|
84127c7
|
You're either remarkable or invisible," says Seth Godin in his 2002 bestseller, Purple Cow.1 As he elaborated in a Fast Company manifesto he published on the subject: "The world is full of boring stuff--brown cows--which is why so few people pay attention.... A purple cow... now that would stand out. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing."2 When Giles read Godin's book, he had an epiphany: For his mission to buil..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
ec40c82
|
The passion hypothesis is not just wrong, it's also dangerous. Telling someone to "follow their passion" is not just an act of innocent optimism, but potentially the foundation for a career riddled with confusion and angst."
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
5e1c1fb
|
Digital minimalists see new technologies as tools to be used to support things they deeply value--not as sources of value themselves. They don't accept the idea that offering some small benefit is justification for allowing an attention-gobbling service into their lives, and are instead interested in applying new technology in highly selective and intentional ways that yield big wins. Just as important: they're comfortable missing out on ev..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
a30d01c
|
Here's a case where someone successfully followed their passion," they say, "therefore 'follow your passion' must be good advice." This is faulty logic. Observing a few instances of a strategy working does not make it universally effective."
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
77b74a2
|
If you go after more control in your working life without a rare and valuable skill to offer in return, you're likely pursuing a mirage.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
00cdaed
|
Step 1: Decide What Capital Market You're In For the sake of clarity, I will introduce some new terminology. When you are acquiring career capital in a field, you can imagine that you are acquiring this capital in a specific type of career capital market. There are two types of these markets: winner-take-all and auction. In a winner-take-all market, there is only one type of career capital available, and lots of different people competing f..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
dfb7b13
|
Don't follow your passion; rather, let it follow you in your quest to become, in the words of my favorite Steve Martin quote, "so good that they can't ignore you." To" --
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
e19f751
|
I love what I do for a living. I'm also confident that as I continue my commitment to the ideas discovered in my quest, this love will only deepen. Thomas feels the same way about his work. So do most of the people I profiled in the book. I
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
644aaa4
|
To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
dd2ace2
|
When she leveraged her value to obtain a thirty-hour schedule at her first job, for example, her employer couldn't say no (she was saving them too much money), but they didn't like it. It took nerve on Lulu's part to push through that demand.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
0e33e3c
|
something more fundamental to human flourishing: the sense of meaning that comes from acting with intention.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
dd35f0c
|
A job...is a way to pay the bills, a career is a path towards increasingly better work, and a calling is work that's an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
c2ffa74
|
this approach, in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule, the journalist philosophy.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
ed67ea9
|
We now know from decades of research in both psychology and neuroscience that the state of mental strain that accompanies deep work is also necessary to improve your abilities.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
21d838e
|
How do people end up loving what they do?
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
f4704dc
|
the rhythmic philosophy. This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you're going to go deep.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
d0d0d71
|
In an age of network tools, in other words, knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative--constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction. Larger efforts that would be well served by deep thinking, such as forming a new business strategy or writing an important grant application, get fragmented into distracted dashes that produce..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
8aa0e00
|
some general questions that any effective ritual must address: Where you'll work and for how long.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
03b1f5c
|
Do what Thoreau did, which is learn to have a little disconnectedness within the connected world--don't run away.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
26359b1
|
Where you'll work and for how long. You ritual needs to specify a location for your deep work efforts.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
3bc16f1
|
How you'll work once you start to work. Your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
eb9db72
|
How you'll support your work. Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
cb269ae
|
If you want to become a superstar, mastering the relevant skills is necessary, but not sufficient. You
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
3e04f41
|
The 4DX framework is based on the fundamental premise that execution is more difficult than strategizing.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
cbfcf4a
|
To summarize, I've presented two different ways people think about their working life. The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
ba69442
|
study the brain behavior of subjects presented with both positive and negative imagery. She found that for young people, their amygdala (a center of emotion) fired with activity at both types of imagery. When she instead scanned the elderly, the amygdala fired only for the positive images. Carstensen hypothesizes that the elderly subjects had trained the prefrontal cortex to inhibit the amygdala in the presence of negative stimuli. These el..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
ae0a073
|
cultivating "concentration so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.")"
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
6dfd728
|
attention restoration theory (ART), which claims that spending time in nature can improve your ability to concentrate.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
a70c239
|
this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or (2) it's captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right. The process should be an algorithm: a series of steps you always conduct, one after another. When you're done, have a set phrase you say that indicates completion (to end my..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
51f35a8
|
Don't Take Breaks from Distraction. Instead Take Breaks from Focus.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
e403dfe
|
It's as if our species has evolved into one that flourishes in depth and wallows in shallowness, becoming what we might call Homo sapiens deepensis.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
5bd55d3
|
The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. This idea might sound obvious once it's pointed out, but it represents a departure from how most people understand such matters. In my experience, it's common to treat undistracted concentration as a habit like flossing--something that you know how to do and know is good for you, but that you've been neglecting due to a lack of motivation. This mind-set is appealing becau..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
cce3fb2
|
craftsman mindset is the foundation for creating work you love.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
36fe51d
|
Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
bcf5548
|
Deep Work Helps You Produce at an Elite Level
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
d3c949f
|
law of productivity: High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
fc8a672
|
To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
8dfc93b
|
Alex Berger, he didn't arrive at his outstanding job by following a clear passion. Instead he carefully and persistently gathered career capital, confident that valuable skills would translate into valuable opportunities.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
d8ecd2a
|
There is, however, an important corollary to this idea: Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don't simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction. Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you'll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
7b834c4
|
I had reached the level of expertise you would expect from someone who had played an instrument seriously for the last six years. But this is what I find fascinating: Compared to Jordan Tice's ability at this same age, I was mediocre.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
c792e40
|
Jordan left me in the dust. I played. But he practiced.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
e5ce9a8
|
This focus on stretching your ability and receiving immediate feedback provides the core of a more universal principle--one that I increasingly came to believe provides the key to successfully acquiring career capital in almost any field.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
69ec5e2
|
Thomas had followed his passion to the Zen Mountain Monastery, believing, as many do, that the key to happiness is identifying your true calling and then chasing after it with all the courage you can muster. But as Thomas experienced that late Sunday afternoon in the oak forest, this belief is frighteningly naive.
|
|
|
Cal Newport |
|
d724965
|
deliberate practice" to describe this style of serious study, defining it formally as an "activity designed, typically by a teacher, for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual's performance."4 As hundreds of follow-up studies have since shown, deliberate practice provides the key to excellence in a diverse array of fields, among which are chess, medicine, auditing, computer programming, bridge, physics, ..
|
|
|
Cal Newport |