So Good They Can't Ignore You

by Cal Newport

How do you make mission a reality in your working life? The answers I found are complicated. To better understand this complexity, let’s put the topic back into the broader context of the book. In the preceding rules, I have argued that “follow your passion” is bad advice, as most people aren’t born with pre-existing passions waiting to be discovered. If your goal is to love what you do, you must first build up “career capital” by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the traits that define great work. As I’ll explain, mission is one of these desirable traits, and like any such desirable trait, it too requires that you first build career capital—a mission launched without this expertise is likely doomed to sputter and die. But capital alone is not enough to make a mission a reality. Plenty of people are good at what they do but haven’t reoriented their career in a compelling direction.