The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do

by Jeff Goins

we never find a calling o...

Sometimes the people who help us find our calling come from the least likely of places. It’s our job to notice them.

nobody reaches expert status without intense preparation.

Excellence, then, is a matter of practice, not talent.

confusing my understanding of ability with what was actually possible.

We are often exceeding our own expectations of ourselves.

we continue to believe in the Myth of Talent, that some people are born a certain way, that we cannot rise above our circumstances and achieve something greater than we’ve ever done before. When we do this, we deceive ourselves.

Hardwired in our brains and bodies is a potential greater than we realize, and all we have to do to unlock it is believe.

Regardless of natural talent or the lack thereof, every person has the ability to improve themselves.9

it’s more important to try than to rest on your natural ability.

Because you’re capable of more

than you realize, and in trying, you learn something new as you push past possibility. As a result, you grow, learning that most skills are not inborn, but learned. Practiced. At least, they can be, if you’re willing to adopt the growth mindset and dedicate yourself to the practice that follows. Even the most gifted people ...

comfort never leads to excellence. What it takes to become great at your craft is practice, but not just any kind of practice—the kind that hurts, that stretches and grows you.

the right kind of practice is a process of repeated tasks that end in failure. You fail and fail and fail again until you finally succeed and learn not only the right way to do something, but the best way.

“deep practice,”

To master any skill, you must first choose a task; then do it over and over again until the activity becomes second nature; and finally, push through the times when you fail, exhibiting even greater foc...

quality of practice

distinction between ordinary and extraordinary practice

They recognize the resistance we all feel but instead choose to see it as a sign of how close they are to their goal. Disciplining themselves, they deliberately lean in to the most difficult parts when most people tend to quit.

Pain is instructive to the person willing to learn. But do we apply the same lesson to our vocations?

push ourselves past what others expect, beyond what is normal,

You must take yourself beyond what you think is possible, to the utter limits of your ability.

Rarely do easy and greatness go together.

long before a person is ready for his calling, life is preparing that person for the future through chance encounters and serendipitous experiences.

True practice is not just about learning a skill; it’s about investing the time and energy necessary to discern if this is what you are meant to do.

Skill is the result of intense practice; it’s the product of persistent trial and error until the person gets it right.

some failures are not challenges to overcome but signs of what we shouldn’t be doing.

What makes a person successful, then, is not the luck, but what he or she does with it.

Are you committed to the craft, or will you quit when it gets too hard?

We all want to do something that we are good at, that the world in some way recognizes, but the point of practice is never just about skill acquisition. It’s about making a contribution to the world.

Discovering your calling is not an epiphany but a series of intentional decisions. It looks less like a giant leap and more like building a bridge.

find what you love and what the world needs, then combine them.

“Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

There was no plan. But they acted anyway.

Commitment is costly; it

should scare us.

The process of finding and claiming your calling is a journey, one that requires you to leave what you know in search of what you don’t know.

speak, for your servant is listening.

as we continue ignoring the call that beckons our souls to awaken, we grow restless. And the voice grows louder until one day it is unbearable.

clarity of calling comes more through a series of deliberate decisions than it does through any sudden revelation.

gentle, consistent prodding that won’t leave you alone until you act. That you respond to the call, not how, is what makes it extraordinary.

And once I grasped my identity, the activity followed.

Often our lives are speaking to us in extraordinary ways, but we lack the ability to hear or interpret the message.

finding your calling, as mysterious as it seems, is not only a mystical process; it is intensely practical. You either act on what you know, or you miss your moment.

Humility is a prerequisite for epiphany.

you must act.

if we are truly called, the work always comes before we are ready. We will have to act in spite of feeling unprepared.

Decisions reveal opportunity.

A calling takes everything you’ve done up to a certain point and turns it into preparation.

she had to trust that feeling.