Cal Newport Quotes

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.

If you spend too much time focusing on whether or not you’ve found your true calling, the question will be rendered moot when you find yourself out of work.

With so little input from labor, the proportion of this wealth that flows back to the machine owners — in this case, the venture investors — is without precedent. It’s no wonder that a venture capitalist I interviewed for my last book admitted to me with some concern, “Everyone wants my job.

to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. This doesn’t mean that you have to eliminate distracting behaviors; it’s sufficient that you instead eliminate the ability of such behaviors to hijack your attention. The simple strategy proposed here of scheduling Internet blocks goes a long way toward helping you regain this attention autonomy.

The problem this research identifies with this work strategy is that when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow — a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task.

The best students understood the role intensity plays in productivity and therefore went out of their way to maximize their concentration — radically reducing the time required to prepare for tests or write papers, without diminishing the quality of their results.

As a 2018 article from the MIT Sloan Management Review explains: “The ‘keep everybody busy’ theory remains alive and well . . . in knowledge work.”39 (The article elaborates that the manufacturing sector, by contrast, figured out in the 1980s that relentless busyness was not an optimal way to run things.)

minimalists don’t mind missing out on small things; what worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good.

You have to get good before you can expect good work.

This same trend holds for the growing number of fields where technology makes productive remote work possible — consulting, marketing, writing, design, and so on. Once the talent market is made universally accessible, those at the peak of the market thrive while the rest suffer.

The task of a craftsman, they conclude, “is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there.

Marcus Aurelius asked: “You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?

A better strategy for shifting other’s expectations about your work is to consistently deliver what you promise instead of consistently explaining how you’re working.

Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best.

All the people I ever admired and respected led balanced lives — studying hard, partying hard, as well as being involved in activities and getting a decent amount of sleep each night. I really think this is the only logically defensible way of doing things.” Chris, a straight-A college student