Cal Newport

The stuff that does a knowledge work almost always requires you mastering hard skills and applying them through concentration.

And ultimately that shakes out.

There's only so far you can get or so far you can hide being busy because busyness can't be monetized.

And, you know, of course you can create a smoke for a while, but like, I don't know, like, you know, uh, Chris seems like productive, I guess.

Like he's always on these emails and this and this and that.

But if you're not actually producing things that have economic value, like ultimately that catches up to you, your opportunities narrow, you're going to get found out at some point where if you do the other thing, it's like, no, I'm creating stuff that is rare and valuable.

It's unambiguously, uh, has value in the marketplace.

You write your own ticket.

Like what?

You want to have a business where you work half the year?

You can do it.

You want to get paid a huge amount of money?

You can do it.

You want to like work for a company, but you choose when you come into the office and you declare like, I don't want to do meetings.

That's actually a thing, by the way.

I talked to a marketing team at one of the major tech companies not long ago.

And they said, you know what?

We're in the sales side.

And like our group, the sales group, we are exempt from meetings because they can directly monetize.

Oh, you brought in this many dollars.