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.

42

26

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.

Get

Explore more quotes

"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

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

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

There is only one Mariano Rivera. There won't be another person who will come along and do what he did. No one does it like him. It was an honor to catch him and play alongside him for as long as I did. He made my job as a catcher so much easier. Mariano is a special person and obviously a special player.

Jorge Posada

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

Garrett Hardin

Why go now? That is the question people asked when I announced I was retiring. A combination of things made me feel it was all drawing to a natural end.

Graeme Le Saux

I just live my life how I live as a person. I certainly am not, like, a saint or an angel by any means. I'm not anything like that. But I live just how I live. I mean, I have a little paranoia, but that's about it.

Emma Stone

In most companies people make a specific contribution to the company in their function. But it is not expressed in terms of profit, only in terms of performing their function better.

Carlos Ghosn

You know what the secret to weight loss is? Don't eat much.

Simon Cowell

I don't drink at lunchtime because I'm very weak at alcohol like most Asians.

Ha-Joon Chang

But I've come to the point in my evolution on the instrument where I realize that I can't play the same stuff that just a guitar player or organ player would play - and I need to embrace that in a big way.

Charlie Hunter

I definitely think it exercises an interesting muscle, auditioning for bad parts and trying to figure out how to make it real. I don't know what I'm talking about now.

Anna Kendrick

To impose taxes when the public exigencies require them is an obligation of the most sacred character, especially with a free people.

James Monroe

No one doubts the enormity of the social challenges we face around the world but one critical element of our response must be the generation of new thinking and ideas. Yet creating the conditions that make this possible is not simple.

Simon Mainwaring

Jewelry takes peoples minds off your wrinkles.

Sarah Phillips

We took an approach, supported by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Mayor for London, that we had very real fears of violence and damage being caused across the streets of London.

Michael Todd

When you have very lax parents, you tend to get more conservative kids.

Hanya Yanagihara

Indians have very good engineering capabilities, and that is why, if an industry focuses on innovation, you will have a far greater chance of success, rather than the model which is based on just being a production machine.

Baba Kalyani

I was just an ordinary student. I'd always gotten along with authorities quite well.

Oliver Tambo

I cannot doubt that women will line up, like the men elected, with the groups whose political thinking and convictions are in accord with their own political convictions.

Edith Rogers

Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.

James Lovelock

Capital isn't that important in business. Experience isn't that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas.

Harvey S. Firestone

When it comes to hockey, it's been in my blood since I was 3 or 4 years old. I love coaching the kids, especially at that level.

Mario Lemieux

I didn't go to law school to become a lawyer, per se - let's just say I was leaning in to some strong suggestions from my parents - but my nebulous goals of someday becoming a writer were just that, nebulous.

Rachel Sklar

I wait for the next opportunity to have something to do with food. If I get rested, my mind just starts creating new dishes - click, click, click.

Paul Prudhomme

The best fantasy does not offer an answer to our lives, it is an offering that acknowledges enough of the truth to resonate and add to the understanding about the human condition.

Isobelle Carmody