Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital.

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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

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

Online advertising works, although it lands especially on search engines like Google and Yahoo. They achieve much higher revenues online than the websites of publishing companies.

Hubert Burda

The second time around, I'll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn't care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

Kevin Hart

Until I'm actually stood on the set doing the job, I always keep my options open.

Katherine Kelly

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

Dr. Seuss

A true friend is someone who is always there during the ups and downs, I actually have a song called 'True Friend'.

Miley Cyrus

I think to be 'tough' means you look relaxed. So you have to be tough to win tournaments. But you don't want to be so tough on yourself.

Yani Tseng

Cooking is for chefs. Science informs us and lets us cook while knowing what we are doing, but it is not a replacement for the skills of a chef.

Nathan Myhrvold

I'm not saying you have to be totally despondent or anything, but... in New York, it's cold sometimes; it rains sometimes; even if everything in your life is great, bad weather can set the mood. You can write songs in New York because it's not always perfect. To write a good song, things can't be perfect.

Tom Odell

My goal is to be really incredible by the time I'm 70.

Kurt Elling

I listen to all kinds of music, but I've always been a really big fan of Top 40 radio. If I'm in my car, that's what I listen to.

Aaron Tveit

Let's be honest with one another: almost everything is too long except life, and I know people who wouldn't even concur with that exception.

Howard Jacobson

To be pregnant is to be vitally alive, thoroughly woman, and distressingly inhabited. Soul and spirit are stretched “ along with body “ making pregnancy a time of transition, growth, and profound beginnings.

Anne Christian Buchanan

When you have a tough loss, go through it and agonize. I had one loss that I still want to change, but at the same time I realize it is an important part of who I am.

Andrew Shue

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

Mark Shields

It is not surprising, then, that in the decade since Oslo began, Arafat used all the resources placed at his disposal to fan the flames of hatred against Israel.

Natan Sharansky

I don't have a problem with Werner Herzog.

Abel Ferrara

When I was 13, I asked for a guitar. And that's how I really started explaining my point of view.

Katy Perry

The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.

Ken Kesey

Teach your children they're unique. That way, they won't feel pressured to be like everybody else.

Cindy Cashman

I don't miss anything about the 1960s, not really. I did it. It's like asking, 'Do you miss the fourth grade?' I loved the fourth grade when I was in it, but I don't want to do it again.

Grace Slick

Now along comes the potential creative destruction brought by a different distribution methodology, the Internet.

Barry Diller

Standing by myself, just having everybody looking at me the entire time, is not my idea of a good time.

Jane Lynch

If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate.

Steven Pinker