“The art of mission, we can conclude, asks us to suppress the most grandiose of our work instincts and instead adopt the… — Cal Newport Art Copy Share Image
“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… — Cal Newport Hard work Copy Share Image
“The fault of the courage culture, therefore, is not its underlying message that courage is good, but its severe underestimation of the… — Cal Newport Courage Copy Share Image
“when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck… — Cal Newport Focus Copy Share Image
“general observation for joining the ranks of winners in our economy: If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or… — Cal Newport Economics Copy Share Image
“the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.” They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number… — Cal Newport Goals Copy Share Image
“People ask me how I funded my business,” he said. “I tell them first I sold one CD, which gave me enough… — Cal Newport Business Copy Share Image
“We instead find ourselves in distracting open offices where inboxes cannot be neglected and meetings are incessant—a setting where colleagues would rather… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a… — Cal Newport Outstanding performance Copy Share Image
“the message at the core of this book: Working right trumps finding the right work—it’s a simple idea, but it’s also incredibly… — Cal Newport Books Copy Share Image
“little bet, in the setting of mission exploration, has the following characteristics: It’s a project small enough to be completed in less… — Cal Newport Exploration Copy Share Image
“I had reached the level of expertise you would expect from someone who had played an instrument seriously for the last six… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“Personal Goal: To maintain close and rewarding friendships with a group of people who are important to me. Key Activities Supporting… — Cal Newport Friend Copy Share Image
“If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels.… — Cal Newport Books 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… — Cal Newport Ability 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… — Cal Newport Books Copy Share Image
“Consider a 2012 study, led by psychologists Wilhelm Hofmann and Roy Baumeister, that outfitted 205 adults with beepers that activated at randomly… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“In 2013, for example, Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer banned employees from working at home. She made this decision after checking the… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“TRAITS THAT DEFINE GREAT WORK Creativity: Ira Glass, for example, is pushing the boundaries of radio, and winning armfuls of awards in… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“Getting to the cutting edge of a field can be understood in these terms: This process builds up rare and valuable skills… — Cal Newport Cutting edge Copy Share Image
“you visit Knuth’s website at Stanford with the intention of finding his e-mail address, you’ll instead discover the following note: I have… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“deliberate practice” to describe this style of serious study, defining it formally as an “activity designed, typically by a teacher, for the… — Cal Newport Computer programming 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… — Cal Newport Creativity Copy Share Image
“You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your will, in other words, is not a… — Cal Newport Depleted Copy Share Image
“Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.” — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“just because you really want to organize your work around a mission doesn’t mean that you can easily make it happen.” — Cal Newport Goals Copy Share Image
“as we shift to an information economy, more and more of our population are knowledge workers, and deep work is becoming a… — Cal Newport Knowledge workers Copy Share Image
“To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.” — Cal Newport Life Copy Share Image
“Telling someone to “follow their passion” is not just an act of innocent optimism, but potentially the foundation for a career riddled… — Cal Newport Passion Copy Share Image
“At the end of every week he prints his numbers to see how well he achieved this goal, and then uses this… — Cal Newport Goals Copy Share Image
“Beautiful code is short and concise, so if you were to give that code to another programmer they would say, “oh, that’s… — Cal Newport Beauty Copy Share Image
“Knowledge work is not an assembly line, and extracting value from information is an activity that’s often at odds with busyness, not… — Cal Newport Assembly line Copy Share Image
“background-research process, which combines exposure to potentially relevant material with free-form re-combination of ideas, comes straight out of Steven Johnson’s book, Where… — Cal Newport Books Copy Share Image
“The difference in our abilities by the age of eighteen had less to do with the number of hours we practiced—though he… — Cal Newport Copy Share Image
“big trends in business today actively decrease people’s ability to perform deep work, even though the benefits promised by these trends (e.g.,… — Cal Newport Business Copy Share Image
“The respected New Yorker staff writer George Packer captured this fear well in an essay about why he does not tweet: “Twitter… — Cal Newport Fear Copy Share Image
“musicians, athletes, and chess players, among others, know all about deliberate practice, but knowledge workers do not. Most knowledge workers avoid the… — Cal Newport Deliberate practice Copy Share Image
“By leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward… — Cal Newport Change Copy Share Image
“Here’s a case where someone successfully followed their passion,” they say, “therefore ‘follow your passion’ must be good advice.” This is faulty… — Cal Newport Good advice Copy Share Image