this is Stuff You Like and today you can call me Jill because it's Stuff You Like's fifth
birthday, Ursa's fifth birthday, and I would like to dole out some unwanted
life advice about passion and also talk about a book. The book is So Good They
Can't Ignore You: why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love, and it's
by Cal Newport. Cal Newport is a computer science professor but he also writes
books and a blog which I've been reading for a few years which is how iknow about him.
So Good They Can't Ignore You which was published in 2012 is all about how people get great
careers they really enjoy and are, well, passionate about. And his conclusion is
that in most cases passion is a side effect of mastery, not something that you
should follow into a job. And that in 95% of cases trying to follow your passion
is terrible advice that will just make it more unhappy. In the other 5% of cases
people actually do follow a pre-existing passion into a career that they love but
that's not generally how it works. Instead you may start with a vague inclination but
then if you commit to getting really good you acquire skills which make you
better at what you do and then make your work more enjoyable for you. And that until you
have the skills, until you have something worth offering the world, until you are
in the words of Steve Martin, so good they can't ignore you, you might have
trouble finding a fulfilling career. You'll probably have trouble finding
fulfilling career. Cal Newport's main problem, he says, is a semantic one: people
hear the title and they hear the summary of the book and they say what? You're
telling people they shouldn't have careers that they're passion about? You JERK!
But that's not really it at all, the goal of being passionate about your work is not
a bad goal to have. In fact it's a pretty good one. I mean maybe you don't care about finding
fulfilling work and that's okay too, maybe you just want a job which pays
your bills so you can do all of the fun stuff that you like on the side. And that's fine.
You do you. But if you want a career that you love, then following your pre-existing passion
into a job and expecting it to instantly make you happy, is in most cases just
gonna make you more unhappy. Because you're always going to be starting at
the bottom, you're always going to be starting with grunt work, and grunt work by
its nature is not really terribly interesting
And so a lot of people end up chronically job jopping trying to find
the one job which fits with their pre-existing passion, the one job that will
instantly and always make them happy, but it doesn't really exist.
Thing is, passion without skill is just enthusiasm. and you can be as enthusiastic as you
want but until you have skills, until you have something to offer the world, why
would anybody care? Why would they give you more opportunities for creativity or
autonomy or impact if you don't have anything valuable to offer? Those three
traits: creativity, autonomy, and impact, are the things which caused people to enjoy
their work. Those have to be earned
but once you earn them, they can make you happy regardless of what kind of job
you're in. If the job you're in has those three traits: if it scores high on letting
you be creative; if it gives you a lot of control over your working life; if it
allows you to have an impact which is measurable on the world or the people
around you, then you are much more likely to be happy in your job, regardless of
what that job is. The unabridged audiobook is something like five and a
half hours long so obviously there is a lot more to it than I can fit in one
review, but that's one of the things I like about it. It takes a very nuanced
approach to work and careers and passion. It allows for anecdotes it allows for
research and it allows for exceptions. It also tries to dive deep into strategy,
like actual practical strategy, not just, 'here are three traits which, if your career
has them, you'll be happy' but: how do you acquire career capital? How do you acquire
useful skills so that people will give you these traits in your working life?
It also goes into strategy and tactics behind building a career you love. It
doesn't just say, hey here are some traits which make careers great: autonomy,
creativity, impact, sense of relatedness, feeling like you're competent, it draws examples
from lots of different fields and says, 'okay, but how do you find out which
skills make you rare and valuable enough to trade for these things which will
make your working life, you know,
enjoyable?' and this makes a refreshing counterpart to all of that 'follow your
passion' advice which is high on motivational speaking and low on actual
practical application. I like things with actual practical application. After all
things which you enjoy doing as a hobby may not actually transfer into a
fulfilling career or working life. There is a comic, which I will not link to because
frankly the author has gotten enough hate for it already, and the comic goes like
this: you shouldn't do what your parents want you do for a career (which is true)
and you shouldn't do what you think will make you money (umm) you should instead think
about what you would do if money were no object and do that for the rest of your
life!
(Ummm.) The example given was something along the lines of hey if you like knitting, you
should open a wool shop! There are some very eloquent takedowns of this idea in
the reblogs and also some ones which are just ranting and swearing. Which
seems a little unfair seeing as the person who wrote the cartoon is probably
like 13. But for every person who said YEAH FOLLOW YOUR PASSION, great, Ineeded to hear this today, there are at
least five people going, 'ahhh...no'. Hobbies and passions are awesome but just liking
something is not a sufficient reason to try and have a career in it.
The idea, for example, that I should become a professional baker or cyclist
because I like baking and cycling as hobbies is self-evidently ludicrous. I
have no unusual skill at these things I just like to do them sometimes, and the
thing about hobbies that you can be an entirely mediocre baker or golfer
or artist or cyclist and still enjoy doing them. But becoming a professional
baker requires skills which are rare and valuable like, you know, the ability to
make really nice cakes which people want to buy. And if you actually own a bakery
then a whole new set of skills are required:
dealing with tax and payroll in stock and marketing, employee legislation if
you decide to employ people! And raising all of the capital required to buy or
rent premises and equipment. Nah. When it comes to work people are thankfully
pushing back against this idea that passion should be a prerequisite, not
least because there are many jobs which are very valuable to society but which
don't really inspire passion
from the outside. I mean the book talks about a lady who designs custom
databases for businesses and that's not a career that sounds awesome to many
people, but it's clearly one that she is very skilled at and very passionate about,
and one that has allowed her to have the kind of life that she wants. Basically passion
for your work is awesome, but skill is better, both because skill is something
that people are willing to pay for, and because skill often grows passion as
a by-product. Not always. But often. So if you've been feeling kind of lost and
you've been looking for a fulfilling career but don't really know where to
start, or if you've been developing the sneaking suspicion that maybe following
your passion isn't as simple as people make it sound, and what you might
require is not courage but actual useful knowledge and skills? I'd definitely
give So Good They Can't Ignore You a go. Like I said, I can't possibly capture all
of the nuances of the book in a short review, but I thought it was really good, I