Cal Newport

• Knowledge workers are bad at working!. Recommends deep focus:
  1. Get a ritual (shut off computer, turn off lights, make the mood right with a notebook and paper)
  2. Something being painful/mentally stressful means it's good for you, not you should try to get out of it.

A nice summary Disputes the claim that “Follow your dreams” is a good way to find happiness / satisfaction in career.

• Steve Jobs took a night shift at Atari? in order to free up his money needs and study like a crazy man.
• Studied for a long time, did lots of things. Eventually happened upon the idea for building a computer company.

The path to passion in reality is often way more complicated than what that advice tells us.

Survey of 500 canadian university students. Their “passion” was hockey, meaning that all but 4% of them would be in trouble following the “follow your dreams” advice.

The specifics of what you study might matter less than you think.

Those that enjoy what they do took time to build up a “rare and valuable skill”

There's not a lot of people in knowledge worker fields that do deliberate practice, focusing on the areas that they are weak and working on them all the time.

Work backwards from stars, ask them what “capital” they needed to invest in in order to get where they are.

If you believe that building up capital is what makes you love your work, not a matching problem of what job you should pick.

What's more important is learning how to learn, not the specifics of what you learn.