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.

"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.

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.

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."

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.

The confirmation for both jobs - 'AMC' and 'Smallville' - came through on the same day, so there was a lot of wine flowing in the Hartley house that night!

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

I really believe I'm no different from anyone else. I just had a few challenges I had to learn from at a very early age.

There are a lot of people who helped make Queen Latifah who she is today. I don't forget, but a lot of people do and get big heads.

I was a lawyer for 12 years in New York and Sweden.

I definitely love 'Camelot.' It's my favorite show. I'm a big 'True Blood' fan. I love 'American Idol,' and I love my girl J-Lo. The rest are my homework shows: 'Forensic Files,' 'Dr. G. Medical Examiner,' 'The First 48.'

The first job I ever had in my life was in the Dade County Sheriff's Office in the Identification Bureau in the summer that I graduated from high school and was getting ready to go to college.

They have a fine breeze and are now we hope well on their way.

I believe deeply that children are more powerful than oil, more beautiful than rivers, more precious than any other natural resource a country can have.

Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it.

I'm happy every day.

If we're afraid to stand in our own skin with those we work with, then how do we lead those who have no voice at all?

Basketball for me has always been a matter of rhythm - what you do bouncing the ball, how you bounce the ball, how you run, how you receive the ball to be in rhythm.

Our new app increases the exposure of Engel & Volkers' premier services and properties to the growing number of iPad users who are researching their real estate markets, locally and globally.

When you see me on TV, that's about as close to my real personality as you can get. There are a certain amount of folks who admire me, there are a certain amount of folks who don't, and I'm not going to try and change their mind. Nothing I can do will change their mind anyway, because they already have a good gauge of who I am as a person.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Abstinence is many times very helpful to the end of religion.

Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen.

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.

Do you not yet understand what has made woman what she is? Then see what the sickly taste and perverted judgment of man now admires in woman.

I am a New Zealander, but I don't want to swallow New Zealand identity in one gulp.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.