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

by Cal Newport

What Giles discovered, I decided, is that a good mission-driven project must be remarkable in two different ways. First, it should be remarkable in the literal sense of compelling people to remark about it. To understand this trait, let’s first look at something that lacks it. Before releasing Archaeopteryx, Giles had worked on another open-source project. He collected popular command-line tools for Ruby and combined them into one package with consistent documentation. If you asked a Ruby programmer about this project, he would tell you that this is solid, quality, useful work. But it’s not the type of achievement that would compel this same Ruby programmer to write his friends and tell them, “You have to see this!” In the words of Seth Godin, this early project was a “brown cow.” By contrast, teaching your computer to write its own complex music is a purple cow; it inspires people to take notice and spread the word. What’s nice about this first notion of remarkability is that it can be applied to any field. Take book writing: If I published a book of solid advice for helping recent graduates transition to the job market, you might find this a useful contribution, but probably wouldn’t find yourself whipping out your iPhone and Tweeting its praises. On the other hand, if I publish a book that says “follow your passion” is bad advice, (hopefully) this would compel you to spread the word. That is, the book you’re holding was conceived from the very early stages with the hope...