“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.”
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Page 39)
Job Quotes
So Good They Can’t Ignore You [Book]
Book Overview: In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion” is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work—but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping. After making his case against passion, Newport sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving what they do. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers. Matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter, he reveals. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“The infinite game is the game we play to play, not to win. The infinite game is a catch in the backyard with your four-year-old son. You’re not trying to win catch; you’re simply playing catch. The most important parts of our lives are games that we can’t imagine winning.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 167)
“Who wants to do difficult work that doesn’t fulfill us? Who wants to commit to a journey before we know it’s what we were meant to do? The trap is this: only after we do the difficult work does it become our calling. Only after we trust the process does it become our passion. ‘Do what you love’ is for amateurs. ‘Love what you do’ is the mantra for professionals.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 22)
The Practice: Shipping Creative Work [Book]
Book Overview: Creative work doesn’t come with a guarantee. But there is a pattern to who succeeds and who doesn’t. And engaging in the consistent practice of its pursuit is the best way forward. Based on the breakthrough Akimbo workshop pioneered by legendary author Seth Godin, The Practice will help you get unstuck and find the courage to make and share creative work. Godin insists that writer’s block is a myth, that consistency is far more important than authenticity, and that experiencing the imposter syndrome is a sign that you’re a well-adjusted human. Most of all, he shows you what it takes to turn your passion from a private distraction to a productive contribution, the one you’ve been seeking to share all along. With this book as your guide, you’ll learn to dance with your fear. To take the risks worth taking. And to embrace the empathy required to make work that contributes with authenticity and joy.
Post(s) Inspired by This Book:
“You know how you meet people and they ask, ‘What do you do?’ You can always say that you’re a teacher or a student, an accountant or an artist, or whatever your vocation. But once you have a quest, you have another answer, too. Your identity isn’t tied to a job; your identity is who you really are. I’m trying to visit every country in the world. I’m on a quest to publish one million processed photos. I’m going to produce the largest symphony ever performed.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 123)
“Everybody thinks their job is stressful. No job is stressful. There are many jobs that could present challenging situations. There could be nasty bosses, insecure colleagues, emergency rooms, impossible deadlines—or you might even find yourself in the middle of a war zone! But these are not inherently stressful. It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal friction. One can easily lubricate the inner mechanism with some amount of inner work and awareness. So, it is your inability to handle your own system that is stressing you out. On some level, you do not know how to handle your body, mind, and emotions; that is the problem.”
Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 141)
25 Work Ethic Quotes to Re-Ignite (or Reinforce) The FIRE In Your Belly!
Excerpt: These 25 Work Ethic Quotes will get you FIRED up and ready to tackle the challenges of your life (because there’s never a shortage of those).
Read More »25 Work Ethic Quotes to Re-Ignite (or Reinforce) The FIRE In Your Belly!
12 Motivational Michael Gerber Quotes from The E-Myth Revisited
Excerpt: Small business guru Michael Gerber will help you become a successful entrepreneur. These quotes from The E-Myth Revisited will get you going.
Read More »12 Motivational Michael Gerber Quotes from The E-Myth Revisited
The E-Myth Revisited [Book]
Book Overview: E-Myth \ ‘e-,’mith\ n 1: the entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs 2: the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work. Small business consultant and author Michael E. Gerber walks you through the steps in the life of a business—from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed—and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“The business is a place where everything we know how to do is tested by what we don’t know how to do, and that the conflict between the two is what creates growth, what creates meaning.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 201)
Michael Gerber Quote on How The Work We Do is a Reflection of Who We Are
“The work we do is a reflection of who we are. If we’re sloppy at it, it’s because we’re sloppy inside. If we’re late at it, it’s because we’re late inside. If we’re bored by it, it’s because we’re bored inside, with ourselves, not with the work. The most menial work can be a piece of art when done by an artist. So the job here is not outside of ourselves, but inside of ourselves. How we do our work becomes a mirror of how we are inside.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 200)
Beyond the Quote (198/365)
“Autograph your work with excellence,” has become a sort of mantra that I live by. Whatever I set out to do, I always try to give it my absolute best shot. And it doesn’t matter what it is. It could be something important like writing these articles or something that might be considered more menial like vacuuming the rug. The underlying idea is that all work that gets done always gets done with an autograph attached to the work. And that autograph, that work, as Gerber points out above, acts as a reflection of the person who did it. The question that you then have to ask yourself is, what does your work say about you?
Read More »Michael Gerber Quote on How The Work We Do is a Reflection of Who We Are“Always think about what you’re really being asked to give. Because the answer is often a piece of your life, usually in exchange for something you don’t even want. Remember, that’s what time is. It’s your life, it’s your flesh and blood, that you can never get back. In every situation ask: What is it? Why does it matter? Do I need it? Do I want it? What are the hidden costs? Will I look back from the distant future and be glad I did it? If I never knew about it at all—if the request was lost in the mail, if they hadn’t been able to pin me down to ask me—would I even notice that I missed out?”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 191)
“We were not put on this planet to be worker bees, compelled to perform some function over and over again for the cause of the hive until we die. Nor do we ‘owe it’ to anyone to keep doing, doing, doing—not our fans, not our followers, not our parents who have provided so much for us, not even our families. Killing ourselves does nothing for anybody. It’s perfectly possible to do and make good work from a good place. You can be healthy and still and successful.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 125)
“…having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.” ~ Bill Watterson, Speech
Stephen Cope Quote on Engaging With Life Rather Than Retreating—On Doing What’s Meaningful Rather Than Fun
“At the end of life, most of us will find that we have felt most filled up by the challenges and successful struggles for mastery, creativity, and full expression of our dharma in the world. Fulfillment happens not in retreat from the world, but in advance – and profound engagement.”
Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life
Beyond the Quote (64/365)
After receiving a thunderous round of applause for a speech he gave, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson was asked if he was having fun giving speeches and talking about important intellectual topics. When he replied, “No,” I was caught off guard. I couldn’t understand how he could so eloquently CRUSH an hour and a half long speech, do it in a way that was so well received by the audience, laugh and joke throughout, and admit that he didn’t have fun while doing it?
Read More »Stephen Cope Quote on Engaging With Life Rather Than Retreating—On Doing What’s Meaningful Rather Than Fun
“You should never do anything because of duty. Either you do something because of love or you do not do it. Make it a point that your life has to be a life of love, and if out of love, you respond, that I call responsibility. Break the word into two—response-ability—don’t make it one. Joining these two words has created so much confusion in the world. It is not responsibility; it is response-ability. And love is able to respond. There is no other force in the world that is so able to respond. If you love, you are bound to respond; there is no burden. Duty is a burden.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition
“Your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work. If you go at your work with half a heart, it will show in the lackluster results and in the laggard way in which you reach the end. If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you. You may not see this, but you can be sure that the public will feel it and that they will receive your work in the same lackluster spirit it was created in. If you are excited and obsessive in the hunt, it will show in the details. If your work comes from a place deep within, its authenticity will be communicated.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery
“It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most. If it is money, you will choose a place for your apprenticeship that offers the biggest paycheck. Inevitably, in such a place you will feel greater pressures to prove yourself worthy of such pay, often before you are really ready. You will be focused on yourself, your insecurities, the need to please and impress the right people, and not on acquiring skills. It will be too costly for you to make mistakes and learn from them, so you will develop a cautious, conservative approach. As you progress in life, you will become addicted to the fat paycheck and it will determine where you go, how you think, and what you do. Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery