Jim Clark was interviewed at an event held at Stanford University. At some point in the interview, the topic turned to social media. Clark’s reaction was unexpected given his high-tech background: I j...
I’ll call this output-centric approach to work the craftsman mindset. My
It follows that to embrace deep work in your own career, and to direct it toward cultivating your skill, is an effort that can transform a knowledge work job from a distracted, draining obligation int...
Inspired by these meetings, Franklin created a scheme in which the Junto members would contribute funds toward buying books that all members could use. This model soon grew beyond Franklin’s Friday ev...
In which I argue that a mission chosen before you have relevant career capital is not likely to be sustainable. Mission
In the movies there’s this idea that you should just go for your dream, Glass tells them. But I don’t believe that. Things happen in stages. Glass emphasizes that it takes time to get good at anything...
In my experience, the key to sustained success with this philosophy is accepting that it's not really about technology, but is instead more about the quality of your life. The more you experiment with...
In all of these examples, it’s not just the change of environment or seeking of quiet that enables more depth. The dominant force is the psychology of committing so seriously to the task at hand. To p...
In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these winner-take-all markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with...
In Wrzesniewski’s research, the happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what...
In Morozov’s critique, we’ve made the Internet synonymous with the revolutionary future of business and government. To make your company more like the Internet is to be with the times, and to ignore t...
If you’re wearing headphones, or monitoring a text message chain, or, God forbid, narrating the stroll on Instagram—you’re not really walking, and therefore you’re not going to experience this practic...
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.
I like the term stretch for describing what deliberate practice feels like, as it matches my own experience with the activity. When I’m learning a new mathematical technique—a classic case of delibera...
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.
I do all my work by hand and use tools that multiply my force without limiting my creativity or interaction with the material,
I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you. That is, regardless of what you do...
Every week, I expose myself to something new about my field. I can read a paper, attend a talk, or schedule a meeting. To ensure that I really understand the new idea, I require myself to add a summar...
Don’t Take Breaks from Distraction. Instead Take Breaks from Focus.
Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable. I like the term stretch for describing what deliberate practice feels like,