Brigid Greene > Brigid's Quotes

“We tend to place a lot of emphasis on our circumstances, assuming that what happens to us (or fails to happen) determines how we feel. From this perspective, the small-scale details of how you spend your day aren’t that important, because what matters are the large-scale outcomes, such as whether or not you get a promotion or move to that nicer apartment. According to Gallagher, decades of research contradict this understanding. Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“the happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do. On reflection, this makes sense.”
― Cal Newport, So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

“Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.”
― Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

“Your goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it’s instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you’re doing with your time going forward—even”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“Ericsson notes that for a novice, somewhere around an hour a day of intense concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand to as many as four hours—but rarely more.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives.”
― Cal Newport, So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

“A side effect of memory training, in other words, is an improvement in your general ability to concentrate. This ability can then be fruitfully applied to any task demanding deep work.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“This, ultimately, is the lesson to come away with from our brief foray into the world of experimental psychology: To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World