The traits that define great work are rare and valuable.

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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

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

I feel lucky that I got to work with some of the big legends in town.

Yvonne Strahovski

I do not want to say I'm a product designer. I've been trying all my life to not be categorized, to learn something and then to forget about it.

Milton Glaser

I'm telling you, there is a lot of power in being unapologetic.

Dax Shepard

But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be the major institution through which children pass en route to adulthood.

Bernice Weissbourd

I'm not going to go back to gambling; I mean, it's as simple as that.

Pete Rose

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

Bill Gates

If I wasn't making a movie, I was trying to master a new musical instrument or trying to teach myself how to shave with a straight razor. I had to find the weirdest things just to increase my understanding of other cultures or other arts or intellectual pursuits.

Chris Wood

Silence is golden

Unknown

Just for fun, I'm really goofy and I would love to do some stupid comedy. I'm talking, like, crazy, out there, Will Ferrell type of thing. I love it; I think those movies are so funny.

Jaimie Alexander

Life is short, but the years are long.

Robert A. Heinlein

My dad won an Oscar in 1951 with an un-Anglicized name, the first Hispanic to ever win an Oscar, and the Academy is so intractable to this day.

Miguel Ferrer

If Google teaches you anything, it's that small ideas can be big.

Ben Silbermann

You dont enter a dance studio and say I cant do that. If you do then why are you in the studio in the first place

Judith Jamison

My hobbies away from horse racing would be reading and painting; I love art.

Chantal Sutherland

Don't fight darkness - bring the light, and darkness will disappear.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

If you so choose, each day can be filled with even more joy than the one before. If you so choose, even the most seemingly random events can work in your favor.

Ralph Marston

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Isaac Asimov

The CGI landscape is another world. It has its own physical laws; it can defy gravity. But surely the wonder of cinematic space is that it is wedded to reality?

Geoff Dyer

Here's my heart and soul, please grind them into hamburger, and enjoy.

Meredith Grey

Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Joe McCarthy and his Senate hearings were like witch-hunts.

Desi Arnaz

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

Ludwig von Mises

I go to the gym pretty regularly.

Martin O'Malley