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So Good They Can't Ignore You - A Book That Teaches You How to Become Valuable

So good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport

Book Description:

In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice.  Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work-but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job-hopping.

After making his case against passion, Newport sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving what they do. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers.

Matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter, he reveals. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before.

In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.

With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly-written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love.

SO GOOD THEY CAN'T IGNORE YOU will change the way we think about our careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.

My Top Takeaways: 

  • Passion is not a good driving force in choosing our career simply because our passions tend to dramatically change after starting work. For instance, Steve Jobs, who himself tells people that they should follow their passions, only got into computers because he thought it was an easy way to make quick money early on in his career. He became passionate after growing into success and seeing the impact he was making.
  • Nearly every time someone says they are passionate about their work it's because they spent enough time at it to become good at their work. Passion is a side effect of mastery. That's why so many who quit their jobs to chase their passion, whether that's blogging, yoga, art, or just about anything else, eventually feel like they made a mistake and go back to their old job. You're much more likely to succeed if you wait to quit your job until you've mastered the skill that you're wanting to pursue. And who knows, maybe the job you have is something you will become passionate about once you get good at it.
    • Mastery can more easily lead to passion when you feel that you have autonomy, competence, and connection to others.
  • For most people, there are three things needed in a career to feel good about their work - Creativity, Impact, and Control. If you can have all three you have a very good chance of eventually loving the work you do.
  • There is a lot of value in changing your mindset from wanting to become rich, famous, or powerful and instead turn your focus to becoming "so good they can't ignore you."
  • There are times when a job isn't likely to be something you ever feel passionate about. Here are three disqualifiers that might mean it's time to move on to something else:
    • The job presents few, or no, opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable.
    • The job focuses on something you think is useful or maybe even bad for the world (this is why I likely would never feel passionate about working for a pharmaceutical company...).
    • The job forces you to work with people you really dislike.
  • Focus on building career capital (rare and valuable skills) before being overly concerned with whether you are passionate about your work.
  • Once we have built sufficient career capital we can more clearly define our career mission. The best ideas for missions are found in the adjacent possible - the region just beyond the current cutting edge. But to see what's possible beyond the cutting edge we need to be good enough to be at the cutting edge in our field.

'The 52 Book' Review Rating:

Final Thoughts:

So Good They Can't Ignore You is a book I wish I had read 15 years ago, at which time I probably would have rated it as Life-Changing. 

While I got enough value out of it to have already recommended it to three other people, I feel it's probably better suited for people early on in their career development. For instance, I wish this could be required reading for high school seniors or freshmen in college. It's also something that I would love people to read after starting their first job.

I feel like he may have gone just a little overboard in saying that we shouldn't expect to feel passionate or achieve measurable success until we've worked long and hard enough to develop rare and valuable skills, but maybe I'm just too caught up in the belief that a strong belief and vision can overcome a lack of skills. Inspirational books are filled with stories of wildly successful people who simply believed and went for it, but it's possible some of those are overly simplified or even just made up. And even if they are real stories, it's probably not a good strategy to base our life decisions on outliers who may have been luckier than they were skilled.

Regardless, Cal Newport did an excellent job breaking down why "follow your passion" isn't good career or life advice. In fact, he points out that it's one of the main detractors from fulfillment as so many people start a job, then it gets hard and they don't feel like they love the work anymore, and that leads them to quit and move on to their next 9 to 5.

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Have you read So Good They Can't Ignore You, and if so, what are your thoughts?

Also, I am always on the prowl for my next great book. What life-changing books have you read recently? I'm excited to see your comments below.


You can reach out to David Inman at: david@kennected.io 
You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at: 
Location: Indianapolis, IN, USA

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