Quotes About Work

Another issue muddying the connection between depth and meaning in knowledge work is the cacophony of voices attempting to convince knowledge workers to spend more time engaged in shallow activities.

It's just that we don't know what that passion is. If you ask someone, they'll tell you what they think they're passionate about, but they probably have it wrong." In other words, she believes that having passion for your work is vital, but she also believes that it's a fool's errand to try to figure out in advance what work will lead to this passion.

Irrespective of what type of work you do, the craftsman mindset is crucial for building a career you love. Before

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 for a living, approach your work like a true performer.

Decades of work from multiple different subfields within psychology all point toward the conclusion that regularly resting your brain improves the quality of your deep work. When you work, work hard. When you're done, be done.

To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.

without these accountability tools, I tended to procrastinate on this work, turning my attention to more urgent but less important matters.

regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopting the craftsman mindset will be the foundation on which you'll build a compelling career.

craftsman mindset is the foundation for creating work you love.

the message at the core of this book: Working right trumps finding the right work—it's a simple idea, but it's also incredibly subversive, as it overturns decades of folk career advice all focused on the mystical value of passion. It wrenches us away from our daydreams of an overnight transformation into instant job bliss and provides instead a more sober way toward fulfillment.

fully embrace Rogowski's closing advice: "Leave good evidence of yourself. Do good work."...Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world.

This doesn't mean that Jane would have had to resign herself to a life of boring work. On the contrary, the law could have provided her structure to keep exploring variations on her adventurous life vision until she could find one to pursue that would actually yield results.

If you're not focusing on becoming so good they can't ignore you, you're going to be left behind. This clarity is refreshing. It tells you to stop worrying about what your job offers you, and instead worry about what you're offering the world. This mindset–which I call the craftsman mindset-allows you to sidestep the anxious questions generated by the passion hypothesis—"Who am I?", "What do I truly love?"—and instead put your head down and focus on becoming valuable.

Most knowledge workers avoid the uncomfortable strain of deliberate practice like the plague, a reality emphasized by the typical cubicle dweller's obsessive e-mail–checking habit—for what is this behavior if not an escape from work that's more mentally demanding? As

When you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don't like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness.

In other words, 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 for a living, approach your work like a true performer.

put into our terminology, enthusiasm alone is not rare and valuable and is therefore not worth much in terms of career capital.

those familiar with the rigors of such activities, the limit expands to something like four hours, but rarely more.

If you don't produce, you won't thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are. Having

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 will be around for a long time … there is a bunch of e-mail messages that I have sent out to individual persons.

What percentage of my time should be spent on shallow work? This strategy suggests that you ask it.

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.

RULE #1 Don't Follow Your Passion

I have this principle about money that overrides my other life rules," he said. "Do what people are willing to pay for.