So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport

Nov 14, 2012 Kressel Housman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: career-development, self-help, non-fiction

I have rather mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, the advice rang so true to my experience, I actually went to the author's website to contact him, only to discover that his wife just had their first child last week, so he's not available. On the negative side, though, the book pointed out all the mistakes I've made over the years, which has made me worry that at my age, it's already too late for me to ever have what he calls "a compelling career."

The thesis of the book is that followin...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Emma rated it 4 of 5 stars

For me this book is one of the few pop-psych/self-help books that actually holds relevance. Like the author I'm also an academic, however I've done an awesome job of running my career into the toilet. I've spent too many years to mention developing killer skills, but in the parts of the job that give me ZERO career capital. I am an amazing teacher. Truly. I have awards. I get letters from past students now working overseas, thanking me. I make a difference in the lives of young people. Guess wha...more For me this book is one of the few pop-psych/self-help books that actually holds relevance. Like the author I'm also an academic, however I've done an awesome job of running my career into the toilet. I've spent too many years to mention developing killer skills, but in the parts of the job that give me ZERO career capital. I am an amazing teacher. Truly. I have awards. I get letters from past students now working overseas, thanking me. I make a difference in the lives of young people. Guess what? Teaching doesn't count for a fat wazoo in academia.

I really don't want to play the political academic game, but the truth is that unless I start to produce more of the outputs that are valued, I won't be around to do the teaching that gives my life meaning. I particularly like that Newport gives specific, measureable strategies and tools to increase career capital. The case studies are ones that seem applicable to me. After reading the book I can immediately implement some practical things to improve the power I hold at work, which then allows me to also spend time on the aspects of the job that are most important to me.

It is interesting that Newport wrote this book before he took up his first full-time teaching position. I'm keen to see how his ideas change in the reality of the workplace.

One thing the book overlooks, and that is gender expectations. Female academics, as in so many professions, are expected to be 'nice'. Avoiding the emotional caretaking aspects of a workplace is essential for women who want to develop career capital, but paradoxically it is difficult to succeed by using the same work strategy that male colleagues use. Example: working as the lone female staff member on one programme, colleages constantly referred students to me to deal with their life crises: abortions, family deaths, miscarriages, failing papers. A respected mentor told me to my face how much he admired how well suited I am to this. Reality = I'm not. I am not qualified or suited to counsel a student after a miscarriage. Why would I be? Because I also have a uterus? And I don't want to. I do not want to take on a bottomless well of other people's emotional issues. At the end of 2010 I spent nearly three hours a week (!) referring an endless stream of students to the appropriate care provider (also mopping up tears before students could calm down and listen to me). That's more time than I spent on writing journal articles in the same period. When, at the beginning of the next semester, I gave my colleagues copies of the phone numbers and weblinks for the appropriate university resources, and asked them not send students to me any more, I was called a "cold bitch" by a colleague. I have no solution for this, and Newport doesn't address it. If you have one, let me know.

On a day-to-day basis I'm not sure how many people would find the strategies in the book useful. Academics have a great deal of autonomy as to how we spend our time. I only have about 16-20 hours a week where I have to be somewhere. The rest of the time I can determine my work priorities myself. I only worked in industry for about two years, but a lot of the tasks seemed purely reactive, and that makes it much more difficult to prioritize the tasks that bring you the most career capital.

However, in the broad view, the book is great. Newport emphasizes that you can find meaning in any job; there is no perfect 'right' career. You don't have to love your job when you start it: in fact this is highly unlikely. By doing the hard work, that eventually brings skill, satisfaction will follow.

Overall I found this book useful, practical, and encouraging. Recommended for college grads, senior high school students, people in a career transition, and other academics who screwed up.
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Feb 04, 2013 Michelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I picked up this book not so much because I'm at a career transition point (though that is in fact the case), but because I've followed Cal's student advice blog, Study Hacks, for a couple years now, and his pull-no-punches posts often give me lots to think about. His latest book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, challenges all the feel-good yada yada about following your passion popularized by Oprah and so many others. More significantly, it challenges the common assumption that we all have some...more I picked up this book not so much because I'm at a career transition point (though that is in fact the case), but because I've followed Cal's student advice blog, Study Hacks, for a couple years now, and his pull-no-punches posts often give me lots to think about. His latest book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, challenges all the feel-good yada yada about following your passion popularized by Oprah and so many others. More significantly, it challenges the common assumption that we all have some predetermined passion or other that's just waiting to be discovered. I intuitively agreed with the premise of his book and came to it looking for a well argued takedown of the follow-your-passion approach to life. I was curious to hear what Cal had to say about all this.

The book was a speedy read full of good stories - so it's a low-investment effort if you're even vaguely intrigued by the topic. However, it was nowhere near as rigorous as I would've hoped. His argument builds on a succession of short profiles of people who've been successful in their careers and ambitions. Only occasionally does Newport draw on theory (e.g., a nod to self-determination theory in ch.2) or research studies. After starting each chapter with a story, he then boils it down to a simple maxim or two, which in turn slot into his four fundamental "rules" of career-building. One of the recurring frustrations, as other reviewers have noted, is that his stories can be read in various ways, and his heavy-handed, reductionist overlays tend to make you more skeptical rather than more convinced.

There are also some distracting issues with tone. His counter-examples (profiles of people who tried to "follow their passion" and lived to regret it) are merciless and devoid of nuance, to the point that I cringed my way through his ham-fisted telling of their stories. Conversely, his conclusion, in which he describes how he followed his own rules as he transitioned into his new career as a university professor, becomes more than a little galling in its blithe lists of his accomplishments. This passage on p.205 shows how Newport's tone can veer off into self-satisfaction and disdain:

Because of these early experiences [starting up a successful web design business in high school], I looked on with curiosity, once I arrived at college, when my classmates began to wring their hands about the question of what to do with their lives. For them, something as basic as choosing a major became weighted with cosmic significance. I though this was nonsense. To me, the world was filled with opportunities like Princeton Web Solutions waiting to be exploited.... Driven by this insight, while my classmates contemplated their true calling, I went seeking opportunities to master rare skills that would yield big rewards.

Cue eye roll.

Despite these notable flaws, there were several good things I took away from the book. The first was his brief but compelling account of the rise of the "follow your passion" ethos, which drew on Google Ngrams and pointed to the meteoric success of the 1970 book, What Colour Is Your Parachute?. The second was his arguments about the importance of mission, which resonated with me intuitively and challenged me to articulate a mission for my own fledgling career. The third thing was that his blunt analysis and dedicated self-scrutiny boosted my resolve to take a ruthless look at my own skills, ambitions and time management and, above all, to develop a more thoughtful and deliberate approach to my work life. Considering this list of takeaways, these are no small things, so I can be glad I read the book.(less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Torbjörn rated it 3 of 5 stars

There's some really good ideas here, and the thesis at large seems plausible.
It's engaging and fun. But it smells of retrospective coherence.

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Jan 07, 2013 Claire rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Most of what I read I gleaned off the website, though he goes more into depth here. I do love Cal Newport and his advice; it's shaped a lot of my personal philosophy and how I approach life and school and success.

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May 17, 2013 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Pretty damn good. Anyone suffering the paralysis of career choices and finding your passion should find nuggets of insight here. Simple, concise, and with real world examples. Cal Newport uses interviews of real people to dissect how people fall in love with the work they do.

Law #1 : Build Career Capital. Have rare and valuable skills, that people will pay for. Following Your Passion can be bad advice. Instead, focus on building career capital on the rare and valuable skills.

Law #2 : Deliberate...more

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May 02, 2013 Kater Cheek rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book bills itself as the antithesis of "What Color is Your Parachute." It promotes the idea, as does Newport's Studyhacks blog, that following your passion is bad advice. This is definitely a self-help book, and it's structured so that it has four rules to follow if you want to have you perfect job.

I'm not a follower of Newport's studyhacks blog, but I did find myself wishing that he were a few years older than me rather than a few years younger than me so that I could have used his studyin...more This book bills itself as the antithesis of "What Color is Your Parachute." It promotes the idea, as does Newport's Studyhacks blog, that following your passion is bad advice. This is definitely a self-help book, and it's structured so that it has four rules to follow if you want to have you perfect job.

I'm not a follower of Newport's studyhacks blog, but I did find myself wishing that he were a few years older than me rather than a few years younger than me so that I could have used his studying and deliberate practice techniques back when I was in school.

I'm not going to summarize the whole book, but to summarize the most important part--you get better by doing what's uncomfortable. That uncomfortable stress you get when trying to understand something that's difficult is exactly the state you need to be in to progress to the next level of understanding. Runners understand this, I'm told. He talked about deliberate practice as it pertained to music, explaining that he used to just play the songs he always knew, whereas the musicians that got good did so by challenging themselves to learn new riffs and harder arrangements until they were at a level far past where he was. (I tried to apply this to my writing, agonizing whether I was improving or whether I was just spinning my wheels, but I couldn't figure out how to make the analogy fit.)

The part I liked least were the examples held up as people who succeeded in their careers by following Newport's rules. First of all, because I don't really see close parallels. Secondly, because some of the people who succeeded did so by following their passions until they got good at it and found a way to get paid for it, which kind of negated his "following your passion is bad advice" mantra of the book.

I think that the advice in this book, primarily the latter half, is better suited for academics than corporate drones, because he talks about how to excel in your field by studying hard stuff. The first half of the book was almost inspirational. I say almost inspriational, because I get inspired by practical advice and crushingly discouraged by "success stories" of people who had fewer advantages than me and yet somehow succeeded beyond my dreams at ten years younger. I hate those stories.(less)

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Apr 25, 2013 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's really difficult to know what rating to give this. The style of it grated pretty heavily in places, as did the constant “Here's what I'm going to tell you next” / “Here's what I just told you” summaries. And for a book that states up-front that it's going to be written in the style of a manifesto, it's actually much more of an autobiographical quest interspersed with a series of interviewee mini-biographies.

But for all its problems it does a great job of combining the central ideas of Driv ...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Kim Moravec rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book stands out from just about every other career book because it is written not by a professional career counselor, but by a professor of computer science. Cal Newport crafted a successful career in a competitive and difficult area, and he did it by empirical observation and thoughtful analysis.

This book is not limited to advice for academics or computer scientists; it looks at a few different career domains. Newport is specifically concerned with exceptional successes rather than medioc...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, education

A really interesting perspective on career planning. I wish I had read this at age 18 or age 22 - finishing up high school and uni.

He says not to "follow your passion"; rather, build solid skills in the form of "career capital". He argues that the thing that actually makes you happy in work and life is autonomy - more freedom. The harder you work to get more skilled, the more autonomy you can have, whether that is in choosing the work you want, being ready for opportunities, or simply having mor...more A really interesting perspective on career planning. I wish I had read this at age 18 or age 22 - finishing up high school and uni.

He says not to "follow your passion"; rather, build solid skills in the form of "career capital". He argues that the thing that actually makes you happy in work and life is autonomy - more freedom. The harder you work to get more skilled, the more autonomy you can have, whether that is in choosing the work you want, being ready for opportunities, or simply having more freedom at work.

To get good at something, you have to employ deliberate practice and serious study - identifying and eliminating your weaknesses. Be more intentional with the time you spend on something.

There are two types of career capital markets - winner take all (1 endpoint) and auction (you have a unique collection of skills that could lead you multiple directions). Figure out which one you're in and either hone in or branch out. Define what "getting good" means so you have clear goals to work towards. Be diligent and patient.

Control Traps:
- control acquired without career capital is not sustainable (ie quitting your job to do something you know nothing about)
- when you have acquired enough career capital to get more control, it's the point when you've become valuable enough to your current employer that they will try to prevent you from making the change.

The Law of Financial Viability: 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."
If people aren't willing to pay for what you want to do, move on.

Having a career mission (which makes work meaningful) is waiting to be found in the adjacent possible of your field. Get good at something, and then you'll find the mission. Don't try to figure out the mission before you get good at something. You don't know in advance what work will lead to your passion. Missions require little bets. Start with small achievable goals and you don't know where that will lead.

"Working right trumps finding the right work."

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Apr 06, 2013 Clara rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, dc-public-library, read-it-in-dc

Dr. Newport offers an abundance of prescient advice that has motivated me to focus on building skills and embrace the discomfort associated with pushing my limits.

Unfortunately, in his book "So Good They Can't Ignore You," Newport frames his advice in a disingenuous context -- he (perhaps willfully) misinterprets what I suspect a large number of people (including Steve Jobs) really meant when they use the phrase "follow your passion." Newport claims that "follow" implies identifying a pre-existi...more Dr. Newport offers an abundance of prescient advice that has motivated me to focus on building skills and embrace the discomfort associated with pushing my limits.

Unfortunately, in his book "So Good They Can't Ignore You," Newport frames his advice in a disingenuous context -- he (perhaps willfully) misinterprets what I suspect a large number of people (including Steve Jobs) really meant when they use the phrase "follow your passion." Newport claims that "follow" implies identifying a pre-existing passion to match with a job. In the speech Newport claims to "debunk," Jobs tells his audience that "Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on… you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards." Thus when Newport writes "If a young Steve Jobs had taken his own advice and decided to only pursue work he loved, we would probably find him today at one of the Los Altos Zen Center's most popular teachers," Newport is blatantly subverting the meaning intended in the verb "to follow" -- a winding path with obscure targets can be followed. Newport ignores this interpretation. Newport also ignores a meaning often intended by the noun "passion" -- Jobs emphasized the emotional, intuitive aspect while Newport fixates on the definition related to intense conviction.

Beyond the poorly framed first rule about Passion, Newport presents examples of individuals with fulfilling careers that could just as easily be described as people who DID follow their passion, if the phrase is interpreted in the manner more likely intended by Steve Jobs. Pardis Sabeti and Kirk French both "connected the dots" as Jobs encouraged, following their intuitions to arrive at an innovative and inspiring career. The section about finding a career mission could just as easily be rewritten in terms of finding (and developing) a passion.

After reading this book, I agree with Dr. Newport's assessment that catchy phrases and slogans can be dangerous, but not for the reasons he puts forth. These slogans are dangerous because in the absence of nuanced explanation, a slogan is easily subverted and misinterpreted. I'm concerned that Dr. Newport ignores an abundance of data that don't neatly align with his thesis, e.g. "I really don't care why performers adopt the craftsman mindset." I'm used to encountering this sort of defensive bantering in conversation when people are thinking in real time, but it's borderline comical to find it in a book where the author had an opportunity to put more thought into developing and revising his position. This style of argument is sloppy and suggests to me that Newport is more interested in padding his CV with books than presenting coherent discourse to the world at large. (less)

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Mar 11, 2013 Mikhail rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book is probably the best condensed career advice that I've read to date. It begins by debunking the "passion hypothesis"--the idea that there's some magical career waiting for you that you just have to discover through sufficient introspection. Instead, great careers are found first by acquiring lots of what Newport calls "career capital", that is, rare and useful skills. This capital is then used negotiate greater control over your own career.

Through mastering your set of rare and useful s...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Shonna Froebel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: work-related

I'd seen a mention of this book and was intrigued. The book captured me right from the get go. It counters the prevalent mindset (started for real purposes in the 1970's) that to have work you really enjoy, find what you are passionate about and make a job out of that. Newport digs deep into this premise, finding that it isn't as simple as that. He comes up with four rules around finding work you love.
Rule #1 is Don't Follow Your Passion. He looks at successful people, including many who espouse...more I'd seen a mention of this book and was intrigued. The book captured me right from the get go. It counters the prevalent mindset (started for real purposes in the 1970's) that to have work you really enjoy, find what you are passionate about and make a job out of that. Newport digs deep into this premise, finding that it isn't as simple as that. He comes up with four rules around finding work you love.
Rule #1 is Don't Follow Your Passion. He looks at successful people, including many who espouse the "follow your passion" mantra and finds that even they didn't follow that path. Those that do have a passion, and follow that without proper preparation find themselves failing. So following it can actually be dangerous to your continued happiness.
Rule #2 is Be So Good They Can't Ignore You (or, the Importance of Skill). Newport looks at a number of people who are working in something they are passionate about and thus loving their work, and finds the truth behind their stories is getting really good at what they do, even better if it is something relatively rare. He calls this Career Capital. Trying to work at a passion without the practiced skills won't get you where you want to go. Here is where I hear my parents' voices exhorting hard work, because hard work, not just lots of work, but work that is actually challenging and difficult and success with it takes you to the next level is what is necessary. You have to be willing to seek out that work, and keep doing it, getting better with every iteration, until others see that skill in you and are willing to pay you for it. That pay may be in money, time, or other things, but that is what takes you further toward working with real passion.
Rule #3 is Turn Down a Promotion (or, the Importance of Control). Here, Newport shows that finding real passion in one's work means having a certain level of control about what you do and how you do it. Again, this is not something you can try without having those skills in place. This is about choosing what path you take, knowing that you can make a successful life with your skills in different ways and choosing the path that offers you the level of control you want, even if others try to dissuade you. As he says, because you have those skills, others are likely to try to talk you out of taking this path. Employers may value you highly and not want to give up even a portion of your time, colleagues may not understand you turning down a promotion that limits your control of your work due to the high compensation associated with it. That is why skills are important here, because if you try to exert control without having those skills, then you won't get that control. Here he talks about control traps and the law of financial viability, which is "using money as a way of determining whether or not you have enough career capital to succeed with a pursuit".
His Rule #4 is Think Small, Act Big (or, the Importance of Mission) which is about finding that unifying mission to your professional life that gives you that satisfaction or love of work which we aspire to. Again, he finds that you have to get things in the right order and finding a true mission only comes when we have gained those skills and control that we can see the possibilities and links between things. Visibility is important here, where you can market those ideas in a venue that draws you recognition. This means that you need to have the skills to be one of the top in your field (and this field can be quite narrow) so that you are working at the leading edge of discovery, in what he calls the adjacent possible. He also talks about the importance of the law of remarkability, the need for a project to be remarkable both in the drawing attention meaning and the venue that is conducive to such attention.
He wraps up the book with how he has applied and is applying these rules to his own life, the thought processes he follows for each and the actions he takes to further his career.
This book offers a lot to think about, and would be a great gift for a graduate to get them on the right track earlier.(less)

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Feb 25, 2013 Emily Whetstone rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book needed another editor, but was thought-provoking in many ways. The way Newport knocks down "following your passion" does have more than a whiff of straw man about it. But the point he makes that uninformed passion isn't even particularly desirable is actually rather welcome. "I like that and I could be better at it" is quite enough to pursue small changes in your career, and can lead to very interesting places.

Combining that idea with the point that what makes a "good job"(free time,...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Kylie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this book very logical, useful and practical. I could have done without all of his constant summarizing/recapping of his main points and his smugness (as he presents himself as an example of his thesis), but I still appreciate the fact that he has a logical argument with supporting evidence. The question he was exploring is, how people end up with fulfilling careers, and he debunks the idea that following your passion is the best way to get there for most people. According to Newport, it...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Christina Brown rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book had a provocative title that I couldn't resist, but I was somewhat disappointed by the content. Cal asserts that the road to true career happiness is the steady development of rare and valuable skills that you can eventually cash in for things everyone wants in their work, like autonomy and a deep mission. I fully agree. And someone had to deflate the hype surrounding the passion theory. But the problem is that Cal never adequately addresses how the people he features in the book found...more

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Oct 12, 2012 Pete Welter rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm split on this book. I chose it to read because a number of the writers I admire most, including Seth Godin, Reid Hoffman, Kevin Kelly, Dan Pink and Derek Sivers, recommended it (although it turned out 3 of them are mentioned in the book, so there's that). I have it 4 stars, but I'd go 3 1/2 if there wer such a rating on GoodReads.

Questioning the passion hypothesis - that you first find out what you're passionate about and then find a job that suits it - is a an excellent message. Many people...more I'm split on this book. I chose it to read because a number of the writers I admire most, including Seth Godin, Reid Hoffman, Kevin Kelly, Dan Pink and Derek Sivers, recommended it (although it turned out 3 of them are mentioned in the book, so there's that). I have it 4 stars, but I'd go 3 1/2 if there wer such a rating on GoodReads.

Questioning the passion hypothesis - that you first find out what you're passionate about and then find a job that suits it - is a an excellent message. Many people may not have a passion to speak of, and even if you do, you need to be good at something to do something with it (or make yourself good at something). Sheer desire and passion is not nearly enough - something that had been nagging me a bit of late, and it was good to see it addressed in such a head on manner.

The meat of the book are ways to make this happen, and I can't say I disagree with any of them. Again, it's about trying things, continuing to get really good in a context where others notice. He talks of small bets (a philosophy I wholly buy into) and it feels like his failure stories fit into the "all -in but missed it" category too often. The failure stories feel a bit like straw-men - way too easy of examples. I'd have liked to see a bit more dissection of the intermediate cases.

However, I was not wholly satisfied, because it felt like his sample population was extremely narrow and not at all diverse. His positive examples (like a number of other of these types of books) are cherry picked from the top of the top of their fields. The folks who are Ivy-league or PhD individuals.

My big question: is it possible for the large majority of people to apply what he's talking about? Yes, there is the effort aspect, and I have no problem with the idea that no effort = no reward, and even that the effort has to be the right kind of effort (in his terms, deliberate practice, or working smarter rather than harder). But happens to the vast majority of young people who don't have the resources, the background, or the skill in a rare field. Do we just give up and them have them be the low-paid service workers? Is there enough room at the top of the pyramid that he's imagining for more people?

So, it's worth reading, but go into it with skepticism. Take what fits you, and realize that we all don't dream of being PhD track profs.(less)

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Oct 10, 2012 Bill Gathen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Newport takes a firmly-contrarian stance against the "follow your passion" theory that dominates today's self-help literature, instead recommending we set our sights on jobs (or aspects of our current jobs) which allow us to develop "rare and valuable" talents, work our butts off to cultivate them to the highest degree possible, then utilize the resulting "career capital" (i.e., leverage) to mold our careers to match what actually makes people happy: creativity, impact and control.

While I think...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars

SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU is the latest book by Georgetown Professor Cal Newport, author of the Study Hacks blog. This is a tremendously valuable book for anyone who is looking not for a job, but a career that offers control, autonomy, and gives you a sense of fulfillment. SO GOOD gives you the step by step plan to achieve it.

The subtitle of this book reveals the author’s main theme: “Why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love.” This is a unique idea that rejects the current pop...more SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU is the latest book by Georgetown Professor Cal Newport, author of the Study Hacks blog. This is a tremendously valuable book for anyone who is looking not for a job, but a career that offers control, autonomy, and gives you a sense of fulfillment. SO GOOD gives you the step by step plan to achieve it.

The subtitle of this book reveals the author’s main theme: “Why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love.” This is a unique idea that rejects the current popular advice of “follow your passion.” Even today on a WSJ blog, the CEO of Zipcar, Scott Griffith, is quoted saying,

“If you really don’t have passion for what you’re doing, quit. Go find something. I was interested in technology and transportation when I was in junior high school. It may not be that clear to everybody, but we all kind of know what our passions are pretty early in life, and if you can figure out a way to align your avocation with your vocation, the sky’s the limit for your career and your happiness.” (“Zipcar CEO: ‘If You Don’t Have Passion For Your Job, Quit,’” Leslie Kwoh, Wall Street Journal, 9/19/12)

Newport rejects this idea, claiming that quitting your job to follow your passion is at best unrealistic, and at worst, dangerous for your long-term success. Instead, Newport stresses the pursuit of skills, not passion. But not just any skills. He focuses in on what he calls “career capital”: the specific, valuable, and marketable skills that will separate you from the rest of the pack and let you define the terms of your career.

I think at this point, we’ve all heard the notion of it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. But not all practice hours are equal. Newport suggests using a concept called “deliberate practice”–practice that pushes you beyond your comfort zone, that stretches you, that forces you to improve–to achieve those career capital skills. Although difficult, it is far more effective than other means of practice, Newport argues.

Once you have mastered these skills, you can start defining the terms of your career, giving yourself the control and autonomy many crave but few achieve. Of course, once you’ve picked up a few skills, you’re not scott free at this point. Newport highlights two traps. The first is thinking you have enough career capital too early in your career. In other words, you jump without looking: you start your own business before people are willing to pay you for your skills. The second is acquiring so much capital that your boss will not want to let you go, in effect pushing you in a direction that offers you less control and autonomy even though it may come with a new title, new office, and maybe even a raise. But Newport offers a solid plan to avoid these traps. Moreover, Newport also offers advice on building a career not based on passion, but one that you become passionate about.

Not too long ago, I stopped working at a law firm to become a freelance writer. Writing is always something that I’ve really enjoyed, so I was a perfect example of someone who followed their passion. And although I possessed writing skills, I lacked the other skills necessary for a freelancing life (marketing know-how, references, a pile of clips, etc.). In other words, I didn’t have the complete career capital package. I fell into Newport’s first trap. I’ve been working my way out of it ever since. SO GOOD is the book I wish I had when I first started thinking about transitioning from the law firm to the freelancer life. I would have been able to hit the ground much faster. But Newport offers enough concrete tips in SO GOOD, that I think I can make up for the lost time and separate myself from the other writers out there.

But don’t think this is just a book for people who are thinking of becoming writers or bloggers or lifestyle coaches or whatever new job the latest web gurus are touting. Not only does Newport profile writers and musicians, but also a biologist, venture capitalist, archeologist, and various other entrepreneurs. In SO GOOD, Newport offers a plan that can work for anyone. It’s a short read, and while there are definitely times when Newport repeats himself (he summarizes passages that you have read only a handful of pages earlier for example), the lessons are specific and useful. When you finish reading SO GOOD, I can almost guarantee your career plans will have changed for the better. They will be better defined and likely more productive. Read it, learn it, use it. Discover your dream job by developing your skills.(less)

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Apr 10, 2013 Ahmed rated it 3 of 5 stars

The short version of this book is: don't do something just because you're passionate about it, do it because you're both passionate and very, very good at it then you'll be successful.

The book in summary has 3 parts:
1- debunking the passions hypothesis. Yep its as boring is "debunking a hypothesis" sounds. This is the worst and most uninspiring part. He goes on, and on, and on for 30 pages saying that the advice "follow your passion is bad."

2- introducing main the passion mindset vs the craft...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: money-business

Read this before you think about quitting, getting a degree, a new job (especially self-employment), or "following your bliss." The advice is particularly important in our current economic environment. Find work you can learn from ("build career capital," in Newport's terms) in order to take another step toward more desirable work. Use one foothold to reach the next, and have the humility to recognize that success takes time. Try to spend more time on activities that yield long-term rewards, rat...more Read this before you think about quitting, getting a degree, a new job (especially self-employment), or "following your bliss." The advice is particularly important in our current economic environment. Find work you can learn from ("build career capital," in Newport's terms) in order to take another step toward more desirable work. Use one foothold to reach the next, and have the humility to recognize that success takes time. Try to spend more time on activities that yield long-term rewards, rather than letting busywork fill your schedule.

The writing has minor weaknesses, including a slight egocentricity and prose that feels superficial.

May I add one insight to Newport's, and that is to begin seeing the world with more curiosity. For example, don't look at stores as merely places to buy things. Everything has a history, and that's what makes life (and business) so interesting. Next time you visit a mall, think that the neighbors likely discussed it before it was built, and so did the city council, and construction crews, developers, contractors, and retailers. There were decisions to be made about timelines, costs, revenues, traffic, parking, design, property, branding, signage, wages, taxes, lighting, law, computers, food, certifications, celebrations, holidays, insurance, maintenance, etc.--and that's just the mall, not even the retailers' products!

At corporate headquarters they thought about even more topics. And that's just retail, just one portion of all the economic activity out there! In other words, there is so much to learn, but people will pay you a lot more to do tasks that require experience and proven judgment than they will pay you to dig ditches.

You could build a career specializing in any one of those areas listed above, which is exactly why you shouldn't quit too early--because you'll be competing against people who didn't quit. As Warren Buffett likes to say, 90% of success is just showing up.

One final note: this book may make you see your weaknesses, and that's not always pleasant. It's hard to come to terms with mistakes, whether you knew better or not. As somebody who has been there, moved from place to place to find better work, and made 25,000 cold calls, I can't guarantee that everyone finds a dream job, but I can tell you there's great satisfaction in knowing you tried every day, that you ran the race. With time and effort the days get brighter. Now here's a book recommendation http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68... and a motivational video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTxr..., get out there and make something happen!(less)

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Jan 17, 2013 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Katherine by: Get Rich Slowly blog

This is an excellent counterpoint to the years and years (most notably in college) of various people urging you to "do what you love!" in terms of your career. Those exercises of trying to figure out what your passion is always left me kind of depressed, because my responses are like "sleep, eat, lie in the couch reading, etc." and my rationalist mind rejected the idea that everyone is able to do what they love and get paid for it. I also continue to be baffled by the idea of newly minted colleg...more This is an excellent counterpoint to the years and years (most notably in college) of various people urging you to "do what you love!" in terms of your career. Those exercises of trying to figure out what your passion is always left me kind of depressed, because my responses are like "sleep, eat, lie in the couch reading, etc." and my rationalist mind rejected the idea that everyone is able to do what they love and get paid for it. I also continue to be baffled by the idea of newly minted college grads going into consulting because...what skills or experience or knowledge do they have to offer?

Anyway, what's interesting is that this is essentially not that different from what I'd consider more traditional mindsets about a career, more "obviously entry-level jobs aren't that fun" and "regardless you have to work hard" schools of thought. It's just a bit more modern and flexible in terms of the ways that you can acquire what Newport calls "career capital" that make what you have to offer more rare and valuable (no longer just getting a college or graduate degree, for instance). Or maybe this just seems traditional to me because it's the Asian mindset that I learned from my mom. As described by the tiger mom Amy Chua, "Nothing is fun until you're good at it!" and "Every day that you don't practice is a day you're getting worse" (http://www.goodreads.com/author/quote...)

I would have given this 5 stars because of how long I've spent being annoyed at the thought of tenured professors that have spent their whole career in academia urging impressionable young students to pursue their passion, but there are some unfortunate correlation!=causation fallacies in here. He references a study that shows amongst college administrators, those with more experience are happier and concludes that this is because the senior administrators are more skilled and have figured out the secret to career happiness when this could very just be a self-selecting effect in that everyone else left for reasons other than not wanting to acquire more skills in this particular vocation or these are roles where tenure is rewarded more than effectiveness (think government jobs).

I also don't totally buy the so-called split between industries where only one form of capital matters (ex. in tv writing, the quality of your scripts) vs. multiple kinds (ex. in clean energy venture capital, experience/knowledge/fundraising capability). Regardless of what field you're in, I think those soft skills of promoting yourself, being likable, etc. still matter. I think most people are able to see that the most deserving aren't always the most rewarded, but I guess the point is just that they're more likely to be rewarded than just being the most enthusiastic.

Lastly, I thought the parts about how to get started in deciding which skills you want to try to acquire could have been fleshed out more, i.e. ok I know I don't have to figure out my passion and then pursue, I should acquire skills first, but still...where to start??

Ultimately though, while some of the examples used to debunk the "follow your passion" philosophy are silly (obviously don't quit your job/schooling to do something that you haven't even tested the financial viability of part-time yet), I think this is still a useful (and quick to read, it's not very long) antidote to anyone who attended a liberal arts college and had that shoved at them for 4 years.(less)

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Feb 22, 2013 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Anyone who feels like quitting their job or making a drastic career change should read this book, though you may be surprised by what you find. Newport delivers a devastating critique of the "follow your passion" mindset that has become, over the course of a few decades, a ubiquitous and mostly unquestioned piece of pulp career advice. Having personally subscribed wholeheartedly to the passion mindset during at least the last decade, this book really hit home with me and helped me to realize jus...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Brent Mair rated it 2 of 5 stars

There is definitely the core of a five star book here. The book has an excellent title, good anecdotal stories, and some well researched points.

Unfortunately the book starts out with a bad premise, one that continues to get beaten down, something that Cal calls The Passion Hypothesis, which Cal throws out and beats up at every turn. This hypothesis is:
"The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you're passionate about and then find a job that matches that passion."

From the st...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Deirdre rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really good book. I don't like the title.

I received this book last fall from the publisher and 1)put off by the title and 2) losing it in our basement remodel delayed my review.

My loss. I really like this book. I like the notion of dissuading people from "doing work you love and the money will follow" mantras.

The book covers 4 rules:

1. Don't follow your passion
2. Be so good they can't ignore you (importance of skill)
3. Turn down a promotion (importance of control)
4. Think small, act big (i...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Polly Callahan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: career

I liked his other books MUCH better. This one could have been condensed into a lengthy paper. There was far too much repetition, end of chapter summaries, etc. that seemed almost like filler to make a full length book. Unlike his college advice books, Newport relied very heavily on the anecdotes from the examples to make his case. In his second college advice book he interviewed students(45 listed in acknowledgements) and then distilled his advice, not padding it with anecdotes and summaries.

Sti...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Hector Sosa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: self-improvement, kindle, own, business, career

This is one of the most concise book about how careers, being happy, and the "follow your passion myth" are interrelated. Cal lays out 4 rules about how careers work in the real world. The most revealing part is how nuanced a lot of decisions are. He tells you exactly what the traps are at different stages of your career. Once you read the book, there will be no misunderstanding about how to progress in your career and be happy about it.

I've done a lot of things that he presents, but I did not h...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Dusty Pages rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is by far the best career advice I have ever received. As a late 20-something who was beginning to feel increasing pressure with each passing month to nail down a career plan, the common adage of "do what you love" was enticing to fantasize about, but was not making my decision process any easier--I felt like a frail leaf blown around by the winds of any little doubt that would surface. Then I read this book and so many of the tenets in it were things that had occurred to me at some point.....more

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Jan 24, 2013 Ellen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: business, nonfiction, read-2013, reviewed

Some good advice and analysis here, but none of it's life-changing and a lot was intuitive (at least to me). My favorite piece of advice: to find a meaningful mission related to the skills you already have, you should try a bunch of different small projects in that area that intrigue you and see which one is most successful.

A weird thing about this book: the "good" examples are overwhelmingly men, and the "bad" examples (of which there are fewer) are mostly women. There are many possible explana...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Randy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: business

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Re-posted from: http://bit.ly/U0Hk0U

I recently finished reading a book with unusual career advice. Cal Newport found the title to his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, in a quote from comedian (and actor and banjo extraordinaire) Steve Martin:
Nobody ever takes not of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. 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.’
Martin’s (and Newpor...more Re-posted from: http://bit.ly/U0Hk0U

I recently finished reading a book with unusual career advice. Cal Newport found the title to his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, in a quote from comedian (and actor and banjo extraordinaire) Steve Martin:
Nobody ever takes not of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. 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.’
Martin’s (and Newport’s) point is that success is less about landing the right gigs and finding the “true” path. Instead it is getting so good at your chosen field that you can carve out the kind of work that is most enjoyable. Newport draws on his background as an academic researcher and job hunter to share some of these traits; control over your work, having autonomy, and being driven by a mission. He argues that these things come later in a career after one has first done the hard work of getting really good. He coins the term “career capital” as the build up of skills and experience that can be exchanged for better jobs. He warns that right when you get close to being able to do this is the time that your current employer will try to keep you with a promotion or more money. If you can make money doing what you’re good at, odds are you can do it on your terms and in a way that drives towards a mission you choose.
Newport raised the profile of his book by making a main feature of it his attack on the widely-held belief that people must find the work they are passionate about to be successful. Instead he turns that on its head. Become a master craftsman of what you do, and the passion will follow.
This is a refreshing perspective in a sea of books offering career advice and guidance. It is well written, concise, and illustrated with many examples. Agree or disagree with Newport’s conclusions, it is worth adding the experience of having read it to your career capital.

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