172 Quotes by Cal Newport

In this second part, I introduce a framework I call attention capital theory that argues for creating workflows built around processes specifically designed to help us get the most out of our human brains while minimizing unnecessary miseries. This.

The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest phase.

We like to think of innovation as striking us in a stunning eureka moment, where you all at once change the way people see the world, leaping far ahead of our current understanding. I’m arguing that in reality, innovation is more systematic.

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Blaise Pascal famously wrote in the late seventeenth century.

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

If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.

Our sociality is simply too complex to be outsourced to a social network or reduced to instant messages and emojis.

The important thing about little bets is that they’re bite-sized. You try one. It takes a few months at most. It either succeeds or fails, but either way you get important feedback to guide your next steps. This.

It is a lifetime accumulation of deliberate practice that again and again ends up explaining excellence.