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

I do not believe in self-proclaimed parties.

Ernest Mandel

It's part of our pop culture to give animals human personalities and talents.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I wasn't the most popular girl in school by any means.

Cindy Crawford

Even when I was little, people would always ask me if I wanted to be a movie star, and I would always say, 'No, I just want to be an actor.'

Wil Wheaton

I'm reasonably good at talking onstage, but actually holding court in a pub is all to do with power dynamics which I don't think has anything to do with fiction.

Ned Beauman

Sleeping is forbidden at the age of 22. It's all work and no play.

Usher Raymond

She became so important to them that they wondered how they had ever managed without her in the past. And the longer she stayed with them the more indispensable she became, so indispensable in fact that their one fear was that she might some day move on.

Michael Ende

Short sellers sell stock they have borrowed, hoping to buy it back later when its price has fallen.

Alex Berenson

The Russians and the Chinese have been absolutely clear they don't want to see Iran with a nuclear weapon.

Hillary Clinton

I don't like all suburbs, just like I don't like all parts of cities.

Richard Hayne

Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it's the only place where we can keep track of ideas.

Reza Aslan

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.

Robert Fulghum

Your heart weeps a little bit when you have to say goodbye to a crew you spend two months with, but when it comes to the part, when you live so close to someone for two months, it kind of fades away and then you see her again on screen later on.

Josephine de La Baume

The beauty of collaboration between older and younger generations is that we combine strength with wisdom a surefire way to accomplish more for the glory of God.

Brett Harris

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

Carl Jung

I have an issue with others ordering for me, and I spend far too long haranguing people that my choices are the best. I apologize for the amount of conversations I have ruined with this attitude.

Ben Elliot

I'm restless. I'm all the time here and there and trying to get myself busy and creative. It's something that's part of my personality since I was a kid.

Edgar Ramirez

As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scen.

Jacques Derrida

Well meet again Dont know wheredont know when But I know well meet again some sunny day.

Vera Lynn

For me, nothing is given.

Pharrell Williams

To get to record and to do things with the legends, and with the people that are your musical heroes, that's the biggest honor as an artist.

Zac Brown

I don't find it a struggle to maintain a healthy diet now as my palate has changed. I don't crave rich food.

Jennifer Ellison

Early on, even before he was the front-runner, TV news was giving Trump far more attention than other candidates and far more than he deserved.

Campbell Brown