"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."

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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

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

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

John Burnside

Always have a plan when you shop. Have your list ready so that you know who you're purchasing gifts for and an estimate on how much you're going to spend.

John Rampton

If we must part forever Give me but one kind word to think upon And please myself with while my hearts breaking.

Thomas Otway

I could read music and sing all the right notes at the right time. And over time, I literally found my voice, found a way to make sound.

Caroline Shaw

I am just like my mother. She raised me to love and take care of animals, especially the ones that need it the most and so I started Eddie's Rescue Ranch. We take in animals that need extra care and attention and the animals that get left behind.

Kelly Clarkson

Obamacare is socialism? Nope - as insurance companies vie to sell new policies, competition within private industry is growing rapidly, with the number of participating insurers growing by 26 percent between 2014 and 2015, and the number of products they offer growing by 66 percent.

Kurt Eichenwald

Design, to me, is part psychology, part sociology, and part magic. A good decorator should know what's going on in someone's marriage and how their kids are doing in school.

Nate Berkus

No one's promised anything. You could have the biggest record on radio and sell no records.

Nas

The more we can purge ourselves of the diseases we create the more we can become magnificent people.

Judith Light

Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers.

Buzz Aldrin

A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'

Bob Shacochis

We identify New York with the great bridges and tunnels and roadways and subway system and so forth.

Paul Goldberger

I don't have a model's body. But I'm not one of those crazy girls who thinks that they're fat. I'm okay with what I have. I can rock this body, you know?

Hayden Panettiere

We await the successsive births in the soul of the child. We give all possible material, that nothing may lack to the groping soul, and then we watch for the perfect faculty to come, safeguarding the child from interruption so that it may carry its efforts through.

Maria Montessori

When I was young, I kissed my first woman and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. Believe me, never since have I wasted any more time on tobacco.

Arturo Toscanini

Persecution, whenever it occurs, establishes only the power and cunning of the persecutor, not the truth and worth of his belief.

H. M. Kallen

Above all else, never think you're not good enough.

Anthony Trollope

I'm sure everyone that has ever done an action movie has just drooled over how full of talent Bruce Lee was and how unique he was.

Jason Statham

I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.

Shane Claiborne

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

Thomas Jefferson

I don't like lifts and will walk up 20 flights of stairs if I have to. Crowded rooms make me uncomfortable, too, although I can sing to a stadium full of thousands of people no bother.

Robin Gibb

I've had it with you and your emotional constipation!

Washington Irving

Every generation is gonna keep changing, and you just have to embrace the change.

Wyclef Jean