3 Surprising Fixes To Help You Start Loving What You Do
Hi there fellow book lover! 👋
Welcome to The One Percent Better Club 📚 - your weekly dose of brilliant ideas from the world’s best nonfiction books that are going to help you be one percent better today than you were yesterday! This week, I’m talking about the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. So if you’re ready for that one percent upgrade, then let's get started! 🚀
Why do some people seem to passionately love what they do, while others seem to just absolutely hate what they do?
Thankfully, the answer is simple…
If you want to work a job you love, then you need to cultivate the proper mindset around your job.
“Okay…” you might be wondering. “But how?”
Well, in the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, best-selling author and CS professor Cal Newport has the solution.
Instead of approaching work the way everyone else does, Newport offers a simple, yet revolutionary approach. An approach that will hopefully provide you with a realistic path for meaningful and engaging work.
So if you don’t like your job and you want to find your true passion, then look no further than this book!
Here are the 3 best ideas that Cal Newport gives in his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You:
Let’s dive in!
💡 Idea #1) Why “Follow Your Passion” Is Such Terrible Advice
Growing up, everyone tells you that in order to live a happy and successful life, you should just “follow your passion.”
However, according to the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport makes a compelling argument that if you want to do work you love and reach your full potential, then “follow your passion” is actually terrible advice.
Why? Because having a passion for something is only a single component in the formula for success. It’s not the entire formula.
When it comes to having a happy and successful career, you need to have more than just passion. You need skill.
Unfortunately, this is because if you pursue something you’re bad at, even though it may be what you’re passionate about, the best you’ll become is average at it.
However, if you pursue something you’re already good at, then you can eventually become great at it.
And here’s the amazing thing…
Research shows that the more you focus on what you’re good at, the more you’re likely to start seeing it at as your passion.
Yep, that’s right!
In So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Newport provides research done by Yale that shows that the happiest people are not those who followed their passion, but instead are those who have put in the hard work to become excellent at what they do.
In other words, Mastery Yields Passion.
And this makes sense because when we’re good at something and we do it well, we’re happy.
Interestingly, passion is never the driving force of what makes great people great.
Instead, passion is always a by-product of years invested into mastering a craft.
Amazing, right?
Therefore, if you want to love what you do, then abandon the idea of pursuing your passion and instead invest your time in becoming great at something that you’re already good at.
As Cal Newport says,
"Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion.”
💡 Idea #2) The 2 Mindsets People Have Towards Their Work (One of Them Is Problematic)
No matter who you are or what you do, people generally fall into one of two approaches to thinking about their work.
There’s the Passion Mindset, which focuses on what value your job offers you.
And then there’s the Craftsman Mindset, which focuses on what value you’re producing in your job.
Which mindset do you have?
Probably the passion mindset, right?
This mindset is how most people approach their working lives.
But here’s the thing…
Regardless of the type of work you do, if you want to do work you truly love, then you need to abandon the passion mindset and develop a craftsman mindset instead.
In the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport says there are 2 reasons why he hates the passion mindset.
First, he says, when you focus only on what your work offers you in terms of happiness, it will actually make you more unhappy.
Why? Because you become hyperaware of everything you don't like about your job.
As a result, the annoying tasks you're assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy will become too much to handle, leading to chronic unhappiness and inevitable burnout.
Second, he says that the deep questions that drive the passion mindset are essentially impossible to answer.
Do I love this?
Is this my passion?
What do I really want to do with my life?
These questions rarely have clear yes-or-no answers.
In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually confused, which will lead to even more unhappiness.
Based on these two reasons, the passion mindset can be enough to make anyone go crazy!
So what should you do?
You need to abandon your passion mindset and develop a craftsman mindset.
Essentially, stop focusing on whether the work you’re doing is your passion or not and instead turn your focus towards getting really damn good at something that you think provides value to people.
When you think about your work in this way, you’ll start to feel liberated.
You’ll begin to learn more and expand your skillset. You’ll mentally grow as a person. And you’ll start to enjoy the work you do more.
💡 Idea #3) The Key To Becoming An Expert At What You Do
So you want to take your skills to the next level and become a master of your craft, right?
But how?
Well, you may have already heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule.”
Essentially, this rule states that if you want to master a skill, whether it’s writing, chess, or even accounting, then it’s going to take you 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at it.
It sounds simple, right?
Unfortunately, however, it’s not true!
I mean, just look around you. You probably know a lot of people who have spent decades working in their field. Yet after all those hours and all those years, they’re still just “merely okay” at what they do.
Why? Because becoming an expert actually isn’t determined by the number of hours you put in. Instead, it’s about the quality of hours you put in.
In the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport provides studies done by performance researcher K. Anders Ericsson that show that in order to become an expert in your field, you definitely need to practice, but more specifically, you need to deliberately practice.
What's deliberate practice?
Deliberate practice is when you identify the specific areas of your skill that require improvement and then focus all your efforts on those areas, practicing them relentlessly, stretching yourself beyond the point where you feel comfortable, and then getting ruthless feedback on your performance.
Therefore, if you want to become an expert in your field, don’t just mindlessly practice the same things over and over again. That’s not going to help you improve and get promoted.
Instead, make a purposeful and focused effort to continuously develop your skills while seeking regular feedback in the process.
Unsurprisingly, musicians, athletes, and chess players know all about deliberate practice.
But knowledge workers don’t. This is great news for you! Because if you can introduce this strategy into your working life you can easily vault past your peers and become a true expert at what you do.
Who Would I Recommend This Book To? 🤔
Anyone who wants to know why "follow your passion" is terrible advice.
Anyone interested in alternative routes to job satisfaction and success.
Anyone who wants to be so good at what they do that people can’t help but notice.
That’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed today’s book summary!
Happy reading,
Vincent