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

by Cal Newport

“The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest phase,”

“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.”

Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion.

Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people

I felt like I was stretching to convince the world that my work was interesting, yet no one cared. Martin’s axiom gave me a reprieve from this self-promotion. “Stop focusing on these little details,” it told me. “Focus instead on becoming better.” Inspired, I turned my attention from my website to a habit that continues to this day: I track the hours spent each month dedicated to thinking hard about research problems (in the month in which I first wrote this chapter, for example, I dedicated forty-two hours to these core tasks).

When I told Mark about Jordan, he agreed that an obsessive focus on the quality of what you produce is the rule in professional music.

Irrespective of what type of work you do, the craftsman mindset is crucial for building a career you love.

there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy.

This focus on stretching your ability and receiving immediate feedback provides the core of a more universal principle—one that I increasingly came to believe provides the key to successfully acquiring career capital in almost any field.

If you can figure out how to integrate deliberate practice into your own life, you have the possibility of blowing past your peers in your value, as you’ll likely be alone in your dedication to systematically getting better.

deliberate practice might provide the key to quickly becoming so good they can’t ignore you.

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands…. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it “deliberate,” as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in.

If you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re probably stuck at an “acceptable level.”

It captures well the feel of how career capital is actually acquired: You stretch yourself, day after day, month after month, before finally looking up and realizing, “Hey, I’ve become pretty good, and people are starting to notice.”

“I follow a rule with my life that if something is scary, do it. I’ve lived everywhere in America, and for me, a big scary thing was living outside the country.”

“I 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.”

When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it. If you find this evidence, continue. If not, move on.

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.

According to Johnson’s theory, Sarah would have been better served by first mastering a promising niche—a task that may take years—and only then turning her attention to seeking a mission.

“Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan out a whole project in advance,” he writes, “they 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”