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

We generate fears when we sit. We overcome them by action.

Dr. Henry Link

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

A. E. Housman

Whatever happens, just keep smiling and lose yourself in love.

Rumi

I'm thankful for the work that feminists like Gloria Steinem have done. I am a feminist, but the geography for women today is vastly different than it was in the '60s.

Amber Heard

If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites.

Gary Hamel

These performers that go on about their technique and craft - oh, puleeze! How boring! I don't know what 'technique' means. But I do know what experience is.

Elaine Stritch

If I don't create, I don't exist.

Ingmar Bergman

Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized.

Allan Armitage

What the human being sees, what is poured into his environment, becomes a force in him. In accordance with it, he forms himself.

Rudolf Steiner

Once your career becomes about something other than the music, then that's what it is. I'll never make that mistake.

Eric Church

Dont feel guilty about driving somewhere nice to run. If people can drive to a park to eat hot dogs you can drive there to run.

Bill Rodgers

I pledge tonight to be Mayor for all of the people of this city - for one Chicago.

Jane Byrne

The Dark Side of the Moon has flash - the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance.

Alan Parsons

It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.

Ernie Pyle

My face frowns by default, so when I'm most calm is when I appear the least approachable.

Ken Leung

When I thought about having the greatest impact with my life, I thought about all the times people lose loved ones because diseases weren't detected early enough. I thought, 'I can play a role there.'

Elizabeth Holmes

If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow with the neglect the market fosters.

Helen Clark

You don't have to be an heiress to look like one, if you act like one then everyone will just presume you are one.

Paris Hilton

I guess, as a reporter, I always thought that my biggest strength was that I could get anybody to talk to me. I wasn't the best writer, but I could get people to talk to me.

Jose Antonio Vargas

During that space walk there will be some repositioning of the power so that the arm can be fully controlled by the robotic station that is in the Lab.

Umberto Guidoni

It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry. It's amazing how many people go into the ministry who don't really like to be with people.

John Piper

As far as vintage Champagne goes, I loved 1990; it's a great, great vintage. I bought a lot of 1990 Blanc de Blancs Champagne - my favorite kind - and I plan on drinking it all by 2005.

Robert M. Parker, Jr.

There've been times when I've bought a whole pound of cheese and walked down the street and eaten it in one go.

Helena Christensen