The general economics of "career capital" makes sense, and is central to the thesis of the book. Cal turns a blind eye towards the unglamorous value oThe general economics of "career capital" makes sense, and is central to the thesis of the book. Cal turns a blind eye towards the unglamorous value of "identity capital" and your network -- things that greatly boost your chances of finding a good/fulfilling job. I think that a career ingenue taking Cal's advice to be gospel will fail hard at cocktail parties. Even in seemingly meritocratic places like Silicon Valley, this stuff helps a lot. In the same vein, I wish he'd included a section on "Systematic Lucky Breaks" or something.
Some snippets: "Some top blogs in this space have notoriously clunky designs, but they all accomplish the same baseline goal: they inspire their readers" a Hansonion read of this sentence, ignoring the semantic stopsigns, is really weird! Blogs in the self help space don't have the goal of helping their readers, but merely inspiring their readers. This is why the "productivity porn" genre exists ...
"Because of this it has a reputation for turning young professors into curmudgeons who adopt a masochistic brand of workaholism, in which relaxation becomes a sign of failure and the accomplishments of peers become tragedies" -- <3 this sentence
Echoing the sentiments of other less-than-stellar reviews, the book is really anecdotal but Newport tries to make it seem like a well reasoned argument. I'll say this though: "Hardness scares off the daydreamers and timid" is a great line. One of the 5 personality traits that actually predicts shit in the real world is Conscientiousness, and the world needs more Conscientiousness. Newport has as serious conscientiousness fetish. I read somewhere online that when the dude plays Super Mario he has to MAX out the game, cuz, well, he aint a daydreamer OR timid. He probably couldn't stop without finishing this book, so ignore him at your own peril....more
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