“if you’re not putting in the effort to become, as Steve Martin put it, “so good they can’t ignore you,” you’re not likely to end up loving your work—regardless of whether or not you believe it’s your true calling.” — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“the importance of ability. The things that make a great job great, I discovered, are rare and valuable. If you want them in your… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“many software companies now deploy the Scrum project management methodology, which replaces a lot of this ad hoc messaging with regular, highly structured, and… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“when paying more than $1,000 a day to write the chapter in a suite of an old hotel down the street from a Hogwarts-style… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea.” This advice comes from Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, a Dominican friar and professor of moral philosophy, who during the early part of the twentieth century penned a… — Cal Newport Copy Share
“study by Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow. In this study, a group of management consultants were asked to disconnect for a full day each workweek. The consultants were afraid the client would rebel. It turned out that the client didn’t care. As Jung, Grant, and Perlow’s subjects discovered, people will usually respect your right to become inaccessible if these… — Cal Newport Copy Share
“if it’s rare and valuable, it’s not easy to get. This insight brought me into the world of performance science, where I encountered the… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“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 involved than the step-by-step deconstruction I did on my… — Cal Newport Copy Share
“the journalist philosophy. This name is a nod to the fact that journalists, like Walter Isaacson, are trained to shift into a writing mode… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“Not long into his 2010 TED talk on creativity and leadership, Derek Sivers plays a video clip of a crowd at an outdoor concert. A young man without a shirt starts dancing by himself. The audience members seated nearby look on curiously. “A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous,” Derek says. Soon, however, a second young… — Cal Newport Copy Share
“Kirk’s path to American Treasures was incremental. He didn’t decide out of nowhere that he wanted to host a television show and then work… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
