So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
Cal Newport
20120918
這本書實在是太棒、太精彩了！作者首先論證為什麼「跟隨你的熱情」對大多數尋找工作、事業、志業的人來說不是一個好建議，甚至有害，接著，再回到探討那麼究竟該如何尋找、建構你所熱愛的工作、事業、志業，作者透過系統性的架構，逐一提出應對策略及實務作法，並同時結合許多個案作為例證，協助讀者更容易了解。作者在書中的獨到見解，提供了就業與創業的方向與指南，這本書對於在學學生、剛入社會的年輕人，或是目前正處在掙扎於事業決策點的人來說，絕對是一本必讀的好書，超級推薦！
About This Book
By the summer of 2010, Cal had become obsessed with answering a simple question: Why do some people end up loving what they do, while so many others fail at this goal? This book documents what Cal discovered in his search. The insights in this book will free you from simplistic catchphrases like “follow your passion” and “do what you love” and instead, provide you with a realistic path toward a meaningful and engaging working life.
Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion
Rule #1 took on the conventional wisdom about how people end up loving what they do. It argued that the passion hypothesis, which says that the key to loving your work is to match a job to a pre-existing passion, is bad advice. There’s little evidence that most people have pre-existing passions waiting to be discovered, and believing that there’s a magical right job lurking out there can often lead to chronic unhappiness and confusion when the reality of the working world fails to match this dream.
The Science of Passion
Conclusion #1: Career passions are rare
Conclusion #2: Passion takes time
Conclusion #3: Passion is a side effect of mastery
Rule #2: Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Rule #2 was the first to tackle the natural follow-up question: If “follow your passion” is bad advice, what should you do instead? It contended that the traits that define great work are rare and valuable. If you want these traits in your own life, you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Cal called these rare and valuable skills career capital, and noted that the foundation of constructing work you love is acquiring a large store of this capital.
With this in mind, we turned our attention to this process of capital acquisition. Cal argued that it’s important to adopt the craftsman mindset, where you focus relentlessly on what value you’re offering the world. This stands in stark contrast to the much more common passion mindset, which has you focus only on what value the world is offering you.
The career capital theory of great work
• The traits (creativity, impact, control) that define great work are rare and valuable.
• Supply and demand says that if you want these traits you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital.
• The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming “so good they can’t ignore you,” is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital. This is why it trumps the passion mindset if your goal is to create work you love.
Even with the craftsman mindset, however, becoming “so good they can’t ignore you” is not trivial. To help these efforts Cal introduced the well-studied concept of deliberate practice, an approach to work where you deliberately stretch your abilities beyond where you’re comfortable and then receive ruthless feedback on your performance.
The five habits of a craftsman
Step 1. Decide what capital market you’re in (winner-take-all or auction)
Step 2. Identify your capital type (seek open gates – opportunities)
Step 3. Define “good” (you need clear goals)
Step 4. Stretch and destroy (deliberate practice)
Step 5. Be patient (acquiring capital can take time)
Rule #3: Turn Down a Promotion
The obvious next question is how to invest this capital once you have it. Rule #3 explored one answer to this question by arguing that gaining control over what you do and how you do it is incredibly important. However, there are two traps that commonly snare people in their pursuit of this trait. The first control trap notes that it’s dangerous to try to gain more control without enough capital to back it up.
The second control trap notes that once you have the capital to back up a bid for more control, you’re still not out of the woods. This capital makes you valuable enough to your employer that they will likely now fight to keep you on a more traditional path. They realize that gaining more control is good for you but not for their bottom line.
To help navigate this control conundrum, Cal explained the law of financial viability, which says you should only pursue a bid for more control if you have evidence that it’s something that people are willing to pay you for. This isn’t about making money. Instead, it’s about using money as a “neutral indicator of value” – a way of determining whether or not you have enough career capital to succeed with a pursuit.
Rule #4: Think Small, Act Big
The core idea of this book is simple: To construct work you love, you must first build career capital by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the type of traits that define compelling careers. Mission is one of those traits. Drawing from the terminology of Steven Johnson, Cal argued that the best ideas for missions are found in the adjacent possible – the region just beyond the current cutting edge.
To encounter these ideas, therefore, you must first get to that cutting edge, which in turn requires expertise. To try to devise a mission when you’re new to a field and lacking any career capital is a venture bound for failure.
Once you identify a general mission, however, you’re still left with the task of launching specific projects that make it succeed. An effective strategy for accomplishing this task is to try small steps that generate concrete feedback – little bets – and then use this feedback, be it good or bad, to help figure out what to try next. This systematic exploration can help you uncover an exceptional way forward that you might have never otherwise noticed.
The little-bets strategy is not the only way to make a mission a success. It also helps to adopt the mindset of a marketer. This led to the strategy that Cal dubbed the law of remarkability. This law says that for a project to transform a mission into a success, it should be remarkable in two ways. First, it must literally compel people to remark about it. Second, it must be launched in a venue conducive to such remarking.
In sum, mission is one of the most important traits you can acquire with your career capital. But adding this trait to your working life is not simple. Once you have the capital to identify a good mission, you must still work to make it succeed. By using little bets and the law of remarkability, you greatly increase your chances of finding ways to transform your mission from a compelling idea into a compelling career.