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.

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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

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

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

The main difference to me with Lyft is the sense of community and social experience. The pink mustache, fist bump and strict screening have fostered a strong sense of community with many stories of new friends, discovered jobs, and even some Lyft hugs after a tough break up.

John Zimmer

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

Jimmy Breslin

The hindrances to being psychic are a general dullness that develops from living in the material world and being a material girl.

Frederick Lenz

Nobody wants to retire from football.

LaDainian Tomlinson

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

John 4:7

I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.

Daniel Barenboim

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

Victor Hugo

Lighthouses are endlessly suggestive signifiers of both human isolation and our ultimate connectedness to each other.

Virginia Woolf

Any adaptation is a translation, and there is such a thing as an unreadably faithful translation; and I believe a degree of reinterpretation for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable.

David Mitchell

Ninety percent of the hands aren't shown in a poker game.

Doyle Brunson

My mother gave me this book called Feature Films at Used Car Prices by a guy named Rick Schmidt. I gotta credit the guy, cuz he gave me the most practical advice. It empowers you.

Vin Diesel

I feel that things happen for a reason and open up new opportunities.

Jil Sander

Touch is the mother of the senses. Not only are women more sensitive when they touch, but they're also more sensitive to being touched.

Helen Fisher

Don’t be afraid to just sit and watch.

Anthony Bourdain

I'd rather work all night and sleep all day... perhaps I was a mole in my last incarnation.

Ida Lupino

My father thought of America as the last best hope for humanity. He believed we had a historical mission to be a paragon to the rest of the world, to be about what human beings can accomplish if they work together and maintain their focus.

Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Auditions make me nervous; any time I have to perform, I get stage fright.

Octavia Spencer

I have a lot of confidence through my accomplishments. I'm always trying to prove I'm not the worthless child they say I was.

Paul Greengard

I like to write scenes in the middle of the night. We could change every word of 'Family Ties' between Monday and Friday.

Gary David Goldberg

You change the world by being yourself.

Yoko Ono

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.

David Oyelowo

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Paulo Coelho

Just as a son, to be a son of man, must be of the same nature and spirit of his father; so with the sons of God, and so it will be with all who are born of the spirit of God.

Elias Hicks