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

They're still in the game, and they're trying to get back into it.

Jimmy Hill

Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood.

Moliere

I have absolutely no empathy for camels. I didnt care for being abused in the Middle East by those horrible horrible horrible creatures. They dont like people. Its not at all like the relationship between horses and humans.

Rachel Weiz

I've always loved acting with adults versus like the whole High School feel.

Alison Lohman

If you're not a makeup artist, and you just try to go for the big looks, it just gets the best of you.

Gigi Hadid

Remember this: classics never make a comeback. They wait for that perfect moment to take the spotlight from overdone, tired trends.

Tabatha Coffey

Toxic remnants of war represent a profound challenge for the protection of public health and the restoration of the environment in countries affected by conflict.

Widad Akrawi

Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.

Arthur Machen

I didn't intend to go into the seminar business.

Marilyn Ferguson

I'm not into street clothes. Don't understand it. I don't understand those over-exaggerated jean sizes so they hang off your back... I just don't understand it.

Ozwald Boateng

If you perform your work viewing it as your dharma your actions become sacred.

Mata Amritanandamayi

Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.

Henry Adams

I'm in five guilds; that's a lot of dues to pay. So I have to keep on working.

Griffin Dunne

I don't see why it's such a stretch for distributors, buyers, and studios to put cartoon characters into adult situations on film.

Bill Plympton

Compared to people in Africa, I think we've all had privileged upbringings.

Julian Casablancas

I think is important to give a child room to make mistakes in order to learn. Mistakes build wings so later in life they can fly and go on their own. Let them fall once in awhile... Be their friend and parent as well. When they're in trouble, they will come to you first. Don't try to change their opinion.

Melania Trump

The product cycle for the Oculus Rift will be between the rapid six-month cycle of cell-phones and the slower seven-year cycle of consoles. It's rare to see a phone not coming out every year.

Brendan Iribe

You know, it's a really adult thing, for some people, to choose to not be with the one that you love.

Parker Posey

It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.

Abigail Tarttelin

Young people and Indian people need to know that we existed in the 20th Century. We need to know who our heroes are and to know what we have done and accomplished in this century other than what Olympic athletes Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills have done.

Russell Means

You can do anything. You can go anywhere. Money, power is an illusion. It's up here. You can be here. Me and you.

Into The Wild

The brave man, indeed, calls himself lord of the land, through his iron, through his blood.

Ernst Moritz Arndt

Everybody accuses me of moving fast when I direct a picture. I don't move fast, but I just keep moving.

Clint Eastwood