So next time you start to question whether you’re missing out on some dream job waiting for you to muster the courage to pursue it, conjure up a pair of images. First, recall passion-obsessed Thomas,...
So we have scales that allow us to divide up people into people who multitask all the time and people who rarely do, and the differences are remarkable. People who multitask all the time can’t filter...
Very few people work even 8 hours a day. You’re lucky if you get a few good hours in between all the meetings, interruptions, web surfing, office politics, and personal business that permeate the typi...
Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. Let’s
Sometimes to go deep, you must first go big.
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 fiel...
The curmudgeons among us are vaguely uneasy about the attention people pay to their phones, and pine for the days of unhurried concentration, while the digital hipsters equate such nostalgia with Ludd...
Stephenson sees two mutually exclusive options: He can write good novels at a regular rate, or he can answer a lot of individual e-mails and attend conferences, and as a result produce lower-quality n...
Stephenson summarizes his communication policy as follows: Persons who wish to interfere with my concentration are politely requested not to do so, and warned that I don’t answer e-mail… lest [my comm...
Stephenson wrote an essay titled Why I Am a Bad Correspondent. At the core of his explanation for his inaccessibility is the following decision: The productivity equation is a non-linear one, in other...
We have an information economy that’s dependent on complex systems that change rapidly.
Intelligent machines are complicated and hard to master.* To join the group of those who can work well with these machines, therefore, requires that you hone your ability to master hard things. And be...
Summary of Rule #2 Rule
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...
Summary of Rule #4 The core idea of this book is simple: To construct work you love, you must first build career capital by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the ty...
THREE DISQUALIFIERS FOR APPLYING THE CRAFTSMAN MINDSET The job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable. The job focuses on something...
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 tr...
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 whipp...
Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World, he argued in his 1993 book on the topic. It does not make them illegal. It does not make th...
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.
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