1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
5643
5644
5645
5646
5647
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 656dabb | My Research Bible Routine At some point during my quest, I started what I came to call my research bible, which is, in reality, a document I keep on my computer. Here's the routine: Once a week I require myself to summarize in my "bible" a paper I think might be relevant to my research. This summary must include a description of the result, how it compares to previous work, and the main strategies used to obtain it. These summaries are less.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 199d4c6 | The insights of Rule #2 fundamentally changed the way I approach my work. If I had to describe my previous way of thinking, I would probably use the phrase "productivity-centric." Getting things done was my priority. When you adopt a productivity mindset, however, deliberate practice-inducing tasks are often sidestepped, as the ambiguous path toward their completion, when combined with the discomfort of the mental strain they require, makes.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 81d3b4b | When you study the type of careers that make others remark, "That's the type of job I want," this trait almost always plays a central role. Once you understand this value of control, it changes the way you evaluate opportunities, leading you to consider a position's potential autonomy as being as important as its offered salary or the institution's reputation." | Cal Newport | ||
| 5c05ea5 | in most types of work--that is, work that doesn't have a clear training philosophy--most people are stuck. This generates an exciting implication. Let's assume you're a knowledge worker, which is a field without a clear training philosophy. If you can figure out how to integrate deliberate practice into your own life, you have the possibility of blowing past your peers in your value, as you'll likely be alone in your dedication to systemati.. | Cal Newport | ||
| fb8d032 | Others, such as Alan Lightman, or Erez Lieberman, who earned fame by the age of thirty-one through his combination of mathematics and cultural studies, or Esther Duflo, who won a MacArthur "Genius Grant" for her work evaluating anti-poverty programs, didn't make the cut for the book, but still weigh heavily on my thinking about how to best shape my own career. It" | Cal Newport | ||
| d9cc43b | Little Bets, and it was written by a former venture capitalist named Peter Sims.2 When Sims studied a variety of successful innovators, from Steve Jobs to Chris Rock to Frank Gehry, as well as innovative companies, such as Amazon and Pixar, he found a strategy common to all. "Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan out a whole project in advance," he writes, "they make a methodical series of little bets about what m.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 8395cbc | The important thing about little bets is that they're bite-sized. You try one. It takes a few months at most. It either succeeds or fails, but either way you get important feedback to guide your next steps. This approach stands in contrast to the idea of choosing a bold plan and making one big bet on its success. If Kirk had done this--for example, deciding in advance to dedicate years to popularizing the Land and Water documentary--he woul.. | Cal Newport | ||
| b7d2f89 | What's the impact of our current e-mail habits on the bottom line? | Cal Newport | ||
| a2ad501 | I follow a rule with my life that if something is scary, do it. I've lived everywhere in America, and for me, a big scary thing was living outside the country." After" | Cal Newport | ||
| af1b430 | Ryan and Sarah have heaps of control in their working lives, and this is what makes the Red Fire lifestyle so appealing. | Cal Newport | ||
| c26620a | A Brief Mission Intermission Let's take a moment to pull together what we've learned so far about mission. In the last chapter, I used Pardis Sabeti's story to emphasize that you need career capital before you can identify a realistic mission for your career. Just because you have a good idea for a mission, however, doesn't mean that you'll succeed in its pursuit. With this in mind, in this chapter we studied the life of Kirk French to bett.. | Cal Newport | ||
| a5a5482 | If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short). | Cal Newport | ||
| 63680d1 | To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you're capable of producing--a task that requires depth. | Cal Newport | ||
| d0783a5 | The First Control Trap In which I introduce the first control trap, which warns that it's dangerous to pursue more control in your working life before you have career capital to offer in exchange. Jane's | Cal Newport | ||
| a2402fd | The Second Control Trap In which I introduce the second control trap, which warns that once you have enough career capital to acquire more control in your working life, you have become valuable enough to your employer that they will fight your efforts to gain more autonomy. Why | Cal Newport | ||
| 0c2f642 | Every second we have with these fine animals is a blessing. No creature, human or otherwise, will love you with such devotion, or trust you so fully. Remember this, Officer James. These dogs will lay their precious hearts bare to you, and hold back no part for themselves. Can anyone else in your pathetic excuse for a life say the same? Such trust is a gift from God Almighty above, so best you be worthy. Scott | Robert Crais | ||
| cd0c72c | Holman settled in, expecting her to be late. She would arrive late to establish her authority and to make sure he understood the power in this situation was hers. Holman didn't mind. He had trimmed his hair that morning, shaved twice to get a close shave, and polished his shoes. He had handwashed his clothes the night before and rented Perry's iron and ironing board for two dollars so he would appear as unthreatening as possible. Holman | Robert Crais | ||
| d644004 | Here was my first lesson: This type of skill development is hard. When I got to the first tricky gap in the paper's main proof argument, I faced immediate internal resistance. It was as if my mind realized the effort I was about to ask it to expend, and in response it unleashed a wave of neuronal protest, distant at first, but then as I persisted increasingly tremendous, crashing over my concentration with mounting intensity. To combat this.. | Cal Newport | ||
| c60d5b5 | there's something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is "just right," and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it--and the process won't be easy. With" | Cal Newport | ||
| 237f1a0 | When I began reflecting on this law, I saw that it applied again and again to examples of people successfully acquiring more control in their careers. To understand this, notice that the definition of "willing to pay" varies. In some cases, it literally means customers paying you money for a product or a service. But it can also mean getting approved for a loan, receiving an outside investment, or, more commonly, convincing an employer to e.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 8701dda | Rule #4 is entitled "Think Small, Act Big." It's in this understanding of career capital and its role in mission that we get our explanation for this title. 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 "b.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 4bbfc85 | If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short). In a ROWE company, all that matters is your results. When you show up to work and when you leave, when you take vacations, and how often you check e-mail are all irrelevant. They leave it to the employee to figure out whatever works best for getting the im.. | Cal Newport | ||
| c3670b9 | Summary of Rule #3 Rules #1 and #2 laid the foundation for my new thinking on how people end up loving what they do. Rule #1 dismissed the passion hypothesis, which says that you have to first figure out your true calling and then find a job to match. Rule #2 replaced this idea with career capital theory, which argues that the traits that define great work are rare and valuable, and if you want these in your working life, you must first bui.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 218ab83 | Pardis Sabeti thought small by focusing patiently for years on a narrow niche (the genetics of diseases in Africa), but then acting big once she acquired enough capital to identify a mission (using computational genetics to help understand and fight ancient diseases). Sarah and Jane, by contrast, reversed this order. They started by thinking big, looking for a world-changing mission, but without capital they could only match this big thinki.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 2061b81 | But this brings me back to my nagging question. I had notebooks filled with potential missions, yet I had resisted devoting myself to any one in particular. And I'm not alone in this reluctance to act. Many people have lots of career capital, and can therefore identify a variety of different potential missions for their work, but few actually build their career around such missions. It seems, therefore, that there's more to this career tact.. | Cal Newport | ||
| 756e76b | As I'll explain, mission is one of these desirable traits, and like any such desirable trait, it too requires that you first build career capital--a mission launched without this expertise is likely doomed to sputter and die. But capital alone is not enough to make a mission a reality. Plenty of people are good at what they do but haven't reoriented their career in a compelling direction. Accordingly, I will go on to explore a pair of advan.. | Cal Newport | ||
| c0643b3 | Missions are hard. By this point in my quest, however, I had become comfortable with "hard," and I hope that if you've made it this far in the book, you have gained this comfort as well. 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." | Cal Newport | ||
| df42a0f | In which I argue that a mission chosen before you have relevant career capital is not likely to be sustainable. Mission | Cal Newport | ||
| bb14874 | Most knowledge workers avoid the uncomfortable strain of deliberate practice like the plague, a reality emphasized by the typical cubicle dweller's obsessive e-mail-checking habit--for what is this behavior if not an escape from work that's more mentally demanding? As | Cal Newport | ||
| 1a7a927 | 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. That is what makes it "deliberate," as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. If" -- | Cal Newport | ||
| b6586cb | Pushing past what's comfortable, however, is only one part of the deliberate-practice story; the other part is embracing honest feedback--even if it destroys what you thought was good. As Colvin explains in his Fortune article, "You may think that your rehearsal of a job interview was flawless, but your opinion isn't what counts." It's so tempting to just assume what you've done is good enough and check it off your to-do list, but it's in h.. | Cal Newport | ||
| a4f1daa | Summary of Rule #2 Rule | Cal Newport | ||
| b25f96f | You have to get good before you can expect good work. As | Cal Newport | ||
| ea0d06a | Busyness as a Proxy for Productivity | Cal Newport | ||
| d79a35a | Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. | Cal Newport | ||
| e8b6275 | In other words, forget why Jordan adopted this mindset and notice instead how he deploys it. In the next chapter, I will argue that regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopting the craftsman mindset will be the foundation on which you'll build a compelling career. This is why I reject the "argument from pre-existing passion," because it gets things backward. In reality, as I'll demonstrate, you adopt the craftsman mindset f.. | Cal Newport | ||
| fb2fcde | After returning from a trip to India, where he observed the practice of adding meditation rooms to homes, he expanded the complex to include a private office. "In my retiring room I am by myself," Jung said of the space." | Cal Newport | ||
| 4e713cb | He approached the task of finding good projects for his mission with the mindset of a marketer, systematically studying books on the subject to help identify why some ideas catch on while others fall flat. His marketing-centric approach is useful for anyone looking to wield mission as part of their quest for work they love. Purple | Cal Newport | ||
| a5437b0 | 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. If you want to identify a mission for your working life, therefore, you must first get to the cutting edge--the only place where these missions become visible. This | Cal Newport | ||
| ff2ea5d | What Giles discovered, I decided, is that a good mission-driven project must be remarkable in two different ways. First, it should be remarkable in the literal sense of compelling people to remark about it. To | Cal Newport | ||
| b079b4f | Take book writing: If I published a book of solid advice for helping recent graduates transition to the job market, you might find this a useful contribution, but probably wouldn't find yourself whipping out your iPhone and Tweeting its praises. On the other hand, if I publish a book that says "follow your passion" is bad advice, (hopefully) this would compel you to spread the word." | Cal Newport | ||
| 5ad74af | If you want a mission, you need to first acquire capital. If you skip this step, you might end up like Sarah and Jane: with lots of enthusiasm but very little to show for it. Not | Cal Newport | ||
| 2d7c3b3 | Most individuals who start as active professionals... change their behavior and increase their performance for a limited time until they reach an acceptable level. Beyond this point, however, further improvements appear to be unpredictable and the number of years of work... is a poor predictor of attained performance." Put another way, if you just show up and work hard, you'll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any .. | Cal Newport | ||
| 911e3e7 | I might finish writing at two or three A.M., then have to leave at eight the next morning to get back to my job at NBC on time," Alex recalls. It was a busy period. After" | Cal Newport |