This is an exciting day for me and one that never would have happened without you, my readers here at Study Hacks, who have helped me hone my arguments and my craft. So I humbly thank you.
This brings me to today’s post. I have two goals in the sections below: (1) to tell you a little bit more about the book; and (2) to tell you how you can win a chance to speak with me one-on-one about any topic of your choosing.
This quest took me across the country. I met with organic farmers, venture capitalists, computer programers, college professors, med school residents, and globe-trotting tech entrepreneurs, among many others, all in an effort to understand how people cultivate compelling careers.
In more detail, the book is divided into the following four “rules,” each cataloging a different discovery:
I conclude the book by talking about how I apply these ideas in my own career. You’ll hear about my academic job search process and the types of systems I have in place to help push me toward more and more passion in my work.
If you’re serious about loving what you for a living, and are tired of people reducing this complex goal to a simple slogan (“do what you love! the money will follow”), then this book is perfect for you. (If you’re on the fence, check out the endorsements from folks like Seth Godin, Reid Hoffman, Dan Pink, Kevin Kelly, and Derek Sivers, or the growing number of unsolicited 5-star reviews).
To help motivate you to buy the book during this crucial first week I’m offer a promotion in which I’m giving away 30 minute, one-on-one phone calls with myself, to talk about any topic of your choosing.
I am holding three separate random drawings: one for people who preordered the book; one for people who buy the book this week; and one for people who buy five or more copies of the book. (Not very many people buy in bulk, so if you do, you’ll probably have a good chance of being drawn).
If you win, I’ll notify you by e-mail, and we’ll set up a time to chat on the phone.
Have you ever wondered why no matter what you do, no matter how productive you are, that you’re not getting ahead? Have you ever thought that while you’re good at what you do, you may not be at the level of being “so good they can’t ignore you”?
I remember when I first started my college education in 2007. I was an “older” student and felt that I was much more prepared to get back to school and make something of myself.
That was until I realized that my productivity wasn’t that good.
I didn’t know how to study, concentrate (on the right things), read effectively, and so on. I searched for better ways to get stuff done and came across sites like Lifehack, Lifehacker, 43 Folders, and a little site called Study Hacks. I took to Study Hacks because the author, Cal Newport, was into the same type of industry I was wanting to get into — and he offered a ton of good advice to make me more effective and productive in school.
Newport has taken his advice and research skills to the next level with his new book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
Getting to Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
The basic premise of Newport’s book is that “skills trump passion” and that the age-old adage of “following your bliss”, quitting your job, and doing what you were destined to do, may not be the best advice. Newport argues that rather than try to find work that promotes what you are passionate about, we should try to build valuable skills that lead to “career capital” which will help us create our dream jobs and careers.
Don’t follow your passion because it could be dangerous
We are all told from a young age that we should “do what makes us happy” and that we should make sure that our jobs reflect who we are. Newport tries to disprove this thinking and then goes a step further explaining how it could be dangerous for some. Instead of chasing our dreams and following what we deem as our passion, we would be better served getting really good at something (develop our skills) and then offer our skills to people who deem them valuable.
Cal Newport
Passion Mindset vs. Craftsman Mindset
This is one of my favorite ideas from the book — an idea that I’ll return to regularly. Newport suggests that to create a good career for ourselves we should adopt a “craftsman mindset” rather than a “passion mindset” that is suggested by the mainstream.
The craftsman mindset offers “clarity”. That is, we see the work in front of us and the skills that we need to get the job done. When we have this clarity it’s easier to know what to do.
The passion mindset is ambiguous and pushes us to discover deeper things within ourselves. Things like “Who am I?” and “what kind of job do I need to do to be a better person?” Many of us have no idea what these things are (the vast majority) so we end up chasing something that may not even exist in our current context. Rather than chase, we can develop skills.
The best way that Newport describes the two mindsets:
“The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you.”
By following a craftsman mindset Newport says we can develop “career capital”, which can be used as the foundation of creating work that we love.
“The Control Trap”
After creating enough career capital and skill from using your craftsman mindset, Newport says the next thing that tends to happen is that we gain some control over our work, which is sort of like becoming a decision-maker (or even your own boss). While this is what many people dream their careers will eventually offer, there is a trap…a fine line that is associated with control.
First, Newport says that you can sort of jump into control to quickly. This tends to happen when you think you can start your own business, or make decisions, etc. without enough career capital to back you up. Basically, this is like not having enough experience.
Second, you can gain so much control that if you are in a more “traditional” job setting, your employer may force you back on a path that takes control away from you.
The way that Newport suggests to balance this control trap is by weighing what you are trying to do (start a business, trying to gain more control in your company) by weighing its financial viability. Basically, if people are willing to pay you enough to do something that requires more control, then it’s probably a good idea to seek it.
Putting it all together
The idea of the So Good They Can’t Ignore You is something new and fresh that shows us quitting your job so you can start a business on a whim or because it is something you are “passionate” about probably isn’t the best idea.
But it goes further than that.
Newport’s book is a plan that can be followed and can be used to create your own career capital and control so you can live a life that is truly satisfying. Rather than wishing and hoping for something that may never come (like your “dream job”), you can instead hone your skills and master your craft at this very moment to create your dream job.
It’s nice to see someone approach this at a different, and possibly more realistic, angle than many of the career/self-help books do. Instead of finding out who you are, what makes you tick, and what is the perfect job for you, you can work your butt off and create all of that for yourself. This is refreshing and is truly motivating.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You lives up to its title: it is so good that it can’t be ignored.
Steve Martin’s Advice for Building a Career You Love
http://lifehacker.com/5947649/steve-martins-advice-for-building-a-career-you-love
The following is an excerpt from Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.
The Passion Hypothesis
To simplify things, I'll use the "passion hypothesis" to refer to the popular belief that the way to end up loving your career is to first figure out what you're passionate about, and then pursue it (a strategy often summarized with the pithy phrase, "follow your passion.") The more I studied this hypothesis, the more I noticed its danger. This idea convinces people that there's a magic "right" job waiting for them, and that if they find it, they'll immediately recognize that this is the work they were meant to do. The problem, of course, is when they fail to find this certainty, bad things follow, such as chronic job-hopping and crippling self-doubt.
But without the passion hypothesis to guide us, what should we do instead? How do people really end up loving what they do? To answer this question we need to turn our attention to an unexpected career adviser.
Becoming a Craftsman
In a 2007 episode of the Charlie Rose show, Rose was interviewing the actor and comedian Steve Martin about his memoirBorn Standing Up. They talked about the realities of Martin's rise. In the last five minutes of the interview, Rose asks Martin his advice for aspiring performers.
"Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it's not the answer they wanted to hear," Martin said. "What they want to hear is ‘Here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script,' . . . but I always say, ‘Be so good they can't ignore you.' "
In response to Rose's trademark ambiguous grunt, Martin defended his advice: "If somebody's thinking, ‘How can I be really good?' people are going to come to you."
This is exactly the philosophy that catapulted Martin into stardom. He was only twenty years old when he decided to innovate his act into something too good to be ignored. "Comedy at the time was all setup and punch line . . . the clichéd nightclub comedian, rat-a-tat-tat," Martin explained to Rose. He thought it could be something more sophisticated. It took Martin, by his own estimation, ten years for his new act to cohere, but when it did, he became a monster success. It's clear in his telling that there was no real shortcut to his eventual fame, and the compelling life it generated. "[Eventually] you are so experienced [that] there's a confidence that comes out," Martin explained. "I think it's something the audience smells."
If you're not focusing on becoming so good they can't ignore you, you're going to be left behind. This clarity is refreshing. It tells you to stop worrying about what your job offers you, and instead worry about what you're offering the world. This mindset–which I call the craftsman mindset-allows you to sidestep the anxious questions generated by the passion hypothesis—"Who am I?", "What do I truly love?"—and instead put your head down and focus on becoming valuable.
Martin's advice, however, offers more than just a strategy for avoiding job uncertainty. The more I studied it, the more convinced I became that it's a powerful tactic for building a working life that you eventually grow to love. As I'll explain below, regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopting the craftsman mindset can be the foundation on which you build a compelling career.
Career Capital Theory
Research shows that the traits that lead people to love their work are general, and can be found in many different career paths. They include things like autonomy, a sense of impact and mastery, creativity, and respect and recognition for your abilities. Once you recognize that these traits have little to do with following a pre-existing passion, and can be cultivated in many different fields, you can safely abandon the myth that there's a single right job waiting out there for you.
Of course, this still leaves open the question of how you gain these factors in your working life. One of the first things I noticed when I began to study this question is that these traits are rare. Most jobs, for example, don't offer their employees great autonomy and the ability to make a big impact. If you're a recent college graduate in an entry-level job, you're much more likely to hear "go change the water cooler" than you are "go change the world."
By definition, we also know that these traits are valuable—as they're the key to making a job great. But now we're moving into well-trod territory. Basic economic theory tells us that if you want something that's both rare and valuable, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return—this is Supply and Demand 101.
When you hear the stories of people who ended up loving what they do, this same pattern comes up again and again. They start by painstakingly developing rare and valuable skills—which we can call career capital. They then leverage this capital to gain rare and valuable traits in their career. These traits lead to a feeling of passion about their working life. If career capital is the key to developing passion, then this explains the importance of Steve Martin's craftsman mindset. By focusing on becoming so good they can't ignore you, you're maximizing the rate at which you acquire the capital you need to take control of your livelihood.
Passion 2.0
"Follow your passion" is an appealing idea because it's simple and immediate. If you can figure out what you're meant to do, it promises, a deep love for your career is just around the corner. The reality I'm proposing is less glamorous. It argues that passion takes time and hard work—harder work than most people naturally invest in their jobs. It's also less certain in the sense that you cannot predict in advance the details of the compelling career you're cultivating. But it compensates with clarity.
Stop worrying about what the world owes you, it says, and instead, put your head down, like Steve Martin developing his act, and strive to become so good you can't be ignored. It's this straightforward goal—not some fairy tale about dropping everything to pursue a dream job—that will lead you toward a working life you love.
Adapted from the book So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport. © 2012 by Calvin C. Newport. Reprinted by permission of Business Plus. All rights reserved.
Cal Newport is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. He previously earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2009, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 2004. Newport is the author of three books of unconventional advice for students, which have sold a combined total of more than 100,000 copies: How to Be a High School Superstar, How to Become a Straight-A Student, and How to Win at College. His fourth book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, is a contrarian look at career advice that was just published by Grand Central in September, 2012.
