10 motivational quotes for work success from 5 great career books
This is a distilled list of 10 excellent quotes from 5 great books about career, hard work and job hunting. It doesn’t matters if you are a worker, a boss or a freelancer this books will teach you valuable lessons for work success.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Summary
This book suggest that it should be a person’s talent and skill - and not necessarily their passion - that determines their career path.
Selected quotes
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.
The good news about deliberate practice is that it will push you past this plateau and into a realm where you have little competition.
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Deep work
Summary
Deep Work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.
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Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate
To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don’t cultivate this ability, you’re likely to fall behind as technology advances.
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Show your work
Summary
This is a guide to self-promotion. It’s focused on artists but the advice is helpful to everyone.
Selected quotes
Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.
Don’t try to be hip or cool. Being open and honest about what you like is the best way to connect with people who like those things, too.
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Do the work
Summary
The book states that our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is resistance.
Selected quotes
We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
A trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish. If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal.
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Your brain at work
Summary
This book explores issues such as: - why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources.- why it’s so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions. - how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible. - how to collaborate more effectively with others.
Selected quotes
A quiet mind allows the weak connections of non-conscious processing to rise to awareness
study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of ten points on an IQ test.
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BONUS
This books is similar to Do the work but it’s deserve to be in this list.
The war of art
Summary
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere. Similar to “Do the work” and from the same author.
Selected quotes
We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
A trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish. If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal.
Read more quotes from this book: War of Art best quotes