To maximize your chances of success, you should deploy small, concrete experiments that return concrete feedback.

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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

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

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

Basketball is a game that gives you every chance to be great and puts every pressure on you to prove that you havent got what it takes. It never takes away the chance and it never eases up on the pressure.

Bob Sundvold

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The networks are not some chicken-coop manufacturing lobby whose calls nobody returns.

Ralph Nader

Without Greece, it is not possible to preserve the integrity of the European phenomenon.

Evangelos Venizelos

That feeling when you're so cold you'd give anything to be warm - I've had it before, literally huddled around a candle flame on an ice sheet.

Bear Grylls

Everyone loves fried chicken, Don't ever make it. Ever. Buy it from a place that makes good fried chicken.

Nora Ephron

Just true to form with life sometimes - what you're trying to do doesn't necessarily work out, but what ends up happening can be a lot better. I just relax and say whatever is going to happen - happens.

Tyler Hilton

King Charles II liked women's company and well as making love to them.

Antonia Fraser

Something goes wrong, I yell at them -"Fix it"- whether it's their fault or not. You can only really yell at the players you trust.

Bill Parcells

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.

Friedrich Schiller

The Pop art I wound up doing came to me purely from 'Mad' comics. I loved the idea of doing fun stuff. I met an art dealer who wanted to show the work - that was in January 1962 - and that was the beginning for me.

Peter Saul

Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family.

Isabel Allende

I want to be the candidate placed on the ballot by the people, not the party.

Andrew Cuomo

The great thing about working with NPR - and, really, there's like a million of 'em - is all the cool stuff I get to do for the public. Meet the president. Hang out at the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas. Drink a $10,000 martini.

John Ridley

If you talk to any actor, they'll tell you that working is the best thing.

Daniel Cudmore

There's something so healthy about young people speaking up in unity.

Robbie Robertson

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

Tom Robbins

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence

Deepak Chopra

Things don't really impress me. Memories impress me. It's not the toys, it's the people.

R. A. Salvatore

If you think you are too small to make a difference try sleeping with a mosquito.

Dalai Lama

To me, romance and suspense go hand in hand. What's more suspenseful than wondering how two wonderful people can manage to get together in spite of the world going crazy around them?

Maggie Shayne

I think you really have to remember what you loved about making music in the first place. Ultimately, people can be like, 'We've seen this dude in many movies,' but if they hear a song and they're feeling it, they can look past all the personal things and not hold it against you that you're also an actor.

Common

Ballet is only good when it is great.

Arlene Croce