So Passionate You Never Stop Improving: The Secret Behind the Success of Asimov, Jobs, Seinfeld, Oprah, Buffett, Newton, and All the Greats

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Isaac Asimov published 500+ books, making him one of the most prolific writers in the history of human civilization. Not only that, he was considered one of the “Big Three” sci-fi authors of his time.)

He isn’t focused on each achievement. He’s focused on the process.)

As a result of achieving success, we can **stop doing the stuff we don’t want** **to (the work)** and start doing the stuff we want to (the play).)

Cartland is playing an “infinite game” propelled by devotion while the conventional paradigm plays a finite game propelled by discipline.)

In the finite game, we work hard on stuff we may not like in order to have money and freedom in the future to actually do the stuff we love.)

infinite game, we find what we love early on, and our goal is to keep lovingly playing it regardless of the outcomes and our life stage.)

Feynman explains his antipathy:

Cultures often fetishize arbitrary endpoints (fame, wealth, recognition) rather than the fullness of the process that got them there and the impact it had.)

Passions often aren’t profitable or prestigious for years. Thus, unless someone is willing to be “impractical” or under-estimated for years, they will not even start. Or if they do, they’ll likely give up in months.)

To persist through this early “no money, no respect” period, we must have a strong internal drive. It’s tautological, because without external rewards, the only thing left to drive us is internal)

it took Bradbury 10 years after setting out to become a professional writer to actually become one and make a middle-class $50,000 salary)

Cultivating infinite devotion is the prerequisite for becoming great in any field. The external rewards typically take so long to appear that the people who ultimately persist to success are the ones who cultivate their internal motivation to the point where the external rewards are just the cherry on top, not the core goal.)

From the outside, these individuals appear crazy in their early years. From the inside, they are on fire.)

there is no case of lifelong iconic success that I’m aware of which isn’t smothered with Infinite Devotion’s fingerprints)

Top performers have an Infinite Devotion for their craft that is misunderstood and labeled crazy by the outside world.)

Find your passion. I was very, very lucky to find it when I was seven or eight years old… You’re lucky in life when you find it. And you can’t guarantee you’ll find it in your first job out. But I always tell college students that come out (to Omaha), ‘Take the job you would take if you were independently wealthy. You’re going to do well at it.’)

Isaac Newton is regarded as one of the top scientists of all time. He made breakthroughs in optics and invented Calculus by his mid-20s.**​** Then, he invented the Newtonian paradigm for physics, which much of the modern world is built on.)

… an almost voluptuous intellectual energy, one amounting to mania. Newton’s day-to-day life was disorderly; he slept when sleep overpowered him. He read continually, he meditated without pause, often for days on end. He was often too distracted to eat.

I keep the subject constantly before me and wait until the first dawnings open little by little into the full light.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

It was my obsession. I skipped athletics. I went up there at night. We were programming on weekends. It would be a rare week that we wouldn’t get twenty or thirty hours in.

I think most people that are able to make a sustained contribution over time, rather than just a peak, are very internally driven. You have to be, because in the ebb and tide of people’s opinions and of fads, there are going to be times when you are criticized and criticism is very difficult. And so when you’re criticized, you learn to pull back a little and listen to your own drummer. And to some extent, that isolates you from the praise.

People say, “You have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing.” And it’s totally true. And the reason is, because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard and you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you’re gonna give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being “successful” in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t, oftentimes it’s the ones that are successful loved what they did so they could persevere when it got really tough. And the ones that that didn’t love it, quit, because they’re sane, right? Who would wanna put up with this stuff if you don’t love it? So it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly. And if you don’t love it, you’re gonna fail. So you gotta love it. You gotta have passion. And I think that’s the high order bit.