Cal Newport

speaker

1,088 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 22 Jul

Cal Newport’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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So to identify, okay, here's something new that's going to be really valuable.

You already have to have mastered these things on the cutting edge.

And only then can you see, oh, if I take this, but I combine it with that and I take that out, this could be really valuable.

A big mistake people make often is trying to just jump all the way to the innovation from scratch.

But you got to get to the cutting edge first before you can see the new possible configurations and the adjacent possible.

And that's like a process of doing the stuff that people have always valued, doing that really well.

And you move your way towards the cutting edge.

And then you can start to see brand new things to do.

Yeah.

So you have to care about quality, but you can't obsess about the thing you're doing right now being perfect.

Right.

So this is the perfectionism you have to get around.

One way I do it, for example, is like when I'm writing a book, I'll always say the next book

The one after this is going to be the game changer and perfect and catch all the attention.

This is practice for that one.

So I want to make this good, but no, this doesn't have to be the perfect thing.

Just going to like blow the side.

The next book is going to be the one that like I'm going to be remembered for.

So let me just make this one really good, obviously, but that's the one that's going to matter.

I do a lot of that.

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