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Introduction
- Following your “passion” is not the true path to doing work you love.
- Purpose of the book is to answer: “How do people end up loving what they do?”
- The common thread in this book: The Importance of Ability ==> If you want (or want to create) a great job, you must have something rare valuable to offer ==> Need to Be Good At Something
- Mastery is not enough ==> Example: Miserable workaholics
- Let your passion follow you
Rule 1: Don’t Follow Your Passion
Chapter 1: The “Passion” of Steve Jobs
- The Passion Hypothesis: The key to job happiness is figuring out your passions/personality then finding a job that passion/personality ==> This hypothesis is preached everywhere
- Steve Jobs’ passion was for Zen; His first computer work was a “lucky break” ==> Jobs’ story only illustrates that it is good to enjoy what you do, not much about following passion
Chapter 2: Passion is Rare
- Road Trip Nation Interview Revelations: Force yourself through work and acquiring skills + Open up your options + Set goals for being the best at whatever you do + Some people are never sure ==> “Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that ll you have to do is follow your passion.”
- Prevailing social science research: Passion is not one of the factors in measuring workplace satisfaction
- Career Passions are Rare ==> Robert J Vallerand (2002) ==> 96% of people’s passions are related to hobbies; only 4% of participants had passions that had any relations to work/education
- Passion Takes Time ==> Amy Wrzesniewski, “Jobs, Careers, and Callings” (1997) ==> Distinction between job (just to pay bills), career (path for increasingly better work), calling (work that is important to one’s life/identity) ==> Strongest predictor of a person identifying his/her job as a calling was length of time spent on the job (the more time, the higher the chances) ==> Contradicts What Passion Hypothesis Would Predict
- Passion is a Side Effect of Mastery ==> Daniel Pink, Drive ==> Self-Determination Theory (SDT): Motivation has three basic psychological needs: Autonomy + Competence + Relatedness ==> Takes time to build competence and autonomy + Nothing about following passions
- Working right is more important than finding the right work
Chapter 3: Passion is Dangerous
- The Passion Hypothesis arose in 1970, What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles
- The Passion Hypothesis makes people believe that there is a mythical “right job” waiting for them ==> The problem: when people inevitably fail to find this ”perfect” job, negative consequences will occur due to unrealistic expectations ==> Angst, confusion, despair, depression, self-doubt, etc. ==> People have been becoming steadily and consistently less satisfied with their jobs since 1987
- For some people, following their passions works ==> But it is faulty logic to present the stories of people who successfully followed their passions ==> The people that follow their passions first are exceptions ==> For the majority, the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous advice
Rule 2: Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Or, the Importance of Skill)
Chapter 4: The Clarity of the Craftsman
- Craftsman Mindset (A focus on the value you produce in your work) vs. Passion Mindset (A focus on what value your work offers you)
- Steve Martin: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” ==> Hard work ==> “[Eventually] you are so experienced [that] there’s a confidence that comes out… I think it’s something the audience smells.”
- Craftsman Mindset ==> Obsessive focus on quality
- Passion Mindset ==> when focused on what work offers you, too much awareness of what you don’t like (chronic unhappiness) + the driving questions of this mindset (“Who am I?”) are impossible to confirm
Chapter 5: The Power of Career Capital
- Because a great job is rare and valuable, you must build rare and valuable skills to offer to attain one.
- Characteristics of a Great Job: Creativity + Impact + Control/Autonomy ==> These are a rarity in the job market and therefore valuable ==> You need something rare and valuable to get a great job
- Must work extremely hard to acquire rare and valuable skills/products/etc.
- The danger of “Courage Culture,” the idea that the only thing keeping people from pursuing a new career is courage ==> Disregards the value of merit and personal capital for sheer emotional “courage”
- Lisa Feuer vs. Joe Duffy ==> Passion vs. Craftsman
- Some jobs are not suitable for the Craftsman Mindset ==> few opportunities to distinguish yourself through developing skills + focuses on something you believe is useless or negative + forces you to work with people you abhor
Chapter 6: The Career Capitalists
- Use the craftsman mindset, work hard, and develop rare and useful skills to construct a great career
- Alex Berger ==> Keep collecting career capital
- Mike Jackson ==> Do your very best in whatever you are doing at the time + Focus on your capabilities
Chapter 7: Becoming a Craftsman
- Anders Ericsson: Deliberate practice + Stretching your ability + Receiving immediate feedback
- Anders Ericsson: 10,000-Hour Rule
- Neil Charness – Research on chess mastery ==> Serious Study most important factor in predicting chess skill, significantly so compared to other factors (e.g. tournament play) ==> Those who became grandmasters studied 5x more than those who remained at intermediate level
- Practicing without deliberateness and expert feedback leads to performance plateaus
- Five Habits of Craftsmen
- Step 1: Decide What Capital Market You’re In
- 2 Types of Markets: 1) Winner-Take-All (only one type of career capital available and everyone competes for it), e.g. Television Writing; 2) Auction (Many different types of career capital and everyone has their own unique collection), e.g. cleantech business niche
- Know your market: Don’t confuse one with another
- Example: Blogging is a winner-take-all market, not an auction market ==> Inspiring people
- Step 2: Identify Your Capital Type
- In a winner-take-all market, the market itself defines the single capital type in demand
- In an auction market, seek open gates ==> opportunities to build capital
- Step 3: Define “Good”
- Step 4: Stretch and Destroy
- Deliberate practice is NOT enjoyable BUT deliberate practice is NECESSARY to becoming exceptional
- Actively seek out and embrace constructive feedback
- Step 5: Be Patient
- Adopt a lifestyle of diligence
- Step 1: Decide What Capital Market You’re In
Rule 3: Turn Down a Promotion (Or, the Importance of Control)
Chapter 8: The Dream-Job Elixir
- Ryan Voiland (Red Fire Farm) ==> He has full control of his business
- Dan Pink, Drive (2009) ==> Control leads to a better life
- Businesses that focused on giving employees control grew at 4x rate of those that did not
- Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) ==> Less employee attrition + More employee happiness, engagement, and fulfillment
Chapter 9: The First Control Trap
- To achieve control, one must have career capital to offer in return
- One must have a stable means to support unconventional lifestyle
- Blog Example: Need to give readers content they are willing to pay for
Chapter 10: The Second Control Trap
- Once you have enough career capital, you must become valuable enough to employer that they will fight for more control over you
- Having control over your career generates resistance from those who want to keep you
- So right when you have accumulated a valuable enough career capital for control, your employer will try to prevent you
- Expect this to happen
Chapter 11: Avoiding the Control Traps
- Law of Financial Viability ==> Only pursue more control if you have evidence that people are willing to pay for that particular pursuit
- Derek Sivers: “Do what people are willing to pay for.”
Rule 4: Think Small, Act Big (Or, the Importance of Mission)
Chapter 12: The Meaningful Life of Pardis Sabeti
- Combining your mission to working life can lead to great satisfaction
- A mission serves as a unifying focus for your career
Chapter 13: Missions Require Capital
- “…a mission chosen before you have relevant career capital is not likely to be sustainable.”
- Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: “multiple” discoveries of same scientific findings are surprisingly common in history ==> e.g.: sunspots + battery + oxygen
- Paradigm shifts almost always discovered in the “adjacent possible” ==> the current cutting edge
- Discoveries are increasingly possible as one grows closer to the “cutting edge”
- Scientific innovation is systematic ==> Work the path to the cutting edge –> Reach the adjacent possible –> Innovate –> Start over
- Cal Newport’s Theory: “A good career mission… [is] an innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field.”
- You must reach the cutting edge or adjacent possible of your field before your career capital will be relevant enough to be “good”
- This will take many years of hard work and training
- One must suppress the most grandiose of our work visions, but first focus patiently on gaining career capital and reaching the cutting edge ==> Only then is it a good time to act big
- You must reach the cutting edge or adjacent possible of your field before your career capital will be relevant enough to be “good”
Chapter 14: Missions Require Little Bets
- Grand visions become successes through accomplishing small and achievable projects to explore the concrete possibilities surrounding an idea
- Peter Sims, Little Bets: Successful innovators “make a methodical series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning critical information from lots of little failures and from small but significant wins” ==> “…allows them to find unexpected avenues and arrive and extraordinary outcomes.”
Chapter 15: Missions Require Marketing
- Great missions become great successes through finding projects that satisfy the law of remarkability ==> Requires an idea to be inspiring enough for people to remark about it + Project launched in a venue where remarking is easy
- Giles Bowkett combined two book philosophies:
- Seth Godin, Purple Cow: “You’re either remarkable or invisible.”
- Chad Fowler, My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job
Conclusion
- Deliberately practicing/stretching mental skill is difficult
- Take a set time to only focus on deliberate practice + Capture results of skill building in useful form [Like these notes]
- Mental strain is good
- Newport’s Routines: “Research Bible” (Paper Summaries) Routine + “Hour-Tally” (Tracking Time Spent in Deliberate Practice) + The “Theory Notebook” (Archiving Brainstorming Theories)
- The Productivity Through Deliberate Practice Mindset
- To find a mission: Develop career capital + Always scan for the adjacent possible
- Cal Newport’s Approach:
- Top Level: Develop Tentative Research Mission
- Bottom Level: Keep Performing Research
- Middle Level: Perform Exploratory Experiments ==> Takes less than 1 month + Forces you to create new value + Produces concrete result to gather concrete feedback
- Have a number of “little bets” going at the same time + Active Deadlines
- “Working right trumps finding the right work.”
- Cal Newport’s Approach: