Quotes About Dedication

monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling. This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations.

Think Small, Act Big." It's in this understanding of career capital and its role in mission that we get our explanation for this title. Advancing to the cutting edge in a field is an act of "small" thinking, requiring you to focus on a narrow collection of subjects for a potentially long time. Once you get to the cutting edge, however, and discover a mission in the adjacent possible, you must go after it with zeal: a "big" action.

Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output.

Conclusion #3: Passion Is a Side Effect of Mastery

Your work is craft, and if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled wheelwright you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life.

the monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling. This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations. Practitioners of the monastic philosophy tend to have a well-defined and highly valued professional goal that they're pursuing, and the bulk of their professional success comes from doing this one thing exceptionally well.

Sertillanges seems to have been ahead of his time, arguing in The Intellectual Life, "Men of genius themselves were great only by bringing all their power to bear on the point on which they had decided to show their full measure." Ericsson couldn't have said it better.)

Without this patient willingness to reject shiny new pursuits, you'll derail your efforts before you acquire the capital you need.

There's a gravity and sense of importance inherent in deep work—whether you're Ric Furrer smithing a sword or a computer programmer optimizing an algorithm. Gallagher's theory, therefore, predicts that if you spend enough time in this state, your mind will understand your world as rich in meaning and importance.

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

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.

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.

the big red Xs on the calendar.

Conclusion #2: Passion Takes Time

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.

To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.

Si queremos triunfar, debemos producir lo mejor que nuestras capacidades nos permitan producir: se trata de una labor que requiere trabajo profundo.

Hours spent in serious study of the game was not just the most important factor in predicting chess skill, it dominated the other factors.

this approach, in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule, the journalist philosophy.

By working on a single hard task for a long time without switching, Grant minimizes the negative impact of attention residue from his other obligations, allowing him to maximize performance on this one task.

You need to get good in order to get good things in your working life, and the craftsman mindset is focused on achieving exactly this goal.

There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration—that there is some strike or bolt or bubbling up of creative mojo from who knows where… but I hope [my work] makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration. In