So Good They cant Ignore You Summary and Notes
A simple, no B.S. guide to chosing a career you love. Cal newport hit the nail on the head here. You need to do the hard work of building skills. Then passion, freedom, and fun will follow.
“Follow your passion.” is bad advice.
Passion comes with mastery.
The hard thing is getting the skills. Force yourself to do it.
Working right trumps finding the right work.
Self-Determination Theory (SDT):
Motivation in the workplace or elsewhere requires Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness.
Craftsman mindset: Focusing on what value you can provide to your job.
Passion mindset: Focusing on what value your job can provide to you.
Create something meaningful and present it to the world.
Adopt the craftsman mindset and passion will follow.
Building Skills (Career capital)
Force yourself to learn skills, to do the work, that is the hardest part.
Jobs that aren’t craftsman mindset compatible:
- The job doesn’t allow you to increase your skillset in order to distinguish yourself.
- The job focuses on something you think is useless or bad for the world.
- The job forces you to work with people you dislike.
Building skills
Polish your skills using many rounds of aggresive feedback.
Stretch yourself beyond what is comfortable.
Just showing up and working hard is not enough.
Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable.
Two types of career capital markets
1. winner-take-all
Where there is only one type of career capital available. Such as blogging, where the only thing that matters is making blog posts that compell your reader.
2. auction
Where there are many types of career capital available and each person may have a unique collection.
It’s important to ignore persuits that distract you from your main goal.
Control
Results only work environment (ROWE) The only thing that matters is that employees deliver the results you want. You do not care about employee hours.
Giving people control over what they do and how they do it increases their happiness, engagement, and sense of fulfillment.
Control traps
It’s dangerous to pursue more control at work before you have the skills to back it up.
Employers will fight your attempts to gain control. Getting more control over your working life benefits you but not your employer.
Only pursue a new career it if it’s something people are willing to pay for.
Mission
Having a mission can be a source of great satisfaction. People who feel like their careers matter are more resistant to hard work.
A mission is not likely to be sustainable if you do not have the relevant skills.
Most advancements come from being at the cutting edge and pushing beyond those boundaries.
Missions are only visible at the cutting edge. You are pushing the boundaries of that edge.
You won’t know in advance what work will lead to passion.
Turning your mission into success
Small and acheivable projects (little bets) explore the possibilities surrounding an idea.
You learn critical information on lots of little failures and wins.
These compound into extraordinary results.
Use each little bet to get feedback that guides your next steps.
Remarkable missions
A good mission-driven project requires that people remark about them. Which means they need to be compelling enough for people to talk about it in a venue that makes remarking easy.
Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing.
Books mentioned
Drive - Dan Pink
Little bets - Peter Sims
Purple Cow - Seth Godin
My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job -Chad Fowler