Quotes from Cal newport

To successfully adopt the craftsman mindset, therefore, we have to approach our jobs in the same way that Jordan approaches his guitar playing or Garry Kasparov his chess training—with a dedication to deliberate practice.

Ryan and Sarah have heaps of control in their working lives, and this is what makes the Red Fire lifestyle so appealing.

The reason knowledge workers are losing their familiarity with deep work is well established: network tools.

the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear.

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 novels at a slower rate.

organizing the raw materials of your work to minimize energy-dissipating friction

Mike's goal with his spreadsheet is to become more "intentional" about how his workday unfolds. "The easiest thing to do is to show up to work in the morning and just respond to e-mail the whole day," he explained. "But that is not the most strategic way to spend your time.

Rule #1 taught you how to integrate deep work into your schedule and support it with routines and rituals designed to help you consistently reach the current limit of your concentration ability.

Irónicamente, es más fácil disfrutar el trabajo que el tiempo libre, porque —como ocurre en las actividades donde hay estado de flujo— el trabajo implica metas, reglas y retos. Todo ello contribuye a que uno se involucre en el trabajo, se concentre en él y se deje llevar. El tiempo libre, en cambio, es desestructurado y se requiere un mayor esfuerzo para darle una forma que nos produzca satisfacción.18

They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, who has no real effect in the world. But craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one's failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.

I'll pay attention to what you say if you pay attention to what I say—regardless of its value.

to actively try to work through these decisions will lead to a worse outcome than loading up the relevant information and then moving on to something else while letting the subconscious layers of your mind mull things over.

You "like" my status update and I'll "like" yours.

a good process-centric message immediately "closes the loop" with respect to the project at hand. When a project is initiated by an e-mail that you send or receive, it squats in your mental landscape—becoming something that's "on your plate" in the sense that it has been brought to your attention and eventually needs to be addressed. This method closes this open loop as soon as it forms.

big trends in business today actively decrease people's ability to perform deep work, even though the benefits promised by these trends (e.g., increased serendipity, faster responses to requests, and more exposure) are arguably dwarfed by the benefits that flow from a commitment to deep work (e.g., the ability to learn hard things fast and produce at an elite level).

According to Johnson's theory, Sarah would have been better served by first mastering a promising niche—a task that may take years—and only then turning her attention to seeking a mission.

If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short).

To use my terminology, this long period of training, starting with her undergraduate biology classes and continuing through her PhD and then postdoctoral work at the Broad Institute, was when she was building up her stores of career capital. When she took a professorship at Harvard, she was finally ready to cash in this capital to obtain the mission-driven career she enjoys today.

By leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward supporting a deep work task, you increase the perceived importance of the task.

A 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.

una mente ociosa es el taller del diablo"... Cuando pierdes la concentración, tu mente tiende a fijarse en lo que no marcha bien en tu vida y a pasar por alto lo que sí está bien».14Desde una perspectiva neurológica, un día de trabajo que pasamos en función de lo superficial muy probablemente será un día agotador y perturbador, incluso si la mayoría de cosas superficiales que ocupan su atención parecen inofensivas o divertidas.

Jung, for example, needed his clinical practice to pay the bills and the Zurich coffeehouse scene to stimulate his thinking.

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous,

The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration