Author: Cal Newport
A friend recommended this book to me so I gave it a go.
The premise is that focusing your career aspirations around the elusive “passion” is not an effective way to build your career and usually ends in disappointment. Instead, honing your skills and building “career capital” gives you the flexibility to command more autonomy and control for example, which are some of the top factors of job satisfaction. Newport gives several examples of people who quit the rat race to chase their passions with little career capital, and a lot of enthusiasm. The stories he chose of course all ended badly for those people. He also discussed several people who gained skills and were disciplined about acquiring skills. These people usually spent years acquiring those skills and working towards something, but in these examples, they ended up in work that they love. Not because it was their original passion, but because they have come to a place where they are valuable enough to command autonomy and control over their life.
The premise aligns with my opinions on pursuing a career. I always die inside a little when I see young people (as if I am so old and wise) barely into college but they decide they want to “be brave” and start their own business (usually an MLM). Or want to be a travel blogger and they have no doubt their English 12 writing class will help them create content that is interesting enough amidst the oceans of content already out there that people will literally pay them to travel.
I think I’ve talked about this on this site before, but the idea of compounding often comes to mind with me beyond the scope of interest/money. Nobody likes the grind. We all want to chase our passions and short term interests and hope that will be enough for us. After years of chasing, with disappointments mounting, I’ve seen people become disillusioned. Usually they older they get, the easier it is to “give up” and just settle as well. Not only do they settle in their careers, but they settle into disappointment and usually resentment at other people who seem to be doing well.
When someone suddenly gains notoriety or success, it seems to come out of nowhere, but that’s sort of how compounding works. Incremental investment that starts to grow really fast. The incremental investment is just boring, and usually hard work.
I particularly like a part of the book around 155 pages in where he talks about the adjacent possible. He is essentially making the same point as he does earlier in the book on the importance of career capital, but illustrates it along side scientific breakthroughs. Studies have shown many major scientific breakthroughs have had multiple people working on and figuring something new out at the same time despite being unconnected. This is usually because a previous development came out that acts as a major stepping stone and opens up new possibilities. He shows that most scientific breakthroughs are not quite as breakthrough that they seem, and require a long time of getting to the point of “adjacent possible”. Newport makes the argument that the same can be said for our careers. We need to develop the skills and abilities necessary to leave doors open as wide as possible and bring us to that “adjacent possible” space where the opportunity for things to breakthrough is high.
The theme of the book of speaking against chasing our passions in our careers is kind of like the business version of a philosophy that I really despise.
Whenever I hear someone say “just do whatever makes you happy” I vomit a little bit in my mouth.
What terrible advice! Terrible advice that we hear constantly. And when someone takes that advice we are supposed to feel happy for them and inspired that they are choosing to selfishly do whatever makes THEM happy?
“I’m just going to do whatever makes me happy”
“Yea, you go girl! So inspiring!”
“Yea, I’m amazing”
Overheard at a Chuck-E-Cheese
Do whatever makes you happy?? Really? How many of us are happy to go to school? How many of us are happy to wake up early and go to work? Stepping out of my comfort zone certainly doesn’t make me happy. Guess I’ll just wrap myself in tin foil and watch TV all day. Exercise? Ain’t gonna happen.
Would it make me happy to get what I want all the time? Would I lie, cheat, manipulate to get what I want since it would make me happy? Life is all about me after all. Your loss could still be my gain.
I’m afraid I am ranting at this point, but I hope that expresses my disdain for that phrase.
Back to the book. I think the best thing this book does is snaps readers out of the mindset that attempting to find your passion first, ahead of building competency is a dangerous path. I think it does a good job of speaking against a prevalent narrative around chasing your passion that many young professionals are likely stuck in that trap and could benefit from reading. My primary takeaway is the book inspired me to continue to invest in learning and development and not settle.