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

"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."

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.

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.

Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies.

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.

God and His Son are glorified personages. God the Father is our living Creator, and His Son, Jesus Christ, is our Savior and Redeemer. We have been created in God's image.

I drive my own horses in a race. And I always have.

Books open and broaden our minds allowing us to challenge ourselves to become more than we are, by setting positive goals for ourselves, and overcoming doubts about our ability to receive the education we want to achieve.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn't thinking about it in terms of a social impact.

You can go the route of not living your life at all - and a lot of actors do that, where they just won't even go out of the house at all - but it makes life so unenjoyable. You can't go out, you can't hold hands with your girlfriend, you can't do any of these things.

Clay Hunt was the kind of individual that has made America a great country. In 2005, when his country needed him, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. Shot in Iraq, he earned a Purple Heart, and after he recuperated, he graduated from Marine Corps Scout Sniper School and was deployed to Afghanistan.

I always end up taking people that are morally ambiguous.

I do get approached every day by people who say, 'Why don't you make more movies?' I don't really miss it when I get to go and watch my daughter in the Christmas pageant.

There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the Praiseworthy.

'The Hobbit' didn't include female characters at all and was a very linear story, a book for children, really.

When ambitious desires arise in thy heart, recall the days of extremity thou have passed through. Forbearance is the root of all quietness and assurance forever.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.

I've waited my entire life to be busy. Whenever I hear actors complain about being busy, I think, 'shut up.' Because you do, you wait to be successful or to be able to work.

What's fantastic is that there's a real growing appreciation for performance-capture technology as a tool for acting.

People really want to set up these rivalries because there's a lot of vampire books out there. People want to believe we're all fierce rivals, and really there's just so much camaraderie with authors. Everyone kind of boosts each other.

Some people tend to believe that I'm a strong believer, a strong Christian, but that's not true. I'm not a strong believer. I'm very weak.

In every book I write, I try to name-check the most prominent influences, or the most prominent conscious influences.

Well, there are three different processes of making a film, of course. They're sort of re-written three times. You write it to start with, and then you shoot it and you re-write it while shooting and you sort of re-write it as you edit.

The wealth of the country, its capital, its credit, must be saved from the predatory poor as well as the predatory rich, but above all from the predatory politician.

The funniest comedians are in touch with their emotional level.