“ Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear, Martin said. What they want to hear is ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script,’… but I alwa… Cal Newport
“ My author website doesn’t provide a personal e-mail address, and I didn’t own my first smartphone until 2012 (when my pregnant wife gave me an ultimatum—you have to have a phone that works before our… Cal Newport
“ Mike Jackson leveraged the craftsman mindset to do whatever he did really well, thus ensuring that he came away from each experience with as much career capital as possible. He never had elaborate pla… Cal Newport
“ Leroy introduced an effect she called attention residue. In the introduction to this paper, she noted that other researchers have studied the effect of multitasking—trying to accomplish multiple tasks… Cal Newport
“ Leah Pearlman, who was a product manager on the team that developed the Like button for Facebook (she was the author of the blog post announcing the feature in 2009), has become so wary of the havoc i… Cal Newport
“ Knowledge work is not an assembly line, and extracting value from information is an activity that’s often at odds with busyness, not supported by it. Cal Newport
“ It’s here that some might respond that their knowledge work job cannot possibly become such a source of meaning because their job’s subject is much too mundane. But this is flawed thinking that our co… Cal Newport
“ It might seem harmless to take a quick glance at your inbox every ten minutes or so. Indeed, many justify this behavior as better than the old practice of leaving an inbox open on the screen at all ti… Cal Newport
“ In the early 1990s, Anders Ericsson, a colleague of Neil Charness at Florida State University, coined the term deliberate practice to describe this style of serious study, defining it formally as an a… Cal Newport
“ In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in… Cal Newport
“ In addition to executives, we can also include, for example, certain types of salesmen and lobbyists, for whom constant connection is their most valued currency. Cal Newport
“ In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment. Cal Newport
“ If you’re a recent college graduate in an entry-level job, for example, you’re much more likely to hear go change the water cooler than you are go change the world. Cal Newport
“ If you work in an environment where you can get an answer to a question or a specific piece ofinformation immediately when the need arises, this makes your life easier—at least, inthe moment. If you c… Cal Newport
“ If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. [If I instead get interrupted a lot] what replaces it? Instead of a novel that… Cal Newport
“ I shared the details of Steve Jobs’s story, because when it comes to finding fulfilling work, the details matter. If a young Steve Jobs had taken his own advice and decided to only pursue work he love… Cal Newport
“ I might finish writing at two or three A.M., then have to leave at eight the next morning to get back to my job at NBC on time, Alex recalls. It was a busy period. After Cal Newport
“ I keep a tally of the total number of hours I’ve spent that month in a state of deliberate practice. Cal Newport
“ I had reached the level of expertise you would expect from someone who had played an instrument seriously for the last six years. But this is what I find fascinating: Compared to Jordan Tice’s ability… Cal Newport
