← So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Afterpage · week card

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Cal Newport

Key ideas

  1. Passion follows mastery.
  2. Adopt the craftsman mindset.
  3. Build career capital.
  4. Practice deliberately.
  5. Use capital for control and mission.

The week

Day 1Read the summary. Five key ideas and where the book overreaches.
Day 2List your career capital. Write down the skills and experience you have that are rare and valuable to others.
Bad day: Write one skill people ask you to help with.
Day 3Pick one skill to stretch. Choose a single skill that would most raise your value at work, and define what better looks like.
Bad day: Write the name of one skill you want to get better at.
Day 4Do 30 minutes of uncomfortable practice. Work on that skill for 30 minutes at the edge of your ability.
Bad day: Spend two minutes on the hardest part of a task you've been avoiding.
Day 5Ask for honest feedback. Ask someone whose judgment you trust to critique one piece of your work.
Bad day: Send one person a message asking for one improvement on a recent piece of work.
Day 6Run a small bet. Design one small, low-cost experiment that tests a direction you're curious about.
Bad day: Write one sentence describing a small project you could try.
Day 7Schedule weekly practice. Block a recurring time each week for deliberate practice on your chosen skill.
Bad day: Create a repeating weekly reminder titled “Deliberate practice.”

Free week by email at getafterpage.com/books/so-good-they-cant-ignore-you