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.

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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

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

Those who make happiness the chief objective of life are bound to fail, for happiness is a by-product rather than an end in itself.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass the test.

George W. Bush

It's so great to show up at work and truly enjoy every word you say.

Ian Somerhalder

We are not here to be successful we are here to be FAITHFUL.

Mother Teresa

Hollywood can be a very stinging town. They say it's a forgiving business. It's not that forgiving.

Jeff Conaway

I never wanted to be an actor.

Moon Bloodgood

I'm pulling out, and I'm going to concentrate every ounce of time and energy over the next week working to defeat the recall because I realize now that's the only way to defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arianna Huffington

Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it.

Hannah Arendt

I am the underdog - the 5-foot, 6-inch wrestler. The kids don't say, 'I can beat Rey.' Instead, they say, 'I can be like Rey.'

Rey Mysterio

I like to challenge myself. I like to learn - so I like to try new things and try to keep growing.

David Schwimmer

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Baruch Spinoza

It is a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to a waiter.

Don Herold

Washington is dominated by big money.

Bernie Sanders

I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor.

Sue Townsend

If you have a secret, and it's embarrassing to you, when you tell that story - you own it. It becomes yours, and no one can use it against you.

Aisha Tyler

Everyone I tell that I had an aneurysm always says, 'Oh, my cousin died from that.' Well, I didn't, so I'm amazed. I was in a wheelchair, and I had to go to rehab. And now I'm walking!

Teri Garr

I think I started out trying to be very objective about the flow of the play.

James Rado

Humour allows people to exhale a little.

Zach Anner

When I was in Seattle, I listened to Carlos Guillen and other older players.

Asdrubal Cabrera

I think we are living in a time where the consumer has lots of choices, whether it's coffee, newspapers or whatever it is. And there is parity in the market place, and as a result of that, the consumer is beginning to make decisions, not just on what things cost and the convenience of it.

Howard Schultz

You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and by falling over.

Richard Branson

When you conceive the scene, you go, 'That is scary, right?' When you shoot it, a lot of times you're not quite sure. Hopefully what you can shoot is what your conception is.

James Wan

Value in medicine depends on information - as I said in 'Let Patients Help,' 'People perform better when they're informed better.' It follows that to make patients and families more effective in care, they need to know more.

Dave deBronkart