What You Get:

PHASE ONE: RESEARCH

We will teach you research techniques that can save you years of wasted effort. Knowing exactly what matters—and what doesn’t—is the first step to becoming a top performer. We’ll also guide you away from common pitfalls that plague amateur efforts.

In this phase you’ll learn:

• The number one mistake most people make when making career decisions
• How to become an expert in how your career works
• What to do if you have no clue where you should go with your career
• Who you should talk to—and who you should avoid—when trying to understand your career
• The two styles for researching your career, and why most people choose the wrong one

You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:

• Differential Analysis: Learn how to scientifically test which attributes matter for your career and which don’t
• Choose the Lifestyle, Not the Person: How to design your career so you can live the life you want
• The Colored Folder Fallacy: Understand why you’ll often get lousy career advice and how to fix it
• And much more…

PHASE TWO: PROJECT

Choosing the right project can be the difference between rapid advancement and stagnation. We’ll teach you how to craft a deliberate practice project to quickly build key skills.

In this phase you’ll learn:

• The quickest way to get good at complex skills like programming, research, or business
• The Business Plan Method: A tool for procrastination-proofing your projects
• Ways to measure your progress, so you can actually see yourself getting better
• How to integrate deliberate practice into your existing job, see faster results without more work
• The ingredient shared by all successful opportunities for skill improvement

You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:

• How to Build Soft Skills: Learn how to deliberately practice soft skills like selling, negotiating, speaking, or leadership
• How to Design Projects You’ll Actually Finish: Procrastination-proof your projects so that you can confidently get them done
• From Insight to Action: How to generate project ideas for improving the skills that matter
• And much more…

PHASE THREE: DEEP WORK

How can you cut through busyness to get important work done? We’ll show you the strategies behind the world’s most productive people, so you can get results without burning out.

In this phase you’ll learn:

• How to control how much busyness you have in your life, rather than letting it be dictated to you
• How to work more deeply, making use of your limited time to get greater improvement
• Strategies for managing your energy so you can prevent subtle drains on your productivity
• Techniques to improve your ability to concentrate and focus on tasks

You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:

• The Artifact Method: Avoid falling into pseudowork with this proven technique for increasing your deep work
• The Power of Single-Projecting: How to increase your ability to get meaningful work done—while reducing your busyness
• Fixed-Schedule Productivity: The productivity system Cal used to publish five books while completing a PhD at MIT and raising two kids
• And much more…

PHASE FOUR: MASTERY

Finally, we’ll teach you how you can apply the lessons of research and deliberate practice to your entire career.

In this phase you’ll learn:

• Why some feedback can actually hurt your progress
• What “Desk Drawer Syndrome” is and why it holds you back from improving
• How to cultivate a circle of mentors to guide your career into the future
• The strategy for making smart long-term career investments
• A system for monitoring your career progress so you can avoid worrying too much (or too little) about your goals
• How to repeat the processes in Top Performer for continuous improvement

You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:

• Time Auditing: Figure out where your time is going so you can focus it on what matters
• How to Combat Perfectionism: Figure out the good—and bad—kinds of perfectionism to prevent them from holding you back
• Career Capital Analysis: Learn to assess what skills and assets you bring to the table, so you can spot areas you might be able to leverage or strengthen
• And much more…

What’s New in Top Performer 2.0

In addition to the 60 lessons from the original program, Cal and Scott have added eight new lessons for Top Performer 2.0. In this updated edition, you’ll find:

• Skill vs Signal
  Combine objective performance with legible signals to boost career success.
• Environment Matters
  Why choosing where to work shapes your career.
• End-User Analysis
  Analyze the upstream and downstream value of your work.
• Drilldown vs Benchmark Projects
  Learn how to integrate your projects within your work.
• Ways to Be Better
  The 6 different dimensions of your work you can improve.
• Wicked Problems at Work
  Learn to tackle problems which have no definite solution.
• Timelogging
  Why it works and how to do it.
• Overcoming Uncertainty in Making Plans
  How to take charge and act in situations where you are not sure what to do.

Top Performer 2.0 has also expanded with interactive worksheets. These video-guided exercises will take you through the process step-by-step.

In addition to Top Performer, we have three other courses taught by either Cal or Scott. Normally we only offer these courses twice per year. In this session, we’re providing an all-access pass that will let you take not only Top Performer, but any of our other courses—at your own pace.

This includes:

• Life of Focus
  Depth is something we all crave—but often struggle to find. Life of Focus is a three-month program, taught by Cal Newport and Scott Young, designed to inject more focus into your work, life and mind. Building on their best-selling titles, Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and Ultralearning, this course goes deep into how you can accomplish big things while creating a satisfying life outside of work.

• Rapid Learner
  Scott’s 6-week course in effective learning combines research from cognitive science with Scott’s personal experience taking on challenging learning projects, such as tackling MIT’s undergraduate curriculum in twelve months and learning four languages in a single year. If you buy now, you’ll get access to the Total Mastery Edition, which includes full access to Scott’s previous programs Learning on Steroids and Learn More, Study Less.

• Make it Happen!
  Gain a deep understanding of the strategies to effect change in your life—master your psychology, create systems to ensure progress and avoid the traps that hold you back. You’ll get the upgraded Gold Edition of this course which includes additional audio recordings and e-books.