So Good They Can't Ignore You
Cal Newport
Summary
Cal talks about ways to become indispensable at your company throughout your career, no matter what industry you're in.
Rating: 3/5
Notes
You need to be good at something before you can expect a good job
Things happen in stages
A job is a way to pay the bills, a career is a path towards better work and a calling is work that’s important to your life and identity
Focus on what value you’re producing in your job and you’ll begin to love the work
No one owes you a great career, you need to earn it and the process won’t be easy
Build up career capital: skills developed over time that are so good they can’t ignore you
Approach your job w/ a dedication to deliberate practice
Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable, but it has to be done
Giving people more control over what they do and how they do it increases their happiness, engagement and sense of purpose
Control acquired without career capital is not sustainable
Do what people are willing to pay for
Think small but act big
Make little bets, learn critical info with lots of small failures but also significant wins
Remarkable projects must couple people who encounter it to remark about it to others and it must be launched in a way that supports such remarking
The best missions are found in the adjacent possible: the region just beyond the current cutting edge
Become good at something rare and valuable and then invest the career capital into traits that make a job great
Strain is good and you need to have deliberate practice
Become more craft centric rather than productivity centric
Working right trumps finding the right work
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Make Something Wonderful
Steve Jobs
Summary
The life of Steve Jobs in his own words
Rating: 5/5
Notes
Make something wonderful and put it out there
‘You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear’
When you’re a stranger in a place, you notice thing you don’t otherwise (Jobs after India trip)
Whenever you start with nothing, always shoot for the moon. You have nothing to lose.
You never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times
Never be afraid to fail. You never achieve what you want without falling flat on your face a few times
We are never taught to listen to our intuitions, to develop and nurture them. But if you do pay attention to these subtle insights, you can make them come true
Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights others don’t see
Believe that some of what you follow with your heart will come back and make your life richer. And it will. And you will gain even firmer trust on your instincts and intuitions
Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.
The journey is the reward. The reward isn’t in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s in crossing the rainbow
To find A+ talent, if experienced, look at their track record and results
The world we know is a human creation and we can push it forward
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do (read whole ad ‘here’s to the crazy ones)
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit - Aristotle
Hire people better than you are
You can’t plan to meet the people who will change your life
It’s impossible to connect the dots looking forward, but they make sense looking backwards so you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future
Everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you
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Free E-book download here
