Quotes from Cal newport

Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted.

When experts exhibit their superior performance in public their behavior looks so effortless and natural that we are tempted to attribute it to special talents," Ericsson notes.

What, if anything, is active in the brain when someone is not trying to do a task? "It was an unusual question," notes Lieberman, but we should be glad they asked, because it led to a remarkable discovery: the team found that there's a particular set of regions in the brain that consistently activate when you're not attempting to do a cognitive task, and that just as consistently deactivate once you focus your attention on something specific.

People ask me how I funded my business," he said. "I tell them first I sold one CD, which gave me enough money to sell two." It grew from there.

to advance your understanding of your field you must tackle the relevant topics systematically, allowing your "converging rays of attention" to uncover the truth latent in each. In other words, he teaches: To learn requires intense concentration.

the big red Xs on the calendar.

It follows that if you want a great job, you need something of great value to offer in return.

philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.

allow an optional technology back into your life at the end of the digital declutter, it must: Serve something you deeply value (offering some benefit is not enough). Be the best way to use technology to serve this value (if it's not, replace it with something better). Have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it.

Conclusion #2: Passion Takes Time

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands…. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it "deliberate," as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. If

we argue that the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.

the rhythmic philosophy. This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you're going to go deep.

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.

Schedule an escape for yourself every single week. And do it alone. Treat it like taking medicine.

1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you're trying to improve or an idea you're trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it's most productive.

Asimismo, una persona que trabajaba en el área del marketing en los años noventa quizá no imaginó que hoy debe tener sólidos conocimientos en análisis digital. Por lo tanto, para seguir siendo valiosos en nuestra economía, es necesario que dominemos el arte de aprender rápidamente cosas complicadas. Esta labor exige un trabajo profundo. Si no cultivamos esta aptitud, nos quedaremos atrás conforme vaya avanzando la tecnología.

Why do some people enjoy their work while so many other people don't? Here's the CliffsNotes summary of the social science research in this area: There are many complex reasons for workplace satisfaction, but the reductive notion of matching your job to a pre-existing passion is not among them.

hub-and-spoke-style arrangement: Expose yourself to ideas in hubs on a regular basis, but maintain a spoke in which to work deeply on what you encounter.

Grant's productivity depends on many factors, there's one idea in particular that seems central to his method: the batching of hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill,

In a post-Enlightenment world we have tasked ourselves to identify what's meaningful and what's not, an exercise that can seem arbitrary and induce a creeping nihilism.

skills, be they intellectual or physical, eventually reduce down to brain circuits.

Within the overall structure of a project there is always room for individuality and craftsmanship… One hundred years from now, our engineering may seem as archaic as the techniques used by medieval cathedral builders seem to today's civil engineers, while our craftsmanship will still be honored.