Quality breeds success

 

Cal Newport debunks the jargon “follow your passion” by revealing have little to do with how most people end up loving their work after spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and other who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work.

Newport takes the lid off strategies they used and pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers.

Comedian Steve Martin who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to “be so good they can’t ignore you.”

After making his case against passion, Newport reveals  passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable. What you do for a living is much less important than how you do it and sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up achieving their passion.  Most passions had no viable relationship to careers, but were more hobbies, like skiing, dancing, reading. Only 4 out of the 84 aid they had passions that could be linked to realistic careers. Many people switch jobs more frequently  because they think they should do a job they love.

However, Newport, contends the happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion, but instead are those who have been around long enough to become great at whaty they do. When you have mastered something, the chance are you will be passionate about it. According to the theory of self-determination three factors including Autonomy – having control over what you do and how you do it; Competence – being good at what you do; Relatedness – feeling connected  to other people. Newport claims  to gain the necessary expertise you don’t need passion, you just need to work hard. The mindset is treating your job as a craft, focus on gaining rare and valuable skills until you become so good they can’t ignore you as quality breeds success.

 

Loving what they do, instead of trying to find your passion or mission right away, pursue small and achievable projects that allow you to make progress step by step. To maximise you chances of success, these projects should be small concrete  experiments  that return concrete feedback.

 

So Good They Can’t Ignore You Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport, Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group,  £11.49, 304 pages (ISBN: 978-1455509126)