So Good They Cant Ignore You [Paperback] Cal Newport Paperback – January 1, 2018

Although my comments below are mostly critical, let me first say that I enjoyed the read. I give the author credit for proposing a different take on how to achieve job satisfaction than has appeared in so many books in recent decades.1. "Um... and for those of us who aren't Leonardo de Vinci?"a.) Who is the target audience: Ivy League grads (well, Stanford is in there too), music prodigies, people whose standardized test results put them in the top 1%, United States top-ranked debaters who use law school as a back-up plan for trying out Hollywood?!! In fairness, there are also studies cited. But is this really a guideline meant to be representative for a generalized population? Yes, these remarkable people worked hard, excelled, and appear to be content. It makes sense to look at that. But what about the rest of us?b.) An underlying assumption seems to be that career "success" is the same as career "satisfaction." (I'm not sure I would choose someone like Steve Jobs to illustrate how to be happy.) If the book were entitled, "How to be successful," I would probably quibble less. Snapshot assessments are provided of talented people who are for the moment extremely successful, and who appear content. How do we measure that these people are really happy in their jobs, or that they will be 30 years from now? Does one have to be "successful" to be happy? How many examples exist of people who have been successful who have lied (to themselves and others) about their happiness--only to later implode.c.) How do these examples support causality relative to the book's premise? There was no mention of the possibility that others might try the recommended approach and fail anyway.d.) The author's work with computers perhaps betrays him. This comes across as an intellectual construct based on the premise that job satisfaction is a deterministic puzzle. I don't agree: our lives are not linear, and this is NOT a science. There are just too many variables. Some write songs in 5 minutes, others labor for weeks or months. Some write books prolifically, some struggle for years. The template is not fixed.2. "The Craftsman Mindset (Mastery)"a.) Of all the places to look for evidence that job satisfaction is the result of the merit of one's efforts, the decision to highlight people in the music and television industries as illustrative models is just stunning. These venues represent the most subjective examples of achievement I can imagine. Countless instances can be found to illustrate a lack of mastery, talent, and quality. How many contemporary singers sing off pitch, how many hit television shows are increasingly... garbage? Perhaps "the tape doesn't lie", but in too many cases it just doesn't matter.b.) The celebration of mastery, hard, smart work, craftsmanship, and excellence is valid, wonderful, and useful. But history is replete with examples of people who were masters at what they did, and yet they WERE ignored--or even vilified. The response based on the line of reasoning presented would likely be that these people failed to adequately handle their "career capital." Should they have assessed their marketability at the expense of their mission or their integrity? Would this have made them happy? On the other hand, maybe it's possible they were already happy--despite their lack of tangible success.c.) I find it difficult to believe that people who have the tenacity to pursue the craftsman mindset do so not from passion but because it's what the "industry requires", or because it's what they can "offer the world." The former rationale is too cynical (a la "Stepford" employees). The latter is too Pollyanna-ish. I doubt either covers the general case.d.) Ira Glass is quoted as asserting that "you have to force the skills to come." I can attest from decades of experience in diverse environments that some of the most capable people I have met were the biggest goof-offs... and when it came time to get down to brass tacks, it wasn't because they "forced it". (I suspect this is partially because their minds were relaxed enough to learn.) Would they fit the book's criteria to be considered masters? I don't know, but that's not the point: the question was whether they were happy in their work.3. "Passion"a.) I think the book makes some good points regarding passion. It is sometimes difficult to understand passion in the absence of experience. But people have done amazing things because of passion--passion allows people to get beyond horrible circumstances through dedication to something they love. And while the book ridicules the passion mindset, Craftsman Mindset Disqualifier #2 allows for avoiding work that one considers "useless." Why? Probably because it's hard for anyone to have ANY passion for something they consider useless. (And later the development of a sense of mission is lauded to answer the related question "what should I do with my life.")b.) The argument that prior to deciding on a mission, one must first "get to the cutting edge" is just not realistic. How many people are ever able to attain that status? But even if they can, at what price? The opportunity cost of "10,000 hours" (particularly to find out one was mistaken) is enormous. Is this really a prescription for job satisfaction for the average person?c.) Perhaps the most poignant counter-examples to the premise that passion lacks value are provided by many who do excel at music as a profession. Accomplished musicians invariably note that they selected music as a career, because they in effect "had no choice," it is "part of who they are." As far as Jordan Tice, I cannot see how he would have practiced so much without passion. And to compare someone with average or even above-average musical skills to someone who is a musical "prodigy", and assert that the difference between the two can simply be attributed to how they practiced, seems to be pushing it a bit. For myself at least, I can tell you that I harbor no such illusions. :-)d.) The assertion is made that Steve Jobs wasted time during his younger days on the idea of passion. But how does one know that his "messy path" wasn't a prerequisite for his later success and happiness? How would he know he shouldn't become a Zen master, if he hadn't taken the time to explore the possibility? More to the point, maybe he would have never accomplished what he did if he hadn't attempted that path first. Indeed, the knowledge that our passions may not be clear cut may be the very reason for their pursuit. How will people obtain clarity, if they never investigate what they believe to be true? Passions may at times be illusory, and they may change, but that doesn't negate their validity--or their pursuit.4. "The American Dream"a.) This book can be viewed as optimistic, in that it suggests that anyone can do anything. Implicit in the analysis is the cliché that if one just tries hard enough and in the right way, they'll make it, and they'll be happy. But it can also be viewed as convenient and elitist to argue from success, e.g. "I succeeded, I'm happy, why aren't you... just do what I did." Though not mentioned as such, this idea fits in well with of the longstanding concept of the American dream. The narrow and exclusive nature of the supplied anecdotes does not lead one to be persuaded regarding the general premise. The author suggests that passion is rare, but how rare are the exceptional stories that were described? How many follow the rules and aren't happy; how many don't follow the rules but are? I would be curious as to how Malcolm Gladwell might view this book. Some of the points made in "Outliers" are cited, but in my opinion this book misses some of the heart that comes through in Gladwell's book. But perhaps I'm mistaken.b.) The book notes the particularly low satisfaction level of young workers. Increasingly, Americans' expectations are too high, we have grown up believing that we deserve to be entertained. In some ways this feeds our obsession with passion--I agree. But beyond this, we live in a culture where money, power, winning, and success--not craftsmanship or mastery--are the holy grail. Are we really surprised that people feel empty?c.) If one Googles "resume tips", they'll come upon the recommendation for people to leave their personal information off their resume. This is practical advice that is understandable, but consider the rationale that is provided: "We don't care what kind of person you are." That, I suggest, may be closer to the root of why rank and file people are often miserable in the jobs.

I read this book twice and love it. I hope that my younger family members will all read it but at the same time not be discouraged if they feel like they have a passion to pursue. This book is not an argument against passion but an argument against pursuing unidentified passion. My impression is that the author would advise against dropping everything in pursuit of passion and to make sure that it is financially viable first. Also, I strongly disagree with some of the other comments I've read here regarding the book being poorly written. The author has main points that he is trying to get across and has written the book in a style to prove his theory. Almost as if he is presenting a case in court he systematically describes this theory, why he believes it, supporting examples, and then counterpoints to objections that he anticipates. The book is another perspective on how to approach your work life in the modern world. It may be different than what a lot of American's have read or been told recently but if you have any "blue-collar" or immigrant family members it's not that unfamiliar.At the end there is also an outline of the steps he has taken to implement these strategies in his own career. This provides a practical example of his arguments you just read so I'd recommend not skipping this section. Maybe you will have some ideas on how to do the same for your own career.Book Notes:Rule #1 Don't Follow Your PassionArgument against the Passion Hypothesis. Most people do not seem to have a pre-existing passion waiting to be discovered and therefore believing that there is a magical right job awaiting you is a mistake.Rule #2 Be So Good They Can't Ignore YouArgument for building career capital which is the acquisition of rare and valuable skills. These skills are used in order to get a great job which is also rare and valuable.Great work allows you to be creative, have impact, and control.How you do this:A) Craftsmen mindset - focus on what value you are bringing to the world around you as opposed to the passion mindset which is focusing on the value the world is offering you.Three disqualifiers to craftsmen mindset:1) The job presents few opportunities to develop rare and valuable skills.2) The job focuses on something you think is useless or bad for the world.3)The job forces you to work with people you really dislike.B) Deliberate practice - deliberately stretching beyond your comfort zone in work and receive feedback on your performance. Similar to how athletes and musicians train. This is deep work where you focus on improvement.Rule #3 Turn Down a PromotionOnce you have career capital how do you invest it? Gaining more control over your career...not necessarily promotions or more responsibility.Control Traps:1) Do not try to gain more control too early. Need to make sure you are valuable enough to your employer before making moves for autonomy.2) Once you are skilled enough to make moves for more control your employer will resist because of the value you bring to them. They will push you toward promotions and roles requiring more responsibility.If you are pursuing more control in your career but are encountering resistance you can test the reason by using the law of Financial Viability. This simply means doing what people are willing to pay for. This is an indicator of whether or not you have enough career capital to do what it is you are pursuing.Rule #4 Think Small, Act BigHaving a guiding Mission is a trait to pursue if you want a compelling career. You must first develop career capital to increase your chances of having a successful mission. You must have this career capital in order to see what the opportunities are in your field.Adjacent possible is the area just beyond cutting edge in your field. In order to see this you must be skilled enough in an area which requires developing career capital.Once you have a mission or an idea of a mission it is best to use Little Bets which are small specific projects launched at pursuing this overall mission. These little bets allow you to get feedback to see if you are on the right track or if you need to make adjustments to your ideas.It also helps to pursue remarkable projects. That is 1) compels people to spread it and 2) launched in a venue that is conducive to spreading. An example of this is open source platforms or academic journals.

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I really enjoyed reading this book more than I thought I would.As someone who lost her job, went into freelancing for almost 2 years, and just recently got back into the cooperate world, I can attest to the fact that building career capital definitely helps you get a job you love.I totally relate with the sentiment that it takes time and experiences to really figure out what you love, and given the right circumstances, you get to love what you do.This is such a good read for anyone who is in the cooperate world, and certainly for anyone thinking about quitting their job to "pursue their passion"

This framework may be easier to apply to someone like a professor (like the author himself) or a creative worker like a writer or a musician. Those common office workers who have to navigate politics and mind games in the business world may find it a bit challenging to manifest the craftsman mindset, the mindset that the author asserts as a must-have quality to end up loving what we do. That said, overall stories here are extremely compelling and practical enough to apply in any type of work situation. Highly recommend it to anyone who concerns about some sort of growth and fulfillment at work.

Very good book! Really helpful!

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love (Newport, Cal)- Seu destaque na página 8 | posição 121-122 | Adicionado: quarta-feira, 25 de janeiro de 2017 00:55:19The things that make a great job great, I discovered, are rare and valuable. If you want them in your working life, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return. In other words, you need to be good at something before you can expect a good job.Don’t follow your passion; rather, let it follow you in your quest to become, in the words of my favorite Steve Martin quote, “so good that they can’t ignore you.”The Passion Hypothesis The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you’re passionate about and then find a job that matches this passion.“I feel like your problem is that you’re trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them. That’s your tragic mistake.”A job, in Wrzesniewski’s formulation, is a way to pay the bills, a career is a path toward increasingly better work, and a calling is work that’s an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.SDT tells us that motivation, in the workplace or elsewhere, requires that you fulfill three basic psychological needs—factors described as the “nutriments” required to feel intrinsically motivated for your work:Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are importantCompetence: the feeling that you are good at what you doRelatedness: the feeling of connection to other peopleworking right trumps finding the right work.Telling someone to “follow their passion” is not just an act of innocent optimism, but potentially the foundation for a career riddled with confusion and angst.Two different approaches to thinking about work: the craftsman mindset, a focus on what value you’re producing in your job, and the passion mindset, a focus on what value your job offers you. Most people adopt the passion mindset, but in this chapter I argue that the craftsman mindset is the foundation for creating work you love.This hour-tracking strategy helped turn my attention back above all else to the quality of what I produce.No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy.regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer.This is why I reject the “argument from pre-existing passion,” because it gets things backward. In reality, as I’ll demonstrate, you adopt the craftsman mindset first and then the passion follows.The Power of Career Capital In which I justify the importance of the craftsman mindset by arguing that the traits that make a great job great are rare and valuable, and therefore, if you want a great job, you need to build up rare and valuable skills—which I call career capital—to offer in return.Glass emphasizes the importance of the hard work required to develop skill. “All of us who do creative work … you get into this thing, and there’s like a ‘gap.’ What you’re making isn’t so good, okay? … It’s trying to be good but … it’s just not that great,” he explained in an interview about his career. “The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest phase,”television writing is attractive because it has the three traits that make people love their work: impact, creativity, and control.What interests me about Mike is that, like Alex Berger, he didn’t arrive at his outstanding job by following a clear passion. Instead he carefully and persistently gathered career capital, confident that valuable skills would translate into valuable opportunities. Unlike Alex, however, Mike started gathering capital before he knew what he wanted to do with it. In fact, he had never given a moment’s thought to cleantech venture capital until a couple weeks before his first interview.When you correctly understand the market where blogging exists, you stop calculating your bounce rate and start focusing instead on saying something people really care about—which is where your energy should be if you want to succeed. Mike Jackson, by contrast, correctly identified that he was in an auction market. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do, but he knew it would involve the environment, so he set out to gain any capital relevant to this broad topic.Step 2: Identify Your Capital TypeOnce you’ve identified your market, you must then identify the specific type of capital to pursue. If you’re in a winner-take-all market, this is trivial: By definition, there’s only one type of capital that matters. For an auction market, however, you have flexibility. A useful heuristic in this situation is to seek open gates—opportunities to build capital that are already open to you.Step 3: Define “Good” It’s at this point, once you’ve identified exactly what skill to build, that you can, for guidance, begin to draw from the research on deliberate practice. The first thing this literature tells us is that you need clear goals. If you don’t know where you’re trying to get to, then it’s hard to take effective action.If you show up and do what you’re told, you will, as Anders Ericsson explained earlier in this chapter, reach an “acceptable level” of ability before plateauing. The good news about deliberate practice is that it will push you past this plateau and into a realm where you have little competition. The bad news is that the reason so few people accomplish this feat is exactly because of the trait Colvin warned us about: Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable. I like the term “stretch” for describing what deliberate practice feels like,Pushing past what’s comfortable, however, is only one part of the deliberate-practice story; the other part is embracing honest feedback—even if it destroys what you thought was goodStep 4: Stretch and DestroyStep 5: Be PatientThe appeal of control, however, is not limited to farmers. Decades of scientific research have identified this trait as one of the most important you can pursue in the quest for a happier, more successful, and more meaningful life. Dan Pink’s 2009 bestselling book Drive, for example, reviews the dizzying array of different ways that control has been found to improve people’s lives.1 As Pink summarizes the literature, more control leads to better grades, better sports performance, better productivity, and more happiness.If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short). In a ROWE company, all that matters is your results. When you show up to work and when you leave, when you take vacations, and how often you check e-mail are all irrelevant. They leave it to the employee to figure out whatever works best for getting the important things done. “No results, no job: It’s that simple,” as ROWE supporters like to say.The First Control Trap: Control that’s acquired without career capital is not sustainable.enthusiasm alone is not rare and valuable and is therefore not worth much in terms of career capital.the second control trap, which warns that once you have enough career capital to acquire more control in your working life, you have become valuable enough to your employer that they will fight your efforts to gain more autonomy.This was not a great job. In fact, this was not even a decent job. It’s here that Lulu could have easily fallen into the first control trap: Finding yourself stuck in a boring job is exactly the point where breaking away to pave your own non-conformist path becomes tempting.Her first client really wanted to hire her full-time to work on the project, but she refused. “They really didn’t want a contractor,” she recalls, “but they didn’t have anyone else who could do this type of work, so they eventually had no choice but to agree.”The more I met people who successfully deployed control in their career, the more I heard similar tales of resistance from their employers, friends, and families.By this point in my quest, I’ve encountered enough stories of control going both right and wrong to know that this conundrum is serious—perhaps one of the single most difficult obstacles facing us in our quest for work we love. The cheery slogans of the courage culture are obviously too crude to guide us through this tricky territory. We need a more nuanced heuristic, something that could make clear exactly what brand of control trap you’re facing.Avoiding the Control Traps In which I explain the law of financial viability, which says you should only pursue a bid for more control if you have evidence that it’s something that people are willing to pay you for.have this principle about money that overrides my other life rules,” he said. “Do what people are willing to pay for.”“Money is a neutral indicator of value. By aiming to make money, you’re aiming to be valuable.” He also emphasized that hobbies are clearly exempt from this rule.what’s important to note now is that her mission provides her a sense of purpose and energy, traits that have helped her avoid becoming a cynical academic and instead embrace her work with enthusiasm. Her mission is the foundation on which she builds love for what she does, and therefore it’s a career strategy we need to better understand.To have a mission is to have a unifying focus for your career. It’s more general than a specific job and can span multiple positions.Here’s the leap I made as I pondered Pardis Sabeti around the same time I was pondering Johnson’s theory of innovation: A good career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough—it’s an innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field. If you want to identify a mission for your working life, therefore, you must first get to the cutting edge—the only place where these missions become visible.Princeton Web Solutions, in other words, had inoculated me against the idea that occupational happiness requires a calling.Because of these early experiences, I looked on with curiosity, once I arrived at college, when my classmates began to wring their hands about the question of what they wanted to do with their lives. For them, something as basic as choosing a major became weighted with cosmic significance.The second type of structure I deployed was information structure—a way of capturing the results of my hard focus in a useful form.After these first two steps, emboldened by my initial successes in deploying hard focus, I moved on to the big guns: proof summaries. This is where I forced myself to take each lemma and walk through each step of its proofs—filling in missing steps. I would conclude by writing a detailed summary in my own words. This was staggeringly demanding, but the fact that I had already spent time on easier tasks in the paper built up enough momentum to help push me forward.I also track my hours spent on these bets in the hour tally I described back in the section of this conclusion dedicated to my application of Rule #2. I found that without these accountability tools, I tended to procrastinate on this work, turning my attention to more urgent but less important matters.A fulfilling working life is a more subtle experience than his old fantasies had allowed. As we chatted, Thomas agreed that a good way of describing his transformation is that he came to realize a simple truth: Working right trumps finding the right work. He didn’t need to have a perfect job to find occupational happiness—he needed instead a better approach to the work already available to him.

Haven't finished yet. But I must say, it was a great purchase. A contradictory but realistic approach towards a happier and prosperous life. It's about how to enjoy what you do and being so good in what you do that you can't be ignored.Author is a firm opposer of passion or purpose driven life. Author says your success and happiness don't depend on how passionate you are, but WHAT VALUE YOU PROVIDE TO THE WORLD.Must go for it. And you should not miss his(Cal's) best selling book ' Deep Work' , a really life changing one. Thank you.

I purchased this book as it kept coming up on YouTube videos I was watching. One Software Developer said it changed his life for the better and a Doctor also gave it a really good review. I've finished it a week or two ago and whilst I don't know if it was "Life Changing" for me personally, I certainly keep thinking about it so it must be good.The very brief summary of the book is that the author believes you should not follow your dreams. Instead, you should work hard excel in your skills and ultimately become "so good they can't ignore you". The idea is by working hard you'll get recognized and relied upon and then with this revelation you'll then become develop a passion for your job and accrue "career capital" which you can effectively "cash in" at later dates.The idea of working hard to excel in your skills personally reminded me of when I was at school and a group of us were learning Electric Guitar. All my friends would be learning the songs they like for that instant-gratification, but I was the only one who went through the strain of doing technical exercises, running up and down scales, picking techniques, etc and I ended up being a better player... That is, until I went to University and found everyone else had practiced even more than me! But really I could relate to the point the author makes where if you take that time to really focus on the hard/boring stuff, you will quickly soar above everyone else. I strongly believe he's correct.Some people may hate the idea of not following your dream but the author's isn't saying you can't do what you're interested in but maybe don't give up your day job until it pays. He gives an example that Steve Jobs doesn't actually follow his dream, he just found a gap in the market. And my personal favorite example in the book was the person who quit their job to start a blog about how to make a living from writing blogs and their blog didn't go very far. There's another about a lady who quits her job to teach Yoga but has very little Yoga experience and soon realises she's financially ruined herself.All in all, I'd definitely recommend it! Maybe nothing too new for some people but the examples are definitely a bit of a wake up call.