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.

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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

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

If I can get a sanitized version of reality, I'll take it.

Darrell Hammond

I'm a character actress.

Shelley Morrison

Simplicity makes me happy.

Alicia Keys

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.

Mark Skousen

There is a fetishization of victimization in our culture. And I just am not interested in victimhood.

Alan Ball

I've been approached by a couple of people who've recognized me from 'Jack Reacher.' It's great... when the feedback's positive. I don't know if I look forward to the day when I can't go out and get a cup of coffee. I kinda hope that day never happens.

Jai Courtney

I've never been out of work in my whole life.

Peter Hook

I regret the 1998 - 99 lockout. I regret that we didn't work harder to educate our players and our owners about what the damage would be. I never can quite come up with the answer on what else we should have done, but I always blame a part of the problem on us and some part on the players.

David Stern

People haven't seen enough of me. My fights haven't gone the distance, and people have a lot of questions. I want to find out for myself as much as the people do. I want to find out what I can do.

Gerry Cooney

You know what? Joy is the only guide. I'm going to have fun regardless.

Joseph Fiennes

The one thing I've learned about friends is that the good ones are rare.

Lauren Conrad

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

Ray Kroc

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

Douglas Macarthur

It is the police of America who are on the front lines, who are on the streets, who are in the daily contact with American citizens, who translate the dreams of American citizens when they succeed and frustrate the dreams when they fail.

Janet Reno

I definitely understand not entirely fitting in. I think everyone has their own version of feeling out of place and I think one of the great things we have the ability to do is to know it's all right. It's OK to have that awkward phase.

Rumer Willis

Our immigration system is a broken system that needs to be fixed. We need reform that provides hardworking people of good character with a real path towards citizenship.

Joe Baca

If you live in the overlapping world of politics and media, as I am learning, anything less than full transparency can potentially do you in.

Campbell Brown

I failed to get into drama school, and my best friend told me I should do stand-up instead. I was always doing gags and voices, so he booked a gig for me without telling me. I only had four days to write it. I did a seven-minute set; the first four minutes were terrible, but the last two were amazing.

Marcus Brigstocke

This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking.

Lionel Trilling

I actually read 'Wonder Woman,' and here's the thing about her: she's more of a physical presence than anything else. You don't get to really know her on the inside.

Jaimie Alexander

We can appear to be tough as nails, but guys have a level of insecurity and vulnerability that's exponentially bigger than you think. With the primal urge to be alpha comes extreme heartbreak. The harder we fight, the harder we fall.

John Krasinski

My problem is that I do not get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them.

Camille Paglia

I just think we're on this rock orbiting a sun that's going to go out, and I don't know that human society is necessarily a wonderful thing for the planet. I think people can be kind to one another and share things, but I don't know that this particular iteration of civilization is to be preferred to any other.

Jesse Ball