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

What you wear for work should be comfortable and empowering. If you're working in business, your outfit should mean business. If I go to meet somebody about an acting job, or something creative, then I'll be in my jeans. For me, overdressing is my biggest fear.

Twiggy

Plagiarism is basic to all culture.

Pete Seeger

'True Blood' differs from 'Six Feet Under' in that there are way more characters and plot-lines, but fundamentally it's still about the characters and their emotions.

Alan Ball

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

Shunryu Suzuki

The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly.

John Charles Polanyi

A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.

Arthur W. Pinero

You need some quick wins in order to stay pumped enough to get out of debt completely.

Dave Ramsey

Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.

P. J. O'Rourke

You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea.

Medgar Evers

People can see it when you're honest and sincere.

Chamillionaire

My brother said 'I want to start acting,' and me and my sister just said, 'Oh we'll try it, we'll see.' It was just one of those things - we were just like, 'Oh, we'll see what happens.'

Willow Shields

Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.

Dean Koontz

The wisest rule in investment is: when others are selling, buy. When others are buying, sell. Usually, of course, we do the opposite. When everyone else is buying, we assume they know something we don't, so we buy. Then people start selling, panic sets in, and we sell too.

Jonathan Sacks

Interviews don't go to the core of my life. Everybody knows my life - it's an open book.

Michael Moriarty

Sometimes I even now feel like a stranger in my country. But I knew there would be problems because I had seen the world as a skater. And now? A lot of people in eastern Germany have lost jobs, rents went up, food costs went up, unemployment went to 20 percent. Freedom is good, but it is not easy.

Katarina Witt

The premieres are, kind of exciting, especially to Ella, who loves limousines.

Kelly Preston

Choosing is a creative process, one through which we construct our environment, our lives, ourselves.

Sheena Iyengar

Not in our make-up, to be sure - not in the pose which is preceded by the tantaras of a trumpet - do the essential traits in our character first reveal themselves. But truly in the little things the real self is exteriorised.

Ameen Rihani

I still have the sword of Inigo Montoya - it's mine!

Mandy Patinkin

When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.

Phil Collins

I don't care about movies. I tend to play badminton once a week.

Edward Witten

I kind of wanted to be a waitress in New York City. I thought it was fun and glamorous in its own way. Like in the movie 'Beaches,' when Bette Midler is banging on the radiator, and it's cold, and she's poor. I kind of thought that would be fun to be, like, a poor, struggling actor.

Kether Donohue