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In career growth, many knowledge workers avoid developing relevant skills because it is uncomfortable. However, to build up large amounts of career capital, you should make deliberate practice a habitual part of your work routine. Don’t obsess over discovering your true calling. Instead, master rare and valuable skills. Then, once you build up the career capital that these skills generate, invest it wisely. Use it to acquire control over what you do and how you do it, and to identify and act on a life-changing mission.” Next Steps
The law of financial viability: you should only pursue a bid for more control if you have evidence that what you do is something that people are willing to pay you for. Auction Market: There is flexibility in the type of capital that you can build. You can create different combinations of skills to emphasize your rareness. The second control trap is that control creates resistance. The point at which you have acquired enough career capital to get meaningful control over your working life, is exactly the point when you’ve become valuable enough that your current employer will try to prevent (resist) you from making this change. Think about it, having more control (e.g., a pay rise, more days off, leave, leaving) does not benefit your employer and based on this, Newport notions that you should expect employers to resist control. Rule 4) Think small, act bigYou must think small and act big. Advancing to the cutting edge in a field is an act of small thinking, requiring you to focus on a narrow collection of subjects for a potentially long time. To have a mission is to have a unifying focus for your career. It’s more general than a specific job and can span multiple positions. It provides an answer to the question, ‘What should I do with my life.’”
Giving the perfect example of how Steve Jobs was never passionate about computers to begin with (he was actually profoundly passionate about Zen Buddhism), Newport explains that passion is not only rare but that it takes time and is a side effect of mastery. A good career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough. It is an innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field. The cutting edge is the only place where these missions become visible. Impact: “From the Apple II to the iPhone, Steve Jobs has changed the way we live our lives in the digital age.” The first is that many of us do not gain something valuable to offer in return for control. Newport argues, and I agree, that we cannot obtain control of our career if we do not have something valuable to offer in return. You hear of hundreds of people quitting their jobs to start new and exciting career adventures and then failing. Why? Well, because they have no value to offer (no career capital) to keep control over their newly found career venture.Decide what capital market you’re in. Are you in a winner-take-all market (e.g., book writing) where you win by becoming an excellent writer, or are you in an auction market (e.g., building startups) where you can build many different combinations of skills and still win. Explore the best books for expanding your mind, the best self-help books, the best philosophy books for beginners, books for people who don't enjoy reading, and more great books. For a mission-driven project to succeed it should be remarkable in two ways, 1) it must compel people to remark about it to others and 2) it must be launched in a venue that supports such remarking. Related Book Summaries
Career Capital – the rare and valuable skills within the working world, which is “the key currency for creating work you love” Passion is a side effect of mastery: when you get great at something, your interest in that something often grows. In large part, that’s because you develop a stronger sense of autonomy and competence the more that you master a craft. According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), there are three basic psychological needs that we need to meet to feel motivated at work: The law of supply and demand says that if you want these traits, you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return.
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Once you get to the cutting edge, however, and discover a mission in the adjacent possible, you must go after it with zeal: a “big” action.” Chapter Fourteen: Missions Require Little Bets
This chapter of So Good They Can’t Ignore You “argues that the more you seek examples of the passion hypothesis, the more you recognize its rarity.” How do you make the leap from identifying a realistic mission to succeeding in making it a reality? Regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopting the craftsman mindset will be the foundation on which you’ll build a compelling career.” So instead of questioning whether you have passion for your work, focus on becoming so good they can’t ignore you. Chapter Five: The Power Of Career Capital In short, it’s rare that you will be passionate about something from day 1 and forever be interested in that something. Rather, passion is often born out of spending a lot of time in a field and getting good at the skills required to feel autonomous, competent, and connected with the work you’re doing. The dangers of the passion hypothesis You should quest to become “so good they can’t ignore you.” Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion Chapter 1: The “Passion” of Steve Jobs
The conventional wisdom of “follow your passion” is seriously flawed. If this is bad advice, what should I do instead? The 10,000-Hour Rule – “the idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise” 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 that you love.” Ryan did not “follow his passion” into farming, he stumbled into his profession and found that his passion for the work increased along with his expertise. Regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer. Chapter 5: The Power of Career Capital
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