Quotes from Cal newport

In the early days of adopting a conversation-centric mindset, you might miss the security blanket of what Stephen Colbert astutely labeled "little sips of online connection," & the sudden loss of weak ties to the fringes of your social network might induce moments of loneliness. But as you trade more of this time for conversation, the richness of these analog interactions will far outweigh what you're leaving behind.

If you're not focusing on becoming so good they can't ignore you, you're going to be left behind.

Finally, it's worth noting that refusing to use social media icons & comments to interact means that some people will inevitably fall out of your social orbit - in particular, those whose relationship with you exists only over social media. Here's my tough love reassurance: let them go.

An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.

I keep a tally of the total number of hours I've spent that month in a state of deliberate practice.

It is a lifetime accumulation of deliberate practice that again and again ends up explaining excellence.

there's nothing wrong with connectivity, but if you don't balance it with regular doses of solitude, its benefits will diminish.

The things that make a great job great...are rare and valuable. If you want them in your working life, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return In other words, you need to be good at something before you can expect to get a good job.

Pushing past what is comfortable, however is only one part of the deliberate-practice story; the other part is embracing honest feedback — even if it destroys what you thought was good.

Basic control over your schedule breeds balance.

What we know at this point," Shakya told NPR, "is that we have evidence that replacing your real-world relationships with social media use is detrimental to your well-being.

The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, . . . was all about: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?" And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.

The passion hypothesis is not just wrong, it's also dangerous. 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.

Here's a case where someone successfully followed their passion," they say, "therefore 'follow your passion' must be good advice." This is faulty logic. Observing a few instances of a strategy working does not make it universally effective.

Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do.24 Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It's where we develop the capacity for empathy. It's where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood.

The title of this book, A World Without Email, turns out to be just an approachable shorthand for the more accurate portrayal of my vision: A World Without the Hyperactive Hive Mind Workflow.

Getting to the cutting edge of a field can be understood in these terms: This process builds up rare and valuable skills and therefore builds up your store of career capital. Similarly, identifying a compelling mission once you get to the cutting edge can be seen as investing your career capital to acquire a desirable trait in your career. In other words, mission is yet another example of career capital theory in action. If you want a mission, you need to first acquire capital.

The Law of Financial Viability When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it. If you find this evidence, continue. If not, move on. When

Philip Morris just wanted your lungs," Maher concludes. "The App Store wants your soul.

All it takes is an ideology seductive enough to convince you to discard common sense.

The key lesson I want to extract from Marshall's story is that management is about more than responsiveness. Indeed, as detailed earlier in this chapter, a dedication to responsiveness will likely degrade your ability to make smart decisions and plan for future challenges

True missions, it turns out, require two things. First you need career capital, which requires patience. Second, you need to be ceaselessly scanning your always-changing view of the adjacent possible in your field, looking for the next big idea. This requires a dedication to brainstorming and exposure to new ideas. Combined, these two commitments describe a lifestyle, not a series of steps that automatically spit out a mission when completed.

I want to spend time on what's important, instead of what's immediate,

The Hyperactive Hive Mind A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services.