is throwing knives at you, it can get old very fast.

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.

My full name's Jonathan Kimble, but my parents didn't want to call me either. So for a while, I went by Kim, which is a name for a girl or a Korean person.

I like movies that are specific. Movies that home in on a very specific subculture, a specific discipline, a specific world.

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.

In general, I think very few people have a sustained interest in news.

You could consider a new beginning as the start of a new year. A fresh start a new goal a year to make your dreams come true. Be determined and persevere.

It is no small thing for an American to be able to go into a fast-food restaurant and to buy a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke for a price equal to less than an hour of labor at the minimum wage - indeed, in the long sweep of history, this represents a remarkable achievement.

All my day is spent dealing with other people. When I come home I like it to be empty. The presence of others in my house kind of annoys me. I love coming home and shutting the doors. I feel brain dead. I'm relatively available, but not to live with.

I did nothing but dramas for seven years in New York. I didn't really start anything comedic until I moved out to L.A. and found The Groundlings.

Golf is supposed to be fun, but I don't think anything is fun if you're not doing it reasonably well.

I love putting people to work of color.