Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

"Passion" is mentioned liberally in entrepreneurial books and communities, but the reality is there are very few people in this world that have found their passion. It is a life long endeavor, a constantly moving target, yet many entrepreneurs blindly follow their "passions". In fact, this behavior is praised in the startup world. The fact is that finding ones passion requires a lot of hard work, building up skills, becoming a domain expert, and frequent reflection. Boldness needs to be balanced with ability. This book, though repetitive at times, gives solid examples and evidence that will debunk some of the most popular beliefs about passion and work.

This books holds good career advice and a bunch of nice arguments against traditional common sense on career development. Overall it's a good read but it's main sin is being a little too repetitive. The constant repetition of the rules is a good help but dwells on the verge of becoming a little bit boring.

Compelling read. Useful for grown-ups trying to work out what they want to be when they're grown up.

I liked the structure of the book, with "rules", case studies to back up and short summaries to review. Great writing style.

It has made me think differently about my job - I was prone to imagining some ideal other job out there, or questioning whether my job aligns with my passion, but actually I've realised that my job has a lot of the valuable traits he is talking about and if I build up enough career capital and work out my mission, it will end up being a job I am passionate about.

I found Cal Newport's book annoyingly thin and under researched. It's more a series of anecdotes about individuals, all of whom seem to lack common responsibilities like spouses/partners, kids, and maybe even dogs and can pick up and cast around to find themselves.

On the other hand, as an executive and career coach with 30 years working in business, Newport's premise - create career capital that provides a strong value proposition as you iteratively figure out where to take your work life - is brilliant and spot-on with my experience and observations.

I'd recommend Newport's book to anyone trying to sort out what to do with their life. While I would have liked to have seen different (more through presentation and referencing of the lots of good supporting research that's out there by people like Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, et al, a broader sampling of people, and a little less about Cal), the structure of his premise is outstanding.

A reviewer on the back of the book says the book contains "Brilliant counter-intuitive career insights." The advice is brilliant, I agree. But I think counter-intuitive is the wrong word. Counter-cultural is what I would use. As Cal lays out his arguments, everything makes sense. It seems to me to be very intuitive. However, the book destroys the "find your passion" theme that permeates our culture.

The book has permeating my thoughts for days and I keep referring back to it. It is a powerful and important book. Buy it!

The basic premise of this book is thought-provoking and very relevant to so many of us struggling through career decisions. The primary point which Newport gets across is unambiguously true: finding a "passion" before setting off in your career is extremely difficult, and perhaps even counterproductive. Developing a very solid set of skills which are somewhat rare and valuable is the only way to position oneself into a meaningful job with any sort of autonomy and humanity. This is essential, especially in the competitive world we live in. And competency itself is related to self-satisfaction—perhaps even moreso than any intrinsic interests we might have. Good points.

However, the book falls flat in almost every other aspect, from the explanations, to the real-world examples, to the relevancy for the vast majority of professional laborers sitting in cubicles today. This is not surprising given Newport's background in prestige and academics, and the quite unorthodox path he's taken. This issue follows through the entire book with example after example of people and their careers that can only be characterized as esoteric and extreme. The hyper-successful individuals he profiles as examples of people happy with their careers are starkly contrasted by the obvious hubris of those he interviews who are not. There is no middle ground, which is, unfortunately, the vast majority of us, who are neither ridiculously foolhardy nor overachievers to the extreme.

This book and its author smacks of the Tim Ferriss-style cure-all self-help trash which is all born out of an unrigorous, hyped-up, TED Talk-syle, fast-food intellectualism which is so tempting to consume in the blogging age. Beware of the hype, remember this book was written in less than 6 months, work hard, and find a job you don't hate for Christ's sake.

Like other books on the subject, written a little like an academic essay. I read allot in this space, so got through it. There were also some 'philosophical' parts that i didn't then follow the preceding argument - so frankly left me a little confused. If you are looking for an 'easy' read, this isn't it. Great subject matter though.

Cal Newport has a compelling argument why you should base your career plans on your core-competencies, not necessarily your passions. My only challenge to this book is the effectiveness of this approach to an average professional, who may not have the opportunity to be selective in making career choices.

Cal provided me with a review copy of this book, and usually books are read and forgotten. But I managed to underline probably half of this book, and I talk about its concepts during a conversation at least once a day. Why? Because it is the most resonating book for people of my generation--20-somethings, trying to figure out our place in the world, and feeling like we don't really know our passion.

Cal shows, through meticulous research and explanation, how to identify a skill that is worth improving, and then how to actually BUILD passion. He shows that passion is correlated with time spent on a job, and passion is made---not given. The importance of deliberate practice and becoming the best is very powerful.

If you aren't sure what to do with your life, I guarantee this book will move you.

Written by an academic, this book reads like an undergraduate's term paper that is trying to create a new dictionary of terms. Not recommended. Advice isn't bad, but the writing could certainly be more engaging and fun to read.

Although Cal deviates from his student-centric advice, this book is relevant to those amongst us wanting to use our time wisely in college as the foundation for a good life post-graduation. The most pertinent student-centric topics include how to deal with "passion" and how to build capital during college in skills that would put us light years ahead of our peers when we enter the working world. I, myself, am only a freshman in university but found the book highly useful.

Some may find his suggestions extremely unorthodox, maybe slightly arrogant, perhaps most notably for tearing down the great Steve Jobs' advice on passion - but Cal is actually sublime in humility and humor, hardly shying away from sharing his own journey thus far. He attributed, without pomp, his achievements in Dartmouth to his reductionist approach toward acquiring the right type of study skills and not to some spontaneous combustion of platonic passion towards computer science. He self-deprecatingly writes about his mediocre guitar skills as a teenager, emphasizing the importance of deliberate practice. He shares, in the most human way, an incisive analysis of his method towards navigating his uncertain and ambiguous way into the job market as a professor - and it is ironically his personal approach that provides readers with the sharpest insight into the applicability of the advice he writes about in reality.

The advice may be contrarian and the proclaimations bold but at its core, the aim of this book is humbly optimistic: how to create, and then integrate a fairly successful career into a content life that in turn, generates happiness.

This is what I believe every reasonable person often grapples with and continue to long for - but not very many writers have been able to write coherently and intelligently about - which is why I highly recommend this book to anyone willing to cast aside selfish presuppositions about being entitled to a "passion" or an exhilirating career from the world without first putting in the work needed to earn it.

A friend recommended this book to me as he was very impressed with the author's idea of 'career capital' as the leverageable asset that leads to work that you love.

I give talks about finding work that you love and the idea that work you love doesn't come from some hidden passion that you simply have to uncover was the best articulation i've heard about how to go about finding, or rather creating, work that you are passionate about.

I also accept Newport's assertion that the "follow your passion" mantra is causing damage to many many people who think there is some undiscovered passion that leads to happiness and wealth, and all they have to do is find theirs.

I recommend this to anyone who is counselling young people about preparing for the working world and charting a career.

An incredibly fresh and useful alternative to other career guidance books.

If you've heard over and over to follow your passion, but are stuck trying to pull a passion out of a hat, give this book a read.

I loved this book! At first it was hard for me to wrap my head around because it is a rare dissenting opinion that you should start by finding your passion and then finding your work. I will be focusing more on cultivating rare and valuable skills now that I read this! Keep up the good work Cal!

A great book full of solid advice. While so many there books are asking how to be happy, this book is really talking about how to be excellent. No quick fix tips, just long term commitments to craft and excellence, mixed with solid strategies for how to test the water, explore lots of options, and gain more creative control and autonomy.

I would recommend this book for anyone lost and seeking their perfect career but cannot find it. The examples of real people used prop up the argument that 'follow your passion' is bad advice. Sound reasoning provides another strong angle to consider for those pondering a new career and sold the notion of passion equals happiness. It doesn't. And this book will offer you an alternative and realistic blueprint to build a career you'll hopefully love. Thank you.

This is a great book for those starting out in their professional careers. As it comes from someone still early in his career and hopefully it resonates.

The book is also great for those entering the mid-life of theri career because it reinforces the thing you've begun to gauge that there is really no substitute for good old-fashioned hardwork, and getting to be dang good at what you do.

Overall a great read, from someone who has a tremendous amount of curiousity merged with the ability to seek out answers from a multitude of domans, and piecing together a coherent picture.

Cal's methodology therefore itself is another takeaway that readers of this book can glean, above the guidelines and facts that Cal presents on how to get really good at what you do, and get satisfaction out of it.

Why do I rate it as a 4 vs a 5. For me personally, it wasn't at a life-changing level. But that's just my fault.

This is a good book and a worthwhile read. A great gift for the twenty-somethings in their morning of their career life.

This book is exactly the escape from intoxicated passions to tangible bliss that I hope more people are exposed to. I'm only a teenager, so learning this early on about what truly matters when creating a career you love gives me a relieving satisfaction for my obstacle filled future ahead, searching for not what the world can offer to me, but rather what I could offer the world through obtaining rare and valuable skills to climb up to a position of career control and sustainability.

This book serves as a good reminder on how to develop one's career. The distinction between chasing after one's passion vs. building a career one will love is compelling. However, the book relies heavily on anecdotal evidence wrapped into convenient formulas for success.

Cal Newport a blog award winning writer and full time Computer Science Professor at Georgetown University breaks down the walls of why just simply following your passion isn't always enough and instead why building career capital, making small bets, and mastery are essential to developing your passion.

This is a great book for those starting out in their professional careers. As it comes from someone still early in his career and hopefully it resonates.

The book is also great for those entering the mid-life of theri career because it reinforces the thing you've begun to gauge that there is really no substitute for good old-fashioned hardwork, and getting to be dang good at what you do.

Overall a great read, from someone who has a tremendous amount of curiousity merged with the ability to seek out answers from a multitude of domans, and piecing together a coherent picture.

Cal's methodology therefore itself is another takeaway that readers of this book can glean, above the guidelines and facts that Cal presents on how to get really good at what you do, and get satisfaction out of it.

Why do I rate it as a 4 vs a 5. For me personally, it wasn't at a life-changing level. But that's just my fault.

This is a good book and a worthwhile read. A great gift for the twenty-somethings in their morning of their career life.

This book is exactly the escape from intoxicated passions to tangible bliss that I hope more people are exposed to. I'm only a teenager, so learning this early on about what truly matters when creating a career you love gives me a relieving satisfaction for my obstacle filled future ahead, searching for not what the world can offer to me, but rather what I could offer the world through obtaining rare and valuable skills to climb up to a position of career control and sustainability.

This book serves as a good reminder on how to develop one's career. The distinction between chasing after one's passion vs. building a career one will love is compelling. However, the book relies heavily on anecdotal evidence wrapped into convenient formulas for success.

Cal Newport a blog award winning writer and full time Computer Science Professor at Georgetown University breaks down the walls of why just simply following your passion isn't always enough and instead why building career capital, making small bets, and mastery are essential to developing your passion.

Good book. The essential point is that blindly following your passion is a bad career strategy, and developing valuable skills will eventually lead you into the passionate pursuit of a worthwhile career. Very wise. Very useful.

When I was working on The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career, I read all the major career books to see what else was on the market. Cal Newport's new book is one of the best written, primarily because it zones in and debunks a myth -- follow your passion as good advice -- and then transitions from there into practical advice for becoming remarkable and building a career that works. If you're a thinking person who knows you can't rely on easy (and wrong) answers about what will make your career go; if you're instead ready to confront the realities of the labor market and the necessity of developing real skills -- then buy this outstanding book.

I had pretty high expectation about this one and they all got satisfied. This books reminds us of what it takes to become great and what EXACTLY you should do to be 'so good they cant ignore you'. It insists that 'follow your passion' is a dangerous road and it got me right in the point in my life when I was going to do so... and things weren't going well.

The concepts that the author explores I believe are very valid and he presents a good case. I also believe they are valid no matter what your education background, career goals, etc are. I was disappointed that he only seemed to use examples of people who were graduating in advanced degrees and/or graduating from Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.

I would like to see the hypothesis the author presents applied to a broader cross section of the population, not just a group of people who are basically high achievers. I think this same message is very valid for the person who will not or cannot go on to higher education out of high school.

Cal,

Your book has provided me with a great, big, overdue epiphany. I can't thank you enough. I've always thought I was a bit crazy for thinking along the lines of what you've written, as so many people have been pushing the follow-your-passion kool-aid since I got out of college.

I was on vacation when I blazed through your book, so it may be a combination of your writing and a clear mind, but I suddenly have a certain excitement about the engineering job I got out of college over three years ago. This is honestly the first time I've felt this way, falling into the passion trap right out of school and wanting to quit my not-so-sexy job for the past three years.

I truly believe that you've struck gold with this line of thinking, and you've articulated it so well in this book. I suddenly feel like I'm on the right track again, not making a mistake by continuing at my opportunity-filled job each day. It's a horrible feeling to be told that you're making a mistake by NOT doing something sexy each day, which is what passion advice essentially boils down to.

Your book has had the ability to stoke a fire that went dim over three years ago. For that I thank you.

Order So Good They Can't Ignore You today. Get it in hardback, get it in Kindle, it can change your life. Cal Newport is a computer scientist in his first year teaching at Georgetown. So what does he know? Well, he has already published three successful books on how to be a super-student--in college and high school--and he runs the enormously popular blog "Study Hacks." And now, in this newest book, he debunks the popular career advice "follow your passion." He doesn't just blow some self-help smoke about how to manipulate your own emotions, he actually tells you what steps to take to develop rare and valuable skills and achieve an interesting life, his "career craftsman" approach.

Cal Newport argues that passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. Just showing up at work or school is not enough. Just being good enough to get by is not enough. Nor is it enough to get to be good at something ho-hum. Cal tells you how to choose what you do carefully, and how to build your rare and valuable skills, always with a view, as well, to how to get your achievements known.

Cal is a scientist. To develop his theories he talked with many people who are successful in their work, from organic farmers to venture capitalists, and he met with the brilliant young evolutionary biologist Pardis Sabeti at Harvard and analyzed her career-building choices and the effect on her career of her sense of mission. But he also applied his theories candidly to how he made his own decisions, good and less so.

Now here's my experience. I have followed Cal Newport's blog for several years. I took it to heart when Cal first started talking about Steve Martin's advice to young comedians, "Get to be so good they can't ignore you"--now the title for the new book--and I recited that motto daily as I drove myself through the final painful months of producing my own latest book Perform Your Best on the Bar Exam Performance Test (MPT): Train to Finish the MPT in 90 Minutes, Like a Sport(TM). Who knows how long the job might have taken without Cal's inspiration. But this review is about Cal's book, not mine.

Let me tell you, Cal Newport's new book is terrific from the title page to the index. Buy it today. Get to be so good they can't ignore you. Get an interesting life.

I wish this book would have existed 10 years ago! I fell into the whole "passion" thing and it crippled me. Now I feel like I have a real method and a new perspective towards work that has given me a freedom that I have been desiring.

This is one of the best written and most valuable books I have ever read. In short, Newport inductively validates the claim that persistent, disciplined skill-development is far more important than "passion" in achieving a career one loves. Newport offers insightful advice on how to apply this principle.

Cal Newport presents a radical concept (why following your passion is bad advice) with strong and persuasive evidence. While the first chapter of the book was less than convincing, it must be said that Newport is faced with the challenging task of debunking a widely accepted concept, "Follow your passion", of which I am a major subscriber. Over the next four chapters, Newport presents an increasingly logical and systematic argument for why it may be inefficient for most people to attempt to "find their passion", when few actually have any pre-existing passions that are career related.

The general theme of the book, "Working right is more important than finding the right work", makes good sense. Too many people worry about how much value a job is providing to them, and not what value they could add to the job. This is true. The traits that make a job so desirable are generally creativity, control, and impact. These traits are rare and valuable. To achieve them, we must have the rare and valuable skills to be exchanged in return for those traits. It follows that to allow ourselves to build skills that employers find rare and valuable, we must be willing to dedicate the hours of "deliberate practice" required to constantly stretch our skills beyond our comfort zone.

However, Newport seems to paint a job more as a means of earning money rather than a "vocation". He pays little credence to the widely researched fact that human beings are more likely to dedicate time to becoming better at something if they enjoy whatever it is they are practicing. Furthermore, I have personally come across numerous individuals who do have creativity, control, and impact in their work but still find themselves de-energized and do not enjoy their lives. Look at the pool of CEOs earning seven figure pay-checks, who are extremely impactful, and have a lot of control not only over themselves but also the corporation. I daresay not all of them love their jobs.

In summary, Newport offers an alternative view to the popular idealistic career advice of "Follow your passion", but still leaves some gaps in his arguments.

Really practical and reasonable advice. Would have liked to read it sooner in life, but thankfully I'm not too too far along in life that I can't use the techniques in the book. Really good for career and life balance issues.

I can’t recommend this book enough. The author’s lessons matches my life experience to the letter. At 25, I quit my engineering job on the day of my 3rd anniversary with a large company (I needed 3 years to vest my retirement stock matching contributions). When I quit, I was beginning to get really good at my job. I quit due to having an excess of courage caused by excessive exposure to (mostly) Robin Sharma’s writings. This was 2004. “You can’t get to second base with one foot on first” Robin said. Yeah. Right. After I quit my job my potential clients fell through, so I started working a sucky part time engineering job with a very small company. I made a lot less money, but at least had more time to devote to “my company”. Well this lasted all of 11 months. I got fed up with how hard it was to get clients, money, and trying to manage all the paperwork of having a company. Looking back I find the whole event comical: I even had a business card with the company name and the title of “President”. Oooohhh preeeesident. What a joke. I was the courageous president of a company that had zero clients.

In reading this book, I feel as if the author is talking about me. I quit a good job to form a my own company even though I had zero clients whom had given me money, no experience in the field I was trying to cover, no reputation, nothing. Just a lot of inspiration from “feel good” authors, all whom became successful by peddling ideas that sound sexy but are dislodged from reality. At least it only took me 11 months to find out. I was able to get a good job at another company and stuck to it for 8.5 years, where I accumulated a lot of career capital. By the time I left I was able to more or less choose what I wanted to work on. I’m 37 now and am doing very well at another large company, but only because I’ve always practiced the craftsman mentality described in this book. So it has always been easy to stand out among my peers. I now have a venture that I’ve been working on the side for a little over 2 years and it is starting to yield more consistent results. I feel I’m at the threshold of something good, but this time, it is because I have accumulated a ridiculous amount of skills and decent connections (still need to work on my networking). This time, if I quit my day job for my own venture I know I will have success. How do I know? Because I will not quit my dayjob unless I’m making more money on my venture.

Oh and don’t get me started on Tim Ferriss. I stumbled upon his book at an airport at a time when I was more mature and knew better. Even so, I still devoted about 2 or 3 weeks of my time to creating a website to get the fabled passive income. At least I lost only a few weeks of my time because I had grown wiser. But yet again, I saw myself in the references the author makes in this book about the “lifestyle design” bullcrap, though he is far more forgiving than I am. It was only when I started acquiring new skills by DOING rather than READING that my options have started to grow exponentially. I still have a long way to go, but everything is getting easier by the quarter. You need money to make money. Everybody knows that. Well I’ve found you also need clients to get clients. You need success to get success. Once you can SHOW rather than TELL what you can do, people start looking for you. You also start to exuberate confidence, both because you have gained experience in the negotiation table, but more so because you have actually a done the work and are truly skillful. This skillfulness brings confidence. Confidence and a body of work brings clients. If a potential client finds you instead of you cold calling her, well that just leads to a very different discussion on the negotiation table. That is why it is critical to have a body of work. And you need a day job to support you while you create that body of work. We are talking years here, not months. There are no shortcuts to success.

It is pretty simple though not easy: Cut your TV watching / internet browsing to only 2-3 hours per week. Use all that time gained learning a skill that interests you. Once you are proficient with the first skill, start with another skill. But you need to be DOING, not reading how to do it or watching how to do it. Spend a year this way and you will become addicted to the personal growth you have experienced while your friends are liking their lives away on Facebook. To the outside world you will be somewhat of a workaholic, but you will not feel that way because you are working on YOUR interests, not your employer’s interests. Success will invariable follow in a few more years because you will be so good they can’t ignore you. You just need to unplug yourself and start on your own path, but without the financial stress of not having a day job.

Quit your Netflix, not your dayjob. Do, don’t plan.

Cal Newport, in his latest book, is as insightful and thorough as ever. A computer scientist in life with the soul of an anthropologist, he pursues the question of 'What makes a successful career?' with the same single-minded, systematic focus he brings to all his other pursuits.

The key takeaway from the book is also the most controversial: there is no such thing as a deep 'hidden passion' lying within all of us, which we only have to uncover to attain amazing levels of success and satisfaction in our careers. The so-called 'passion' comes from long hours of deliberate practice to accumulate what Newport calls 'career capital', a set of rare and valuable skills. This career capital can then be 'cashed in' to attain the benefits of a dream job, such as creativity, impact and control.

With first-hand case studies ranging from an ex-Zen monk, a blues prodigy and a genius geneticist from Harvard, Newport makes his point convincingly. As always, he is open about how he applies these insights to his own life and does not shy away from uncomfortable details and truths.

Newport's candor, rigor and insights are refreshing to read. In an age where the 'follow your passion' craze routinely sets unrealistically high expectations for people and leads them on career cul-de-sacs, his clarion call for discipline, strategic hard work and systematic practice sets this book apart from every other career advice resource out there. It may be a hard read for many people (including myself) who spent years looking for their passion instead of practicing their skills, but I would recommend swallowing the bitter pill and getting to work!

Cal Newport's new book contains some great ideas, but this should have been an article not a book. To summarize, the author argues that the "follow your passion" movement has very little to offer and he proposes a "career capital" model. In the career capital model one asks themselves what they have of value to offer to an employer (or customer for those inclined to start a business), as opposed to asking what our employer has to offer us. Once significant career capital has been built, one can then go about assembling a career based on passion which includes autonomy, control and is mission-driven. I was impressed by the new construct that this book outlines, but I was underwhelmed by the examples used, by the research cited, and by the depth of the information presented. Instead of citing original research Newport primarily refers to works such as Outliers and Drive. Given Newport's impressive research credentials I would have expected more. I finished this in a matter of hours and was disappointed.

If you are old enough to remember when "getting married" was the career option of choice for women you probably remember the trope about the girl torn between the exciting dangerous "bad boy" and the good, boring suitor she didn't love. You know, Twilight except there is no good boring guy in that, just a pair of ultra-dangerous bad boys. But I digress. This book is exactly like that except it is about careers instead of husbands. And Newport is so obnoxious about it you wonder if he was the rejected boring guy once. If he had called the book "Mistakes People Make Following Their Passion" I probably would have given it 4 stars. Even so, just like the parents in those B movies, he has more than a few good points(some people don't have strong career passions, the world might not need another whatever, skill and capital are critical assets, etc).

There is a film that illustrates this dilemma perfectly, the documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" (It streams free with the store Prime). Jiro Ono was orphaned a young age but through a life of hard work became a sushi master whose restaurant was awarded 3 stars by Michelin. [SPOILER ALERT]. The movies also follows Yoshhikazu Ono, his heir, who reveals he didn't like the business at all initially. Sushi is Jiro Ono's passion but not Yoshhikazu-san's. Jiro-san is 85 and the movies explains how Yoshhikazu-san has taken over the heavy lifting in the restaurant. Yoshhikazu-san has gained the respect of Japan's reviewers, vendors and his employees. Then toward the end of the movie it is revealed that Michelin never saw Jiro-san originally, it was Yoshhikazu-san that cooked the meal that earned the stars.

Do I admire Yoshhikazu Ono? Yes! Growing from apprentice to master is an honorable thing. Taking care of your family and supporters is a very good thing. Sometimes it is the best option life gives you. But having options is a fundamentally good thing not to be thrown away fearfully. Newport doesn't get this. Sometime life doesn't work out and bad boys are called BAD for a reason. But that doesn't make the safe choice good or pouring years of effort into something you are ambivalent about wise. Newport is selling so much FEAR here it's hard to hear his good advice.

I’m happy that I found out about this book So Good They Can’t Ignore You; Why Skills Trump Passion In The Quest For Work You Love by Cal Newport because I have discovered from my own personal experience that whatever career I pursue must be one in which the doors are open to me and/or one where I can create my own professional doors while also simultaneously being one that I can easily transfer over to other industries with if necessary ( if forced to leave one workplace and/or I voluntarily choose to leave a given workplace) and keep one gainfully employed regardless of age (such as accountants, chefs, public relation specialists, human resource specialists, manager, careers in merchandising/employed as a merchandiser etc.) This book covers among the following; the authors mention of Steve Jobs and some details on him, the author explains why passion is a side effect of mastery and his reference to the Ted Talk of the Suprising Science of Motivation by Daniel Pink (also author of Drive). In Chapter Three Cal Newport persuasively writes why passion can sometimes be dangerous (when he discusses dangerous I’m taking it to mean if a person for instance leaves a well- paying job that helps them make at least $3,000 a month after taxes without thinking it through enough if there is a way to get their chosen career without taking the financially dangerous route of voluntarily leaving the company). To support his passion is dangerous point, he mentions the example of an accomplished professional living in Washington D.C. who works in politics but admits that they may want to purse something else, in chapter five Newport mentions the power of career capital (he references people such as Ira Glass for creativity in radio and the tale of a woman named Lisa Feur who bravely admitted to having left a career in advertising and marketing to follow her yoga passion (I mean the brave word sincerely because of my own strong interest in wanting to be employed in the advertising,marketing, and/or public relations career fields until the day I die, which hopefully won’t be until I’m at least in my 90’s).

I am a longtime fan of lifestyle design and have read most of the books mentioned in this book: Drive, Outliers, What Should I Do With My Life, etc. I also follow numerous "follow your passion" and business/career blogs: HBR, Penelope Trunk, Chris Guillabeau, etc.

I was SO excited to finally find a soundly-researched, well-articulated counter argument to the "follow your passion" mantra.

This isn't it.

The book employs circular logic, tautology, and loose research references at best--not what you'd expect from an MIT Grad. It's clearly targeted at the 1%. Which, well, tends to eliminate the other 99% of us.

What about the middle class, women, people with children, people who majored in areas other than STEM and non-PhD track folks?

Work hard? Be Remarkable? No pain, No gain?

I wish Mr. Newport had followed his own advice. There is just nothing remarkable or well-researched in here, other than the premise of the book itself.

This would have been a great Kindle Single for $1.99, but there's just not enough research or solid logic to make it worth the $10 price.

I purchased this book in a hurry after watching one of his talks on Vimeo, where he plugs it rather heavily. The reason I purchased it in a hurry is that I have been offered a spot in a grad program, yet am very conflicted about whether or not to accept it or pursue my other career possibility. I was hoping this book would help, but the obvious holes in his logic and fuzzy thinking in general are not giving me a lot of confidence in taking his advice.

The main issue I have is that almost all of his anecdotes completely undercut his primary thesis: that "following your passion" is horrible and even dangerous (really? dramatic much?) advice. A millionaire ad-man, a surf-board magnate, a bluesgrass afficionado, a famous radio host... all of Cal's examples are people who are clearly doing very specific, glamorous jobs which they seem to have been dedicated to for years.

If he was trying to disprove that the nature of your work is irrelevant, why did he not pick accountants, actuaries, retail managers, or any blue-collar workers? A completely satisfied manager at The GAP would have been much more convincing than any one of the exceptional cases he uses to back up his points. In fact, the way he explains the backgrounds of his examples, it is quite obvious they have in fact had "pre-existing passions" for their line of work. None of them were thrust into a field they didn't choose, with the one exception maybe being Steve Jobs. But even that is debatable.

I'm sorry, but what I'm taking away from this book is that if you have natural talent and you work your ass off and become a "craftsman", than you will be able to enjoy a successful career following your passion. For me, the book fails as an argument completely. I give it 3 stars because it introduces new ideas and has interesting stories, and 2 is too harsh.

I have to say though, for someone who spends 42 hours a month thinking about research problems, Cal seems to not be the most spectacular researcher. Or, at the very least, is not very great at presenting what research he has completed.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get better at my passion.

Follow the Footnotes and it Rings so Hollow. The author claims to found one of the main premises of the book "Passion Takes Time" on science, and uses one 1997 graduate student's study of 24 people to make his primary claims. However, the 1997 study authors, led by Amy Wrzesniewski, wrote "As already noted, the results for our small sample of administrative assistants cannot have more than heuristic value." In no way do the study authors imply "Passion Takes Time," and Mr. Newport is reading way too much into the study. He either needs to clarify how he drew the conclusion from other cited research or be more clear that his idea is merely conjecture.

First, I will say that this is an excellent book. In a world of so many different ways to make a living, this is a fresh new path to follow. It really is good advice. Just because people love doing things doesn't mean that people will pay you for it. The trick is to get really good at something and then people will come to you. Essentially, when people come to you, you are negotiating from a position of power and you can set whatever terms will make you happy. You not a morning person? Say you'll work from 12-8. Don't like Tuesdays? Take that day off. It all boils down to having control over your own life. It's the same idea about an encyclopedia vs Wikipedia. The more successful one is the one where anyone can add anything anytime they wanted. They're not even being paid, they just really want to add an article about mustard at 3am.

However, I started getting an elitist feel from the book about halfway through, and it's the reason I gave it only 3 stars. The people he talks about in his book are those buisness/computer people who: A)Know how to start and run a business, B)Can work from home (all they need is a computer), and/or C)have a skill that makes hundreds if not thousands of dollars an hour. Not to mention, most of them have PhD's. One person he talks about started a music company, sold it for 22 million, donated all the money, globe trotted for a few years, then started another freakin' company. Would this book be worth something to a nurse? A teacher? A police officer? Or are these people who have followed their "passion" and this book is just for a select number of people who's highly paid skills are transferable?

If you want a job you love & make great money. Read this book & do what he recommends. Jed Sparks - https://www.the store.com/What-Jed-Sparks/dp/B00MHQMY7W/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1483573775&sr=8-4&keywords=jed+sparks+blues

We all know these are interesting and relevant ideas, but like others have said, the writing style just not really good. I feel that the book doesn't really have much cohesiveness. These might as well be a series of posts on his blog.

Also, the margins are very wide, the font is huge, and the bright orange color is obnoxious. Pick something more understated.

I really loved Cal Newport's first book on study skills, so I was excited when I finally got my hands on this one. I studied languages at an Ivy-level school and studio ceramics at a respected arts university, and the craftsman ethic that Newport delivers here is a familiar one to me. I applied those ideas to a knack I had for editing and went into publishing when I left school. In publishing, success means getting paid a living wage.

In terms of my editing career, my life has followed some of the twists and turns Cal outlines for some of his successful examples: I turned down promotions and hiring offers in order to exert control over my work, and at the moment, I work a 30-hour week on my terms. I have the kind of job one does not typically find in publishing.

That said, there is a common thread in all these stories that Newport doesn't address very well. And I see it in my own life: Most of Newport's examples are either standouts in extraordinary fields or they got the Ivy-league education (or its equivalent) and used that to climb the ladder of success. When neither of those two things happen, Newport doesn't go into much detail, save that this person knows what it's like to be living down by the river in a van.

If you don't know, here is what an Ivy-league education does:

1) In certain industries, the degree makes it very difficult to get that first entry-level job. People think you're going to be too smart, you're going to get bored quickly, or you're going to just stick around for a few months before you go off to grad school. It wasn't until I started leaving my fancy undergrad degree off my resume completely that I started getting callbacks.

2) When you acquire a little career capital, people start seeing that degree as a reason to listen to you rather than a reason to skip over your resume. Ivy-league degree + demonstrable experience + a few industry awards = basically being able to call the shots on your career. In this first book, Newport really took a stance by saying, "try this." In this book, I see more "do this, not that," and it is going to fall flat if you're in a dead-end field or there is more at play than your skill.

In my experience, when you have that degree, and you've worked in a field for a solid decade, you can make demands that would get someone else fired. And I think Newport may have missed that memo.

I have had the pleasure of using my fancy degree to drag friends without degrees or with degrees from lesser-known schools into good work with me. These are friends who are also so good they should be difficult to ignore. Except they do get ignored, because they don't have that degree, because the industry we work in doesn't have a lot of potential ways to toot one's horn, and because the last time it had a bona fide boom was in the 1920s.

I was greatly looking forward to this book as I also am sceptical about the 'passion theory' of career development. It started off well of providing a critique to the passion theory. It also has some useful concepts about building career capital. From there it is downhill. Newport develops his theory on outliers. In his world you can only succeed if you are a dedicated aficionado willing to devote 10,000 hours to developing your craft, you are a genius scientist who is able to do a PhD in science at the same time as completing a medical degree or you a whizz kid tech prodigy who is able to develop software that can write its own dance music. If you are a garden variety professional who wants a satisfying career that is not in the stellar region, forget it. Ironically if you do happen to be one of these extraordinary specimens I doubt very much that you would need Newport telling you how to suck eggs.

What follows here is mostly a critical take on Cal Newport’s excellent book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Elsewhere I wrote about the strengths of the book, which can be summarised in the following conclusions.

• It is foolish to dash headlong into a new career without first establishing career capital (skills, knowledge and connections).
• Innate passions which can be transferred into paid work are rare and it is better to experiment with life to find work you can become passionate about.
• If you cannot see any pre-existing people being paid for your “passion”, don’t try to turn it into work.
• By developing rare and valuable skills, a person’s work will be in demand.
• It is necessary to use deliberate practice to develop such high-level skills in your area of work. This may not be fun at all, and mastery typically takes some 10 000 hours of practice.
• A person needs to develop a mission which helps them focus their work into a precise area, and to avoid scattering one’s energy.
• Patience is required. It takes time and a great deal of work to become great at something.
• Newport heavily criticises the popular self-help-book suggestion that the most important step in developing blissful work is having the courage to quit your job and begin your new, passionate career. This is foolish and likely to lead to failure and rejection if it is done before a person has established career capital in his new field.
These are all common sense, and very useful insights.

However, having mentioned such positives, let me now move onto several reservations I have about Newport’s approach to finding passionate, meaningful work. I believe that it is important to identify the problems with Newport's approach to career development. The book takes only one side of an argument and makes no attempt to mediate that with a more nuanced or balanced approach. I believe that there is a middle ground that can be taken.

So here are my main criticisms of Newport's argument.

SPINNING THE CHERRIES
Newport cherry picks his case studies. The fact that he does not offer a single exceptional case – one that contradicts his main thesis – suggests that his conclusions may be exaggerated. He also appears to “spin” these cases to ensure that they support his argument, highlighting those aspects which are affirmative, but explaining away those things which might potentially contravene his line of argumentation.

For example, he dismisses the case of Steve Jobs – whose Stanford graduation speech on following one’s passion has twenty million hits on YouTube – as evidence for the passion hypothesis. Newport points out that in his youth Jobs studied literature, physics and history at Reed College, a liberal Arts school, and not business or electronics. Jobs was also passionate about spirituality, consciousness expansion and Eastern mysticism. If he’d followed his own advice, writes Newport, Jobs would have become a zen teacher. Newport says that all the Jobs’ biography proves is that it’s good to be passionate about what you do.

But is this really a fair assessment of Jobs’ innate passions?

Newport appears to be playing a semantic game here. Can Newport’s term “electronics” really encapsulate the passion of Steve Jobs? And is not “business” what most self-starters do to turn anything into a successful career? Perhaps terms like “creative inspiration” or “design” are more appropriate descriptions for the innate passions of Steve Jobs. His work at Apple would then seem like an apt fit. And clearly Jobs felt he was living his passion. This is not something that can be so easily dismissed.

In my own life I have found that my passion centres around my work as a writer and explorer of consciousness and spirituality. I certainly didn’t know this when I was twenty. In fact, I never had any deep understanding of this domain till I was about twenty-six – I was actually a sceptic before that time. I studied English and History at University and loved sport as a kid. Thus it may appear to an outsider that my life affirms Newport’s thesis.

But the truth is that I was always deeply introspective. I just needed life experience to bring that out. So in a sense Newport is both right and wrong. It did require the travails of life for me to discover my calling. But I do not feel that this passion was created by my life experience: that passion was always extant. It was a mere potential.

Therefore I am not in full agreement with Newport that we may as well stick a list of ten appealing pastimes on a wall and throw a dart at them to choose which one to explore as a great career (as he states on a Youtube video). I believe that we must also develop an inner wisdom, and use that intuitive intelligence to help us develop our calling in cooperation with life.

Another problematic case study brought forward by Newport involves the story of Ryan and Sarah’s highly successful organic farm at Red Fire, Grandby. Ryan is a former banker who quit his job to set up the farm. According to Newport, Ryan stumbled into his new profession – he literally “grew into it.” However, this is not a logical assessment. From Newport’s description of Ryan, it appears the man always had an innate enthusiasm for working in nature. The fact that he followed a path consistent with his inner world is therefore indication enough that he had a passion for it.

Such problematic interpretations are one of the key limitations of Newport’s thesis, as he regularly twists passion-positive case studies to ensure that the passion hypothesis is nullified.

To be more specific, Newport dismisses the idea of “passion” in relation to Ryan’s work because there were a series of steps over many years as Ryan discovered his “calling.” Such passion only ever develops over time, insists the author. Yet my sense is that Newport is playing word games again when he implies that any unfolding process that is not instantaneous cannot be called “passionate” in the same way that an innate enthusiasm can be.

Obviously it is true that a person’s life process can help reveal his deep passions, as has been true in my own life. Yet it is not simply the case that such passions are conditioned by the life process, which is what Newport suggests. Newport’s thesis is thus sometimes too black and white, adopting an unnecessarily strict dichotomy between careers sustained by passion versus those developed via craftsmanship.

Nonetheless, Newport’s statement that an individual has to acquire significant skills and career capital to succeed in new career directions remains very valid – and Ryan did just this over many years.

OUT WITH INTROSPECTION
Another significant shortcoming of Newport’s book is that he appears to have little practical understanding of introspection or human intuition. He is a successful university professor, and so his education has clearly valorised “rational” and scientific ways of knowing. He tends to dismiss personal insight and human intuition, often with contempt or even ridicule.

A good example occurs very early in the book, when Newport begins with story of Thomas, a zen practitioner with a master’s degree in comparative religion.

In interview, Newport relates that Thomas, is reluctant to communicate the meaning of a specific zen koan. Newport gets around this by googling the koan. He then essentially treats it with contempt, failing to consider the possibility that the Zen masters might be correct in suggesting that some forms of insight cannot be reached through analysis or a mere factual approach (such as using the Internet).

It is here that Newport is at his weakest. Sometimes he mirrors the arrogance of modern scientific “skepticism”, apparently rejecting the possibility that human perception can be enhanced via contemplation or other ways of knowing. This attitude is epitomised when he announces that he has “debunked” the passion hypothesis. He contemptuously denounces the idea as an “occupational fairy tale.”

Newport appears to be on a kind of semi-religious quest to ensure that the passion hypothesis is killed off. Personally, I do not believe that things need to be taken that far.

Further, Newport does not entertain the possibility that science may be limited when it comes to understanding passion and innate human drive. A common criticism of modern brain science is that it is delimited. Empiricism and third-person approaches to dealing with human intention or consciousness cannot really get inside a person’s head. They can only map the correlates of consciousness. In short, science is incapable of truly understanding the spiritual dimensions of life.

To find the answers to the questions he asks, Newport consults academic journals and avoids introspective domains. Is it any surprise then that he completely dismisses and sometimes ridicules passion and introspection? Newport’s argument - and process - ultimately becomes circular. Introspection is not required, therefore the insights of introspection are rejected.

FINE DISTINCTIONS
Newport’s analysis does not distinguish between passion and intuitive intelligence – some might frame such intuition in impersonal language, some might call it "following your muse".

The Canadian college students who were surveyed about their “passions” (and found to have fairly superficial interests like ice hockey) were likely not introspective types in general, being mainstream-educated. That survey (and Newport) fails to discern the difference between the excitement of personal interests and the “excitement” which emerges from an inner sense of guidance or purpose. This is not a small error to make, for Newport is here conflating two very different things. The fact that Newport does not appear to understand this fundamental difference again suggests that he has not undergone any genuine form of introspective training himself.

There is no evidence in the book, nor in the public presentations that I have seen, that Newport has a well-developed understanding of human intuitive intelligence. Newport's worldview likely emerges from standard, mainstream neo-Darwinnian philosophy. This approach to knowledge valorises a delimited range of cognitive processes. Specifically, it is heavily biased towards mathematical, critical and linguistic ways of knowing (the so-called left-brain). Yet there are inner and mystical journeys where inner voice and subtle feelings are crucial. The failure to address such a distinction is a prime shortcoming of Newport’s book. He seems to deny all inner process, seemingly completely ignorant of its existence. Founding his work only on mainstream scientific studies and personal interviews, Newport's conclusions remain delimited by his worldview boundaries. Modern science has actively denied intuition and introspection for centuries, and Newport unquestioningly follows in its footsteps.

My sense is that both the strengths and limitations of Newport’s book stem from his being an academic. He does a wonderful job in drawing attention to the pitfalls of blindly following your bliss. But he is singularly incapable of comprehending the subtleties of the inner intelligence of the wisdom traditions. By limiting his approach to academic analysis of research papers and personal case studies, Newport effectively silences many of the wisest men and women of history. Thus So Good They Can’t Ignore You remains very good - but limited; just as Newtonian physics was a wonderful approximation of an observable universe, but woefully inadequate once finer cosmic truths had been gleaned.

EXCELLENT BUT FLAWED
So Good They Can’t Ignore You is a very worthwhile book to read. The book systematically addresses many of the common pitfalls that “life of passion” advocates experience (including my own). Given that these are very rarely addressed in self-help and new age philosophies, Newport’s book is an invaluable addition to those wishing to develop such a lifestyle. Many of its specific conclusions are strong, based as they are on science and relevant case studies. However, I would encourage readers to be mindful of Newport’s personal biases and limited understanding of introspection and human intuition.

Newport’s “complete rejection” of the passion hypothesis is understandable given his worldview, but nonetheless premature. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Marcus T Anthony, author of Discover Your Soul Template

Gee why didn't I think of that? Actually most of us have, but most of us didn't write a book that makes sense of it all. Sure I learned at a early age after college, that trying to be what my dad wanted me to be was a mistake. Although I enjoyed working with handicapped people, it didn't pay anything and I wanted to make more money and learn more about the world. I learned to SCUBA and thought about Marine Biology, but I wasn't ready to move to the coast at that time. Then I tried retail management for awhile and although it paid the bills, it wasn't my true calling either. I finally ended up working with computers and travelling around the world for the military. That was the most fun and rewarding. What I now know is never stop trying new things. At sixty-six I'm still not done. I plan to professionally pilot quad copters. I learned to fly planes long ago. This should be interesting. I highly recommend this book to give you some pointers for your journey.

We all know these are interesting and relevant ideas, but like others have said, the writing style just not really good. I feel that the book doesn't really have much cohesiveness. These might as well be a series of posts on his blog.

Also, the margins are very wide, the font is huge, and the bright orange color is obnoxious. Pick something more understated.

I really loved Cal Newport's first book on study skills, so I was excited when I finally got my hands on this one. I studied languages at an Ivy-level school and studio ceramics at a respected arts university, and the craftsman ethic that Newport delivers here is a familiar one to me. I applied those ideas to a knack I had for editing and went into publishing when I left school. In publishing, success means getting paid a living wage.

In terms of my editing career, my life has followed some of the twists and turns Cal outlines for some of his successful examples: I turned down promotions and hiring offers in order to exert control over my work, and at the moment, I work a 30-hour week on my terms. I have the kind of job one does not typically find in publishing.

That said, there is a common thread in all these stories that Newport doesn't address very well. And I see it in my own life: Most of Newport's examples are either standouts in extraordinary fields or they got the Ivy-league education (or its equivalent) and used that to climb the ladder of success. When neither of those two things happen, Newport doesn't go into much detail, save that this person knows what it's like to be living down by the river in a van.

If you don't know, here is what an Ivy-league education does:

1) In certain industries, the degree makes it very difficult to get that first entry-level job. People think you're going to be too smart, you're going to get bored quickly, or you're going to just stick around for a few months before you go off to grad school. It wasn't until I started leaving my fancy undergrad degree off my resume completely that I started getting callbacks.

2) When you acquire a little career capital, people start seeing that degree as a reason to listen to you rather than a reason to skip over your resume. Ivy-league degree + demonstrable experience + a few industry awards = basically being able to call the shots on your career. In this first book, Newport really took a stance by saying, "try this." In this book, I see more "do this, not that," and it is going to fall flat if you're in a dead-end field or there is more at play than your skill.

In my experience, when you have that degree, and you've worked in a field for a solid decade, you can make demands that would get someone else fired. And I think Newport may have missed that memo.

I have had the pleasure of using my fancy degree to drag friends without degrees or with degrees from lesser-known schools into good work with me. These are friends who are also so good they should be difficult to ignore. Except they do get ignored, because they don't have that degree, because the industry we work in doesn't have a lot of potential ways to toot one's horn, and because the last time it had a bona fide boom was in the 1920s.

I was greatly looking forward to this book as I also am sceptical about the 'passion theory' of career development. It started off well of providing a critique to the passion theory. It also has some useful concepts about building career capital. From there it is downhill. Newport develops his theory on outliers. In his world you can only succeed if you are a dedicated aficionado willing to devote 10,000 hours to developing your craft, you are a genius scientist who is able to do a PhD in science at the same time as completing a medical degree or you a whizz kid tech prodigy who is able to develop software that can write its own dance music. If you are a garden variety professional who wants a satisfying career that is not in the stellar region, forget it. Ironically if you do happen to be one of these extraordinary specimens I doubt very much that you would need Newport telling you how to suck eggs.

What follows here is mostly a critical take on Cal Newport’s excellent book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Elsewhere I wrote about the strengths of the book, which can be summarised in the following conclusions.

• It is foolish to dash headlong into a new career without first establishing career capital (skills, knowledge and connections).
• Innate passions which can be transferred into paid work are rare and it is better to experiment with life to find work you can become passionate about.
• If you cannot see any pre-existing people being paid for your “passion”, don’t try to turn it into work.
• By developing rare and valuable skills, a person’s work will be in demand.
• It is necessary to use deliberate practice to develop such high-level skills in your area of work. This may not be fun at all, and mastery typically takes some 10 000 hours of practice.
• A person needs to develop a mission which helps them focus their work into a precise area, and to avoid scattering one’s energy.
• Patience is required. It takes time and a great deal of work to become great at something.
• Newport heavily criticises the popular self-help-book suggestion that the most important step in developing blissful work is having the courage to quit your job and begin your new, passionate career. This is foolish and likely to lead to failure and rejection if it is done before a person has established career capital in his new field.
These are all common sense, and very useful insights.

However, having mentioned such positives, let me now move onto several reservations I have about Newport’s approach to finding passionate, meaningful work. I believe that it is important to identify the problems with Newport's approach to career development. The book takes only one side of an argument and makes no attempt to mediate that with a more nuanced or balanced approach. I believe that there is a middle ground that can be taken.

So here are my main criticisms of Newport's argument.

SPINNING THE CHERRIES
Newport cherry picks his case studies. The fact that he does not offer a single exceptional case – one that contradicts his main thesis – suggests that his conclusions may be exaggerated. He also appears to “spin” these cases to ensure that they support his argument, highlighting those aspects which are affirmative, but explaining away those things which might potentially contravene his line of argumentation.

For example, he dismisses the case of Steve Jobs – whose Stanford graduation speech on following one’s passion has twenty million hits on YouTube – as evidence for the passion hypothesis. Newport points out that in his youth Jobs studied literature, physics and history at Reed College, a liberal Arts school, and not business or electronics. Jobs was also passionate about spirituality, consciousness expansion and Eastern mysticism. If he’d followed his own advice, writes Newport, Jobs would have become a zen teacher. Newport says that all the Jobs’ biography proves is that it’s good to be passionate about what you do.

But is this really a fair assessment of Jobs’ innate passions?

Newport appears to be playing a semantic game here. Can Newport’s term “electronics” really encapsulate the passion of Steve Jobs? And is not “business” what most self-starters do to turn anything into a successful career? Perhaps terms like “creative inspiration” or “design” are more appropriate descriptions for the innate passions of Steve Jobs. His work at Apple would then seem like an apt fit. And clearly Jobs felt he was living his passion. This is not something that can be so easily dismissed.

In my own life I have found that my passion centres around my work as a writer and explorer of consciousness and spirituality. I certainly didn’t know this when I was twenty. In fact, I never had any deep understanding of this domain till I was about twenty-six – I was actually a sceptic before that time. I studied English and History at University and loved sport as a kid. Thus it may appear to an outsider that my life affirms Newport’s thesis.

But the truth is that I was always deeply introspective. I just needed life experience to bring that out. So in a sense Newport is both right and wrong. It did require the travails of life for me to discover my calling. But I do not feel that this passion was created by my life experience: that passion was always extant. It was a mere potential.

Therefore I am not in full agreement with Newport that we may as well stick a list of ten appealing pastimes on a wall and throw a dart at them to choose which one to explore as a great career (as he states on a Youtube video). I believe that we must also develop an inner wisdom, and use that intuitive intelligence to help us develop our calling in cooperation with life.

Another problematic case study brought forward by Newport involves the story of Ryan and Sarah’s highly successful organic farm at Red Fire, Grandby. Ryan is a former banker who quit his job to set up the farm. According to Newport, Ryan stumbled into his new profession – he literally “grew into it.” However, this is not a logical assessment. From Newport’s description of Ryan, it appears the man always had an innate enthusiasm for working in nature. The fact that he followed a path consistent with his inner world is therefore indication enough that he had a passion for it.

Such problematic interpretations are one of the key limitations of Newport’s thesis, as he regularly twists passion-positive case studies to ensure that the passion hypothesis is nullified.

To be more specific, Newport dismisses the idea of “passion” in relation to Ryan’s work because there were a series of steps over many years as Ryan discovered his “calling.” Such passion only ever develops over time, insists the author. Yet my sense is that Newport is playing word games again when he implies that any unfolding process that is not instantaneous cannot be called “passionate” in the same way that an innate enthusiasm can be.

Obviously it is true that a person’s life process can help reveal his deep passions, as has been true in my own life. Yet it is not simply the case that such passions are conditioned by the life process, which is what Newport suggests. Newport’s thesis is thus sometimes too black and white, adopting an unnecessarily strict dichotomy between careers sustained by passion versus those developed via craftsmanship.

Nonetheless, Newport’s statement that an individual has to acquire significant skills and career capital to succeed in new career directions remains very valid – and Ryan did just this over many years.

OUT WITH INTROSPECTION
Another significant shortcoming of Newport’s book is that he appears to have little practical understanding of introspection or human intuition. He is a successful university professor, and so his education has clearly valorised “rational” and scientific ways of knowing. He tends to dismiss personal insight and human intuition, often with contempt or even ridicule.

A good example occurs very early in the book, when Newport begins with story of Thomas, a zen practitioner with a master’s degree in comparative religion.

In interview, Newport relates that Thomas, is reluctant to communicate the meaning of a specific zen koan. Newport gets around this by googling the koan. He then essentially treats it with contempt, failing to consider the possibility that the Zen masters might be correct in suggesting that some forms of insight cannot be reached through analysis or a mere factual approach (such as using the Internet).

It is here that Newport is at his weakest. Sometimes he mirrors the arrogance of modern scientific “skepticism”, apparently rejecting the possibility that human perception can be enhanced via contemplation or other ways of knowing. This attitude is epitomised when he announces that he has “debunked” the passion hypothesis. He contemptuously denounces the idea as an “occupational fairy tale.”

Newport appears to be on a kind of semi-religious quest to ensure that the passion hypothesis is killed off. Personally, I do not believe that things need to be taken that far.

Further, Newport does not entertain the possibility that science may be limited when it comes to understanding passion and innate human drive. A common criticism of modern brain science is that it is delimited. Empiricism and third-person approaches to dealing with human intention or consciousness cannot really get inside a person’s head. They can only map the correlates of consciousness. In short, science is incapable of truly understanding the spiritual dimensions of life.

To find the answers to the questions he asks, Newport consults academic journals and avoids introspective domains. Is it any surprise then that he completely dismisses and sometimes ridicules passion and introspection? Newport’s argument - and process - ultimately becomes circular. Introspection is not required, therefore the insights of introspection are rejected.

FINE DISTINCTIONS
Newport’s analysis does not distinguish between passion and intuitive intelligence – some might frame such intuition in impersonal language, some might call it "following your muse".

The Canadian college students who were surveyed about their “passions” (and found to have fairly superficial interests like ice hockey) were likely not introspective types in general, being mainstream-educated. That survey (and Newport) fails to discern the difference between the excitement of personal interests and the “excitement” which emerges from an inner sense of guidance or purpose. This is not a small error to make, for Newport is here conflating two very different things. The fact that Newport does not appear to understand this fundamental difference again suggests that he has not undergone any genuine form of introspective training himself.

There is no evidence in the book, nor in the public presentations that I have seen, that Newport has a well-developed understanding of human intuitive intelligence. Newport's worldview likely emerges from standard, mainstream neo-Darwinnian philosophy. This approach to knowledge valorises a delimited range of cognitive processes. Specifically, it is heavily biased towards mathematical, critical and linguistic ways of knowing (the so-called left-brain). Yet there are inner and mystical journeys where inner voice and subtle feelings are crucial. The failure to address such a distinction is a prime shortcoming of Newport’s book. He seems to deny all inner process, seemingly completely ignorant of its existence. Founding his work only on mainstream scientific studies and personal interviews, Newport's conclusions remain delimited by his worldview boundaries. Modern science has actively denied intuition and introspection for centuries, and Newport unquestioningly follows in its footsteps.

My sense is that both the strengths and limitations of Newport’s book stem from his being an academic. He does a wonderful job in drawing attention to the pitfalls of blindly following your bliss. But he is singularly incapable of comprehending the subtleties of the inner intelligence of the wisdom traditions. By limiting his approach to academic analysis of research papers and personal case studies, Newport effectively silences many of the wisest men and women of history. Thus So Good They Can’t Ignore You remains very good - but limited; just as Newtonian physics was a wonderful approximation of an observable universe, but woefully inadequate once finer cosmic truths had been gleaned.

EXCELLENT BUT FLAWED
So Good They Can’t Ignore You is a very worthwhile book to read. The book systematically addresses many of the common pitfalls that “life of passion” advocates experience (including my own). Given that these are very rarely addressed in self-help and new age philosophies, Newport’s book is an invaluable addition to those wishing to develop such a lifestyle. Many of its specific conclusions are strong, based as they are on science and relevant case studies. However, I would encourage readers to be mindful of Newport’s personal biases and limited understanding of introspection and human intuition.

Newport’s “complete rejection” of the passion hypothesis is understandable given his worldview, but nonetheless premature. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Marcus T Anthony, author of Discover Your Soul Template

Gee why didn't I think of that? Actually most of us have, but most of us didn't write a book that makes sense of it all. Sure I learned at a early age after college, that trying to be what my dad wanted me to be was a mistake. Although I enjoyed working with handicapped people, it didn't pay anything and I wanted to make more money and learn more about the world. I learned to SCUBA and thought about Marine Biology, but I wasn't ready to move to the coast at that time. Then I tried retail management for awhile and although it paid the bills, it wasn't my true calling either. I finally ended up working with computers and travelling around the world for the military. That was the most fun and rewarding. What I now know is never stop trying new things. At sixty-six I'm still not done. I plan to professionally pilot quad copters. I learned to fly planes long ago. This should be interesting. I highly recommend this book to give you some pointers for your journey.

Newport’s goal is to give the reader a tried and true method for building a life of great work. He begins by stating that you have to accumulate career capital by committing to master a narrow range of topics through serious study and deliberate practice—a task that may take years.
Next, you invest this capital in traits that make great work great. Such as mission, control, and self-respect. Throughout the journey, you develop the habits of a craftswoman: in short, don’t play, PRACTICE; and be patient. You also avoid the two control traps: you have to become really good first, and your employer will try to hold you back which is expected. This is when you turn your attention to seeking a mission.
You have to go on the quest for your mission, which means you become comfortable with hard because only a few of us are willing to take the time to carefully work out the best path forward and then confidently take action. Your mission must fulfill the Law of Financial Viability, and it must also fulfill the Law of Remarkability.
In order to fulfill the Law of Financial Viability, you have to first master a promising niche and then advance to the cutting edge of your field. You grind away at the cutting edge of your field until you enter the adjacent possible, where you join an elite circle of anybody surveying the space about to make an important discovery. This is how the cutting edge gets expanded.
Then you deploy small, concrete experiments that return concrete feedback. These bets allow you to explore the specific areas surrounding your general mission, and look for those with the highest likelihood of leading to outstanding results. Finally, you fulfill the Law of Remarkability. Without chatter, good projects may never be seen.
You have to seek opportunities to master rare skills that would yield big results, Newport concludes. Most importantly, you have to become good at something rare and valuable. You have to organize your work around a catchy mission, and make deliberate practice a regular companion in your daily routine. If you’re not putting in the effort to become “so good they can’t ignore you” (Steve Martin), you’re not likely to end up loving your work.

If you are interested in this book, go borrow it from your local library first. I was so excited when I first read the positive reviews and was going to buy it, but I'm glad I did not. The author has a perspective that is interesting but deeply flawed. He promotes a craftsman mindset which he got inspired on from a musician. But then he went on to say how the musician had this mindset was irrelevant, i.e., the musician's passion for music was irrelevant, because musicians were idiosyncratic and different from the majority of common people. His flaw is assuming people are like computers and can switch their mindsets like switching motherboards. People are more complicated than that.

"Working right trumps finding the right work""

That phrase defines the book. Basically, what the author states here is some sort of guide to find a achieve career success.

I found the guide to be interesting but flawed. Flawed because it skips the most difficult part. The premisse here is that you have to build "career capital" first, and then star chasing things you actually care for, like a mission or more autonomy at work. The "career capital"is your differential, your unique value that is going to help you get there.

What Newport fails to tackle is...how are you going to find the motivation to build career capital in the first place? And if you do, how can you be effective in your learning? He does talk about deliberate practice, about stretching yourself and about the importance of feedback (there is a very interesting book about that called peak experiences and another one called mastery).

However what I would like to see would be something specifically applied to his model. Something not about learning itself, but about career trajectory, after all this is a book about career trajectory.

I like Cal's point that you'll get more satisfaction in your work by adopting a craftsman mindset than trying to find your paasion. This strikes me as good advice because there will be lots of times in your working life when it's a bit boring but you need to keep applying yourself because that's how you earn your money.

Unfortunately I thought the rest of the book was a let-down that relied far too much on hindsight and generality and left far too many unanswered questions.

How to tell which skills will be rare and which rare skills will be valuable, especially if you're just starting to develop these skills?

Given that there aren't enough hours in the day to practice everything I can possibly do, how do I know which skills I should devote myself to practicing?

What are the people who aren't at the cutting edge supposed to do? Cal's advice seems to be 'keep plugging away and looking for opportunities'. What if those opportunities never come? At what point do you call it quits and start to practice other skills in order to move on?

Some successful people can spot unexploited niches in their chosen field and that's why they're successful. Is this a skill that can be learned or not? If not then the implication is that unless you possess this quality already you'll only get so far at what you do and never be massively successful. If it is a skill then why not teach us about that?

It's all a bit vague.

In the end I came away thinking that all you ever actually need to do in order to live is be So Good You Get Paid To Do It. If you want to be successful, well it's like catching a tiger by the tail: If you catch one then make sure you hang on, but be careful when you're hunting them because they've been known to eat people.

As excited as I was to read the words "Don't Follow Your Passion," the novelty quickly wore off when I realized that he had equated having a fulfilling career with having a fulfilling and happy life. I would have been overjoyed to hear about plumbers, electricians, other humble craftsmen who had honed their trade and happily found their place in life. Instead, I found the same self-help/motivational crap that you can find in every other business book on the planet, emphasizing rock stars and exceptions that undermined the book's own messages.

It was good to see "Don't Follow Your Passion" written out and defended, but everything after that was banal and rehashed. This book would have been much more interesting if it had taken a critical look at happiness instead of hounding people to build "career capital" and literally putting making meaning last.

Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You was a wake-up call for me. The advice was acutely relevant to my situation at the time that I remember being depressed for a few days. It's sobering to be reminded that if you want to be good at something, let's say good enough to warrant a nice salary increase, there's no way around the hard work that's required to get there.

Cal's Rule #1 I've heard before but not nearly enough given how important it is: Don't Follow Your Passion. It's not saying don't be passionate. Just don't lead with passion. It's an inefficient step at best; catastrophic at worst. Instead of passion, lead with Rule #2: Be So Good They Can't Ignore You. Or, stated differently, work hard to acquire rare and valuable skills. This advice sounds blisteringly obvious, but in a way it's like dieting and exercise—it's hard, often boring and terribly un-sexy, and therefore we naturally avoid it.

Rules #1 and #2 are the crux of the whole book. Rule's #3 and #4, dealing with the importance of control and the importance of mission, are worth checking out, but they only build on the first two. All in all, So Good They Can't Ignore You doesn't waste your time. Cal gets his point across and then wraps it up. Similarly, the book is organized well enough that it's easy to jump around if needed. I especially recommend the audiobook.

This is a helpful little book that I recommend particularly to young people who are concerned about determining their career path and life plans. Newport is convincing when he tells us educators, college counselors and parents to STOP telling students to "follow their passion." The vast majority of young people (and adults) do not have one, which produces tremendous anxiety and causes them to think they must have one or something is terribly wrong. Beyond that, however, he shows us that job satisfaction (the elusive "passion") most often proceeds from developing expertise in a given field over time.

He thoroughly debunks the idea that "you have to first figure out your true calling and then find a job to match." Instead "the traits that define great work [such as creativity, impact, control, and mission] are rare and valuable, and if you want these in your working life, you must first build up rare and valuable skills in return;" this is career capital. Gaining control over what you do requires enough career capital to back it up, but once you have sufficient career capital, others will try to prevent you from exercising that control. The key to control is ensuring that what you do is something people are willing to pay you for.

He tells us where the best ideas for missions are found, but it again requires developing expertise. To make the mission successful and move forward, launch small projects that generate concrete and immediate feedback ("little bets") and do something compelling enough that people remark on it. Finally, "it must be launched in a venue conducive to such remarking."

Newport is a computer scientist, not a social scientist or therapist, and this is not an academic treatise on the subject. It is largely based on observation, personal experience, and anecdotes, but that needn't dissuade a prospective reader. His points are well-considered and logical. As a college counselor, I intend to use this with my students to guide them toward their future plans. Skills matter. In the words of Steve Martin when asked how to get an agent or write a script, "Be so good they can't ignore you." Amen.

I simply cannot stop reading this book..I've actually stopped mid way in reading to write this review...and I don't often do reviews!
This book has turned me upside down in a good way! I've spent soooooo many years trying to figure out what's my passion, what am I good at...that I became stuck! But, now I've got it....there's no magic....there just put your head down and work...simarliar to how's there no magic pill to loosing weight...there is no magic pill for success and passion! When I think about all the persons out there who are enjoying success and living a grand lifestyle and doing what they love...they worked and stayed consistent and dedicated to what was in front of them!
This has truly inspired me to get out of stuckness of what to do, what's my passion and back into the framework that brought me to where I am ....just buckle down and get to it!

This book is extremely flawed but has a couple gems. The best advice is focus on getting extremely good at your job and people will want to hire you. This should be obvious but too many people focus on what a job offers them rather than what they bring to the table. However all of his studies and logic to provide proof of his central theorem that the longer you work on a job the more you love it are plagued by the prosecutor's fallacy. He shows countless examples of people who love their jobs and have done them for many years and concludes that working in anybjob for long time makes you love it. However could it mean if you stick with a job your whole life maybe you found your passion? Could it be so.ething else? Yes to both.

I think I am a little puzzled. Perhaps it is an American Movement or a self help movement that pre-dates any interest I have in the field, but the follow your passion attitude, as I have encountered it, is about being true to yourself, not making a killing and becoming a superstar in your field. I was intrigued by the actual title, but the underlying premise of 'not following your passion if you want a passionate life', truly is so flawed and I cannot imagine the purpose of the writer in doggedly maintaining it.

I know many people, primarily of a certain age as most my own age are still learning, who are very skilled at what they do, most I think are happy enough, but some did have a passion that was not pursued. One friends father is a brilliant golfer, he's the most miserable sod I have ever known, and that's even though his entire life is geared around spending as much time on his beloved hobby as possible. Is it possible he is just a miserable git? Entirely, but perhaps it's because he never got to know how good he might have been, that he had to spend his time playing barely competent amateurs and watching others, including his brother, live his dreams.

Not everyone will have an obvious passion, not everyone will recognise a clear career path for doing what they love, but most of us will surely agree that ignoring a passion out of practicality is a sure way to be left with a lot of regrets at the end? My sister and I are opposites some might say in this area. I discovered my passion around the time I was being potty trained. My sister on the other hand is a classic extrovert whose interests were whatever everyone else was doing. Everything she ever did was about being 'in' and often her path was blocked by those who felt she didn't have the necessary abilities. As such I would say proving herself became an early passion. I imagine many raised in true poverty are similarly passionate about never being poor again. Her doctorate and many degrees in a very unique specialty, which does, as Cal advises, make her too good to ignore, all arise out of that passion and another - people. What truly sets her apart from all the academics who normally people her field is her genuinely caring bedside manner and ability to relate on an average, human level.

As I said its not always obvious and I guess I thought that's what this book was going to be about, but rather than admitting the premise is a bit clickbait-y and developing the many ways to find your way into a fulfilling career, and how to create success out of it, he seems determined to prove his initial hypothesis even at the expense of logic.

HIs example of Steve jobs is so painfully specific that it defies sense - he did not apparently as a teenager have a passion for building a multinational company with cutting edge technology, or some wording even more precise. Seriously? No one starts out with their career map perfectly laid out or imagines past the age of about ten that there won't be unexpected bumps or tangents in every area of life. Jobs had an affinity for computers combined with other personality traits it led to immense success and perhaps that 'success was more important than the tech, as with my sister there is usually more to success than simple passion for the field itself. The most successful are not necessarily those with the most talent, but the happiest may be those with the willingness to pursue passion rather than the outward trappings of success.

The first segments of the book involve a lot of repetition, as Newport laws out his theories and lemmas about why passion doesn't lead to a successful career, but instead by building up valuable skills you can start taking control of your career, and from there developing you own personal mission that people see as passion. These segments run a little long, but if you listen with the audiobook on 1.5x speed they shouldn't be too boring.

Throughout the book, he introduces you to a delightful cast of successful people, across a broad spectrum of industries and careers. What ultimately bumped up my review by a star was the conclusion, where Newport not only summarizes all the stories he told and how they relate to his rules, but also shares how own productivity techniques. He sets up habits and rules for himself that let him effectively spend time developing his career, and how that allows him to have the time to experiment with "hobby" projects that allow him to develop new interests and enrich his career.,

Working in Switzerlamd where unemployment is very low and finding a job is much easier than in many countries I have seen many young people flitting between jobs & taking sabbaticals etc - looking for the meaning of life within the ever elusive perfect job that must be out there somewhere. Disillusioned with each one which always leaves a little something missing. Grow Up is my usual advice & if you want some freedom make sure you are always adding value and always learning - it takes Cal Newport far too long to essentially say the same thing. If you are searching for Utopia in this book there is no silver bullet - be prepared to work hard & learn to love what you do.

I found this book quite helpful and motivating. Basically if you want your career to become something more fulfilling or and you have an interest in improvement, you should read this book. Or if you have not chosen a field of focus for your work, you should read this book. Or if you are going through college or are about to go through college, you should read this book. This is a very important book, that is to say the main point it is making is important to understand and accept. The main sub-points are also very insightful and are not things you would typically figure out just by thinking about them. That is not how this author figured them out, he did so by talking to people with satisfying careers, doing research, and yes also by thinking about stuff.

If you read this book, you should also read his book, "Deep Work". That will expound upon and drive home the point he talked about in this book about deliberate practice in a really impactful way. Recently, I found myself becoming much more skilled at my job and this was making it harder for me to respectfully communicate with my managers when they were pushing a worse way of working on me. So now I'm reading the book "EGO IS THE ENEMY".

I gave this book 4 stars because of how helpful and important it is, but it could have been better. It was very repetitive. He keeps deliberately reviewing the points already discussed in the book. I understand the value of doing that, why he wanted to do it, and I'm not against a book or this book doing that. But he did it too often, and it was annoying, especially since the concepts are not that complicated at all.

There is one more thing I dislike about this book, and it has to do with the main point. Even though it is technically correct that the "passion theory" (explained in the book) is wrong, and it is more important to find a field that allows you to improve rare and valuable skills and then use that as the first step in making a fulfilling career, this misses an important point. There are people out there that have specific jobs that match up with their personality and skills, and simply finding an entry level job in that field can immediately give them a big fulfillment boost and be way less frustrating than doing a different type of work. I agree that in its' purest form, the passion theory is ridiculous, but why only analyze it in its' purest form? Isn't there a middle ground? I know from experience it is important to try out many different things before deciding what to do. If you are in high school try out as many different types of electives as possible. If you are going to college, try out some job / skill focused classes for different things. You might be surprised at how different a job or activity is to actually do and learn compared to how you imagined it would be.

After reading a few books over the past year about how to find your true passion and dream job, this book gave me very helpful information from the opposite perspective. The examples of successful people he interviews make his message very clear and memorable. The author discovered that most of the successful people in the world who enjoy their work did not originally set out to do what they ended up doing...so why should we keep following the advice of "find your true calling and go get your dream job." I recommend this book to anyone out of college who has been bouncing around between jobs waiting for the moment of realizing "this is exactly what I should be doing," which will never come. This book will do wonders for your productivity and attitude towards your work.

Good book for several reasons.

1) It’s readable. In other words, you’re not going to have to deal with the usual “academic – I’m writing for my peers” language.
2) If you’ve ever been frustrated in “finding your passion” or think there’s something wrong with you because you could never figure it out, then shout Hallelujah! He explains how we've all been bamboozled.
3) Cal tells you straight-out what you have to do to get to a position of being able to have more autonomy and control over your work. The title says it all.

This is not pie-in-the-sky stuff, and yes, a lot of the examples are academically oriented. With that said, the basic principles are sound and can be applied to any number of jobs.

And, lest you think he’s telling you that any work can become work you love, he’s not saying that at all. In fact, he lists 3 reasons why you wouldn’t want to stay at a job – or take one in the first place!

If you’re looking for detailed “how to” stuff, then this will be a disappointing read.

However, if you’re looking for guiding principles that you can put to use in your life, and like them mixed in with some inspirational stories, then you’ll both enjoy and profit from this book.

Do you constantly wonder if you're in the right job? if there is a better career path out there? or if this is what you're meant to be doing?

If so, read this book. You will be comforted just knowing that it's okay if you don't have your "dream job". In fact, it's even okay if you don't know what your dream job looks like. You're not alone. Cal Newport provides plenty of relatable examples of happy and successful people who end up loving their careers, not because they knew exactly what they were passionate about from the start, but because they attained valuable skills that ultimately gave them the autonomy to "love what they do". His advice is simple, practical, and actionable:

- Develop a valuable and unique set of skills that people are willing to pay for.
This is hard, time-consuming, and not optimized for short-term productivity.
- Identify a worthy and remarkable mission to provide meaning and focus.
This can only happen after you mastered the skills. Use this as a "true north", and take little bets to turn the mission from idea to reality.
- Leverage your career capital to gain more autonomy.
To me, autonomy (along with financial independence) is the true measure of success.

There is no magic pill or quick solution to find "work you love", but I agree that being "so good they can't ignore you" is one way of achieving satisfaction and happiness. The author skillfully recounts numerous interesting stories based on his own experiences and interviews, but the statistical evidence for his methods and claims are lacking. I appreciate how Cal Newport explains how he applied these rules to his own life and hope to try out his techniques of deliberate practice to continue building up my career capital.

Curious, I checked on the etymology of the word "career" and learned this: Origin in 1530s, "a running, course" (especially of the sun, etc., across the sky), from M.Fr. carriere "road, racecourse." Only centuries later (early 1800s), through the evolution of usage, did the word's meaning emerge as the "course of a working life." I mention all this because one of Cal Newport's primary objectives is to help his reader select the most appropriate career course and remain on it while achieving near-, mid-, and long-term goals; then, if and whenever necessary, adjust the course, pace, and focus to accommodate unforeseen changes. Viewed as a journey, Newport also calls it a "career mission" that serves as "an organizing principle to your working life. It's what leads people to become famous for what they do and ushers in remarkable opportunities that come along with such fame."

Years ago during a commencement address at Stanford, Teresa Amabile urged the new graduates to do what they love and love what they do. I think that is excellent advice. I also agree with Newport that it is also very important to develop capabilities, skills that will "trump passion in the quest for work you love." That is why Newport focuses on what he calls "the craftsman mindset," one that focuses on what you can offer to the world. Unlike "the passion mindset" that focuses on what the world can offer you, the craftsman mindset "asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is `just right,' and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it -- and the process won't be easy."

Here are a few of the dozens of passages that caught my eye:

o Rule #1: "Don't Follow Your Passion" (Pages 3-26)
o The Science of Passion: Three Conclusions (14-19)
o Craftsman Mindset vs. Passion Mindset (49-55)
o Rule #2: "Be So Good They Can't Ignore You" (29-101)
[Note: Newport explains that this comment was made by Steve Martin during an appearance on "The Charlie Rose Show."]
o "The Career Capital Theory of Great Work" (42-57)
o Rule #3: "Turn Down a Promotion/or Control" (105-143)
o "Control Traps" (115-131)
o "The Law of Financial Liability" (137-141)
o Rule #4: "Think Small, Act Big/The Importance of Mission" (147-197)

Newport devotes the final chapter to a brief but revealing discussion of his own "quest" to (a) answer the question, "How do people end up loving what they do?" and (b) obtain a faculty appointment at a university. He explains how he achieved both objectives. Near the end of the book, he observes, "Once you build up the career capital that these skills generate [and others value highly], 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. This philosophy is less sexy than the fantasy of dropping everything to go live among the monks in the mountains, but it's also a philosophy that has been shown time and again to actually work."

No brief commentary such as mine can possibly do full justice to the scope and depth of the information, insights, and counsel that Cal Newport provides. However, I hope that those who read this review will have at least a sense of what his purposes are and how well he serves them. Presumably he agrees with me that it would be a fool's errand to attempt to act upon, immediately, all of his suggestions. Read strategically, highlight whichever passages are most important, formulate a "game plan," and then proceed with both determination and patience during your own journey of self-discovery. Bon voyage!

Most books like this you are happy if you come away with just one good idea - from this one I gained several. I thought his discussion of career capital was very good - as was his advice on the "follow you passion" mantra that has been taught in schools for the past decades (thus producing singer-songwriters, actors, general studies majors, etc. with large debt). His final summary on his personal work habits I am considering adopting.

I never considered the idea that a passion centered life would be the main cause of my widespread failure. After reading this book I have begun to apply a craftsman mindset to the work I do and I can say that just within the last month I have already seen improvements in not only my attitude , but the attitudes of my managers and those around me that view my work. I have suddenly become the go to person without even trying. I won’t say it’s not hard work, but it definitely has given me a sense of bliss that constantly searching for something I’m passionate about has never been able to do.
Read the book, you won’t regret it.

So Good They Can't Ignore You is written like an academic essay for people with short attention spans and bad recall. I found the constant recaps every eight pages or so to be incredibly annoying. So negative 10 points for writing style.

However, as someone who has chafed against the "Follow your passion" advice for the past 8 years (because it failed me, and it failed everyone I know, and it's vague and meaningless), I agreed with the basic concepts of this book. I don't think it's ground-breaking or eye-opening at all: this is stuff I learned in middle school and high school, through extracurricular activities and peer leadership positions. I bet you did, too, and if you read this you'll go "Well, yeah, of COURSE."

Here's the entire book, sans examples and recaps:
Get really good at something through mindful, dedicated practice (seeking and integrating critique/feedback, and pushing the boundaries of your comfort and capabilities).
Then you'll be skilled enough to attract career options, autonomy, and control and THAT will make you love what you do.
Be careful you don't try to leverage your skill set for a better position, before your skill set has the value to do this (you'll know it has value when other people start pursuing you for your skill set).
You'll figure out your mission in life only by pursuing the cutting edge of your career, in incremental steps. If this pursuit gets other people to notice you, then it's a success.

Of course, there are some holes here (like, what's cutting edge for someone not in a science? and How do you pick which skill set you dedicate yourself to, especially when so many jobs are becoming obsolete- just guess which has market viability? )
But for someone who has been disillusioned with the concept that loving something will make you good at it, a desirable hire, or make it enjoyable for you, this book is just common sense.

I can't say I recommend it for anyone UNLESS you're frustrated by your s***ty job *and* don't know what you want to do with your career. It will make you realize that you just need to knuckle down and not expect career happiness yet. It's a great antithesis to What Color is Your Parachute, and reading those back to back gives interesting perspective.

Newport wants to know how people find work they love. The author is a scientist, and his book is presented as a quasi-logical argument.

Rule 1: Most people do not have a burning passion, therefore "follow your passion" is bad advice.

Rule 2: The alternative is to focus on what you can give.....instead of what you can get. To develop a skill that is "rare and valuable." This rare and valuable skill will give you "career capital" in the job market. Hard work and "deliberate practice" are the ways to develop this rare and valuable skill.

Rule 3: Use this career capital ("do what people are willing to pay for")to gain control in your work environment, to do the kind of work you want under circumstances you enjoy.

Rule 4: Use your career capital, to transform your work into a personally meaningful "mission."

If you follow these four rules, you will wind up with work that you love.

The flaw in Newport's quasi-logical argument is its failure to show how people settle on that one "rare and valuable skill." He gives many examples throughout the book of people who have found work they love, and in most cases it seems they either just bumbled into their chosen field or else.....and here's the rub.....they followed their passion.

Pardis Sabeti, to take one example, is a geneticist cited by Newport who uses her extremely rare and valuable skill at computer-driven research to identify evolutionary mutations, mutations which, once identified, can inhibit the spread of deadly diseases in Africa. True, Sabeti didn't start out with a full-blown vision of this amazing career. But she got there like any great achiever, by following one passion that led into another. (Dostoievski, I would suggest, didn't start out to create The Brothers Karamazov, but he did follow his passion to write fiction - step by step - until he reached his highest achievement.)

Perhaps this is just caviling. Because, whatever it's flaws, Newport's work is honest and challenging.....and thought-provoking. For those who are searching for their life's work, it will unquestionably expand the range of their search, especially for those stymied by a lack of a singular passion. "If you don't have a singular passion," Newport is saying, "then do what you can; do what works; do whatever's there, do what interests you.....and if you do it really really really well, it may well grow into something you love."

That's not bad advice.

How do you build a remarkable life and career? How do your find your calling, or passion? This book is a must read for anyone interested in these questions.

To start, as the author argues, starting with "passion", is rarely the right answer: (1) few of us actually know what that means, (2) finding a passion, or an area where you can make a significant contribution requires work - lots of it. Before you can arrive at the destination, you have to acquire the necessarily skills (deliberate practice, and the "10K hour" rule). Once you have the skills, and you understand the area, the "adjacent possible" allows you to survey the field and push the boundaries. Finally, once you are "so good, they can't ignore you", you have the ability to define your own path: resources are given to you, you have career capital you can deploy to optimize for your own goals.

This book puts together all of the distinct ideas of deliberate practice, 10k rule, small bets, adjacent possible, and a few others, into one cohesive and well laid out plan for how to build your career. A must read.

Cal Newport has some valuable ideas here. Where he falls down is trying to turn it into a theory of everything. His theory fails to adequately address when people follow his ideas and start to really get good at something, but still burn out on it and decide it's just not for them. (His story of Thomas at the Zen Monastery is a great example.) Sure, you can argue that they didn't find it "meaningful" enough, but given that two different people can find different levels of meaning from the same activity, how is that not another word for passion?

He also needs to work on his presentation. Clearly he understands the point that repetition is important in driving home your message. But somewhere around the fortieth or fiftieth he repeated the phrase "Following your passion is a bad idea", it simply started to annoy me, and made it very difficult to follow the rest of his narrative.

If he would back off from the hyperbole, and shorten this by about a third, I'd be much more enthusiastic.

Really good book. I wasn't crazy about the title.

I received this book last fall from the publisher and 1)put off by the title and 2) losing it in our basement remodel delayed my review. My loss. I really like this book. I like the notion of dissuading people from "doing work you love and the money will follow" mantras.

The book covers four rules:

1. Don't follow your passion
2. Be so good they can't ignore you (importance of skill)
3. Turn down a promotion (importance of control)
4. Think small, act big (importance of mission)

Good research, great stories, and ideas to roll around in mind like a lifesaver in your mouth. And just as much as I love the book, the glossary, career profile summaries, and the notes -the AWESOME notes - complete with URLs make it a four star read.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher. I was not paid for this review. This is a terrific book and highly recommend it.

The author leads with a personal story about his pursuit for a professorship at MIT. He laments his nervous, arduous, passion-fueled quest to join the academia, and then abruptly dives into a relentless assault on the "passion hypothesis". From this point forward, the book reads like it was written by someone who was told by his mother as a young child that he could not have a puppy - and now, as an adult, he's committed to convincing everyone around him that dogs are awful.

The author relentlessly and incessantly discredits the so-called "passion hypothesis". So much so, in fact, that he only succeeds in convincing us that perhaps we should look beyond passion when attempting to choose a career - and noting more.

I would like to add my 2 cents to the discussion about Mr. Newport's book and his advice.

Cal swears against To-Do Lists, and says that everything needs an exact schedule. I quite frankly couldn't disagree more with this assessment. If you work hard each day (on important tasks, not fluff emails/meetings), you will find that you'll complete much or all of your To-Do List for that given day. I make a Daily To-Do List the night before each day, and check each objective off as I go along. I do not set exact hours for each task--I simply do the best that I can. At the end of the day--it's how hard you work (eg effort, # hours, etc) that make you successful at your job or craft in life--Not whether you schedule things into exact blocks.

In regards to weekly planning--if there are objectives I need to be aware of in advance of 24 hours--I plan it out accordingly--but again, I do not use a strict hourly format or schedule to complete each objective--I simply have a To-Do List for objectives I'd like to complete on each day of the week. If I do not complete an objective on the day I plan to, I will try to complete it the next day.

I've been using To-Do Lists for many years--and they've worked out great for me--both for my career and for my personal life. So, although I agree with Mr. Newport on some of his advice (don't focus on shallow/fluff work, do very few things but be awesome at them, and have a weekly plan), I definitely do not agree with his advice in regards to To-Do Lists.

Cal NEWPORT's views on how to find satisfaction in our work go against some of the mainstream ideas explained in the most popular self-help literature. If someone is deeply indoctrinated in the supremacy of the 'follow your passion' approach to life this books can be quite shocking. I like the pragmatic and well-reason arguments in the book and I believe they are adequately supported by real-life examples. Must-read for everyone who wants to hear an alternative opinion about the most important work related topics within the realm of personal development. I also appreciated the short summary and glossary at the end of the book, they certainly improve the reading experience.

We've been swarmed with career advice that reiterates familiar ideas: follow your passion, run your own business, etc. Instead of leaning toward conventional culture though, Cal takes a broader approach to encapsulate the guys who love their work and see exactly why they do so. He doesn't assume that everybody wants to quit their day job -- and he doesn't assume everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. People who love what they do can be found in all respective fields, he argues, and not just the highly sought after ones (athlete, artist, actor). Whatever you do, if you're ready to do great work, here's your Bible.

If you've read Cal's other books or even checked out his blog, this book might actually surprise you. It's the punchy, simple manifesto style that really has a different flavor to it, and unlike his other books, this one isn't filled to brim with mini-hacks. Instead, what it offers are core ideas that might potentially govern the way you view work for the rest of your life. Some of the stuff here isn't the easiest to do (Deliberate practice), but that's what separates the day-dreamers from the go-getters. The ideas are concrete, yet surprisingly, you'll find that they're missing from the workplace entirely.

Since the inception of the 'follow your passion' motif, job satisfaction has gone down the drain. This book is the fix.

Cal talks about the "adjacent possible" and I felt this book was a good example of that for me because I was just about to write something similar. It seems this is possible because Cal and I both have similar reading habits and a desire to find out how to do what we love. This book builds on principals from Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Derek Sivers, and Reid Hoffman. I will admit that I was a believer in the "passion mindset" and although I thought I was a hard worker, I tended to avoid the mental strain Cal talks about that's so important to deliberate practice in building career capital. This book really does a good job of turning that on it's head while giving you solid, practical advice about how to get the things you want in a job: control/autonomy. The bad news is that it takes a long time, will hurt, and requires a lot of work. But at least now we know.

I only made it halfway through this book before giving up. Also, I listened to the audiobook version.

There are some solid ideas regarding career capital and and also the craftsman approach. I also like the Steve Martin quote (and title of this book) because it is great advice. However, the books does a very poor job of making the argument. A lot of the points are discussed at such length, and in the same way, that they are boring. There are also a lot of logical flaws.

The book would have been better if it just delivered the advice about career capital and becoming "so good they can't ignore you" and dropped the argument against following your passion. It isn't a zero sum game. I agree that a lot more people need to learn to work harder and stop waiting for the world to give them the job they think they deserve.

Others have talked about the good points, so let me explain what issues I see with this book. The idea of not waiting for your passion to be found, but rather having a down-to-earth view to make your current profession work out for yourself is very interesting. However, there are some points in this book that are not so well elaborated and I'm not sure they correspond to the real world most of us face out there.

First, the argument that one should keep moving on and working hard that good things will happen to his/her life can lead people to resign to their current lives, instead of reevaluating or giving up on career paths that do not make sense and may not ever make sense in their lives. The problem here is that people not happy with their jobs or career may continue based on this hope that things will get better and a path of control will take place eventually. Continuing on a path only with an eye on the future, though, may not be the right thing to do - I believe there's an aspect of living the current moment that can forgone due to an oftentimes unrealistic hope for the future.

The "so good" part is another part that needed more care, because the examples of cases that match this hypotheses do not necessarily make this generally applicable. The point is that the "so good" is not only about your own craft (hard skills), but can rather require a number of different skills to be acquired - and not all people have the same innate capabilities to be good at all of them. An example: in the world of software engineering, to get to the point of control that the author suggests, being much better than others technically may not be what distinguishes and gets one to the desired place of control. Once one reaches a certain knowledge, other things tip the scale, like soft skills, political skills, etc. The skills that can take one towards this goal is not really a matter of dedicating oneself to the craft. And here I suspect that the author's experience in the academic world may have biased him.

Finally, mission. This is the most debatable in my opinion. In the world of research, it may be true that one needs to get to the bleeding edge to see what can be developed further and adopt that path as his/her mission. I believe what's missed here is that many missions are more generic and do not require this level of knowledge or experience. And some current professions can be so orthogonal to a meaningful mission to some people that one could spend a long time trying to get to the bleeding edge just to see that, once s/he gets there, no mission is to be found at all.

I've seen a lot of reviews that get hung up on Newport's dismissing the "Passion Hypothesis," and I do think he's sloppy (or provocative) in articulating his rejection of typical advice to follow your passion.

I do think, correctly read, he doesn't assert that passion is bad or that we shouldn't follow it, only that:

a) Your passion is not your career capital. It is not the thing you leverage into good work. It is the thing that motivates you and drives you to acquire and refine the skills that make you successful.

b) Some research into job satisfaction suggests that people who report being happiest in their work are so not because they chose work they were passionate about but because they chose work they were good at. Obviously success, happiness, and passion can all be correlated, but success is not an inevitable byproduct of passion.

Overall I found the book a refreshing read. Obviously it doesn't give secrets for how to parlay a minimum wage job with no training into a six figure income. If that book exists, please direct me to it. It's more about how to prepare for the job market and increase your chances of getting hired by focusing less on figuring out what you "want" to do and more on figuring out what skills you need, and how to develop them, to get people to pay you for what you want to do.

I would like to add my 2 cents to the discussion about Mr. Newport's book and his advice.

Cal swears against To-Do Lists, and says that everything needs an exact schedule. I quite frankly couldn't disagree more with this assessment. If you work hard each day (on important tasks, not fluff emails/meetings), you will find that you'll complete much or all of your To-Do List for that given day. I make a Daily To-Do List the night before each day, and check each objective off as I go along. I do not set exact hours for each task--I simply do the best that I can. At the end of the day--it's how hard you work (eg effort, # hours, etc) that make you successful at your job or craft in life--Not whether you schedule things into exact blocks.

In regards to weekly planning--if there are objectives I need to be aware of in advance of 24 hours--I plan it out accordingly--but again, I do not use a strict hourly format or schedule to complete each objective--I simply have a To-Do List for objectives I'd like to complete on each day of the week. If I do not complete an objective on the day I plan to, I will try to complete it the next day.

I've been using To-Do Lists for many years--and they've worked out great for me--both for my career and for my personal life. So, although I agree with Mr. Newport on some of his advice (don't focus on shallow/fluff work, do very few things but be awesome at them, and have a weekly plan), I definitely do not agree with his advice in regards to To-Do Lists.

Cal NEWPORT's views on how to find satisfaction in our work go against some of the mainstream ideas explained in the most popular self-help literature. If someone is deeply indoctrinated in the supremacy of the 'follow your passion' approach to life this books can be quite shocking. I like the pragmatic and well-reason arguments in the book and I believe they are adequately supported by real-life examples. Must-read for everyone who wants to hear an alternative opinion about the most important work related topics within the realm of personal development. I also appreciated the short summary and glossary at the end of the book, they certainly improve the reading experience.

We've been swarmed with career advice that reiterates familiar ideas: follow your passion, run your own business, etc. Instead of leaning toward conventional culture though, Cal takes a broader approach to encapsulate the guys who love their work and see exactly why they do so. He doesn't assume that everybody wants to quit their day job -- and he doesn't assume everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. People who love what they do can be found in all respective fields, he argues, and not just the highly sought after ones (athlete, artist, actor). Whatever you do, if you're ready to do great work, here's your Bible.

If you've read Cal's other books or even checked out his blog, this book might actually surprise you. It's the punchy, simple manifesto style that really has a different flavor to it, and unlike his other books, this one isn't filled to brim with mini-hacks. Instead, what it offers are core ideas that might potentially govern the way you view work for the rest of your life. Some of the stuff here isn't the easiest to do (Deliberate practice), but that's what separates the day-dreamers from the go-getters. The ideas are concrete, yet surprisingly, you'll find that they're missing from the workplace entirely.

Since the inception of the 'follow your passion' motif, job satisfaction has gone down the drain. This book is the fix.

Cal talks about the "adjacent possible" and I felt this book was a good example of that for me because I was just about to write something similar. It seems this is possible because Cal and I both have similar reading habits and a desire to find out how to do what we love. This book builds on principals from Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Derek Sivers, and Reid Hoffman. I will admit that I was a believer in the "passion mindset" and although I thought I was a hard worker, I tended to avoid the mental strain Cal talks about that's so important to deliberate practice in building career capital. This book really does a good job of turning that on it's head while giving you solid, practical advice about how to get the things you want in a job: control/autonomy. The bad news is that it takes a long time, will hurt, and requires a lot of work. But at least now we know.

I only made it halfway through this book before giving up. Also, I listened to the audiobook version.

There are some solid ideas regarding career capital and and also the craftsman approach. I also like the Steve Martin quote (and title of this book) because it is great advice. However, the books does a very poor job of making the argument. A lot of the points are discussed at such length, and in the same way, that they are boring. There are also a lot of logical flaws.

The book would have been better if it just delivered the advice about career capital and becoming "so good they can't ignore you" and dropped the argument against following your passion. It isn't a zero sum game. I agree that a lot more people need to learn to work harder and stop waiting for the world to give them the job they think they deserve.

Others have talked about the good points, so let me explain what issues I see with this book. The idea of not waiting for your passion to be found, but rather having a down-to-earth view to make your current profession work out for yourself is very interesting. However, there are some points in this book that are not so well elaborated and I'm not sure they correspond to the real world most of us face out there.

First, the argument that one should keep moving on and working hard that good things will happen to his/her life can lead people to resign to their current lives, instead of reevaluating or giving up on career paths that do not make sense and may not ever make sense in their lives. The problem here is that people not happy with their jobs or career may continue based on this hope that things will get better and a path of control will take place eventually. Continuing on a path only with an eye on the future, though, may not be the right thing to do - I believe there's an aspect of living the current moment that can forgone due to an oftentimes unrealistic hope for the future.

The "so good" part is another part that needed more care, because the examples of cases that match this hypotheses do not necessarily make this generally applicable. The point is that the "so good" is not only about your own craft (hard skills), but can rather require a number of different skills to be acquired - and not all people have the same innate capabilities to be good at all of them. An example: in the world of software engineering, to get to the point of control that the author suggests, being much better than others technically may not be what distinguishes and gets one to the desired place of control. Once one reaches a certain knowledge, other things tip the scale, like soft skills, political skills, etc. The skills that can take one towards this goal is not really a matter of dedicating oneself to the craft. And here I suspect that the author's experience in the academic world may have biased him.

Finally, mission. This is the most debatable in my opinion. In the world of research, it may be true that one needs to get to the bleeding edge to see what can be developed further and adopt that path as his/her mission. I believe what's missed here is that many missions are more generic and do not require this level of knowledge or experience. And some current professions can be so orthogonal to a meaningful mission to some people that one could spend a long time trying to get to the bleeding edge just to see that, once s/he gets there, no mission is to be found at all.

I've seen a lot of reviews that get hung up on Newport's dismissing the "Passion Hypothesis," and I do think he's sloppy (or provocative) in articulating his rejection of typical advice to follow your passion.

I do think, correctly read, he doesn't assert that passion is bad or that we shouldn't follow it, only that:

a) Your passion is not your career capital. It is not the thing you leverage into good work. It is the thing that motivates you and drives you to acquire and refine the skills that make you successful.

b) Some research into job satisfaction suggests that people who report being happiest in their work are so not because they chose work they were passionate about but because they chose work they were good at. Obviously success, happiness, and passion can all be correlated, but success is not an inevitable byproduct of passion.

Overall I found the book a refreshing read. Obviously it doesn't give secrets for how to parlay a minimum wage job with no training into a six figure income. If that book exists, please direct me to it. It's more about how to prepare for the job market and increase your chances of getting hired by focusing less on figuring out what you "want" to do and more on figuring out what skills you need, and how to develop them, to get people to pay you for what you want to do.

So Good They Cannot Ignore You by Cal Newport explains
the conditions which must be in place in order to succeed
in virtually any field or endeavor. Newport explains how
to arrive at passion because it is the sidekick of mastery.

The road to passion begins with acquiring skills. For instance,
entrepreneurial professionals must develop a competitive
advantage by building valuable skills first. Passion comes after
you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable,
not before. A related corollary is that you must create value
first to become valuable.

No complex subject matter can be mastered unless the student
has an over-riding interest as a condition precedent.
In addition, labor intensive efforts should be compensated
fully unless the subject matter is a passionate personal
interest or hobby.

Newport indicates that people must be creative so that they
can have the maximum impact and ultimately control. Constant
practice to perfection helps to secure career capital but
the process is not always enjoyable. Newport believes that
natural ability applies to other fields outside of the
traditional ones like music and art.

For instance, any musician capable of playing a piece like
The Flight of the Bumble Bee must invest considerable
capital in mastering the various complex chords. Even with
practice, a musician still needs a minimum level of raw
talent and discipline to perform a complex piece of music
to a minimum level of competence to the trained ear.

The author explains that having a lot of career capital to acquire
control may conflict with an employer's efforts to interfere with
autonomy. Newport cites three absolute disqualifiers in any
job or career.

First, the job has few opportunities to distinguish yourself.
Next, the job is functionally bad for the world. i.e. emitting
gross levels of toxic pollution as an industrial byproduct.
Lastly, the personal chemistry with co-workers or the
bureaucratic culture is unworkable.

So Good They Cannot Ignore You by Cal Newport is an
invaluable work because the author instills in workers
the idea that skills must first be acquired before value
can be created in virtually any endeavor.

And so, the new rule requires that skills be developed first.
Then, passion can be contemplated with the requisite skills
in hand. The implications of Newport's theories are
revolutionary for career planning.

Article first published as [...]Book Review: So Good They Cannot Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion In The Quest For Work You Love by Cal Newport</a> on Blogcritics.

I think as an academic he should have at least started with the definition of term "passion" My biggest disappointment was his commentary on Steve Jobs own life. Newport points that Steve did not follow his passion, while its clear from his Stanford speech and his biography he did follow his passion. Who knows who has lived through the experience, is it person or the commentator of the experience? More on this here

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/follow-your-passion-binoy-chacko/

I purchased this book after hearing Cal speak at the 99u conference in 2013. The book debunks the "follow your passion" myth - a myth the author correctly cites has caused far more harm than good. Instead, the book argues that you should let your passion follow you. As long as you have in a job that (a) allows for skill development (b) delivers a product/service that you feel is good for the world, and (c) is not in a toxic interpersonal environment, then the author suggests that you should LEAN IN to your work. As you build skills, your passion will follow. He cites numerous examples from business and the performing arts to illustrate his premise. Brilliant!

Full Disclosure, I'm ~50% through the book.
I really want to love this book.
But I don't.
It feels less than fully baked - possibly because I've read a lot of different perspectives around career excellence and looking at my own experience.
The craftsman idea is excellent. But there's so much other that's less than excellent.

The idea that following your passion is a bad idea - falls flat.
His own examples are all people who DID follow their passion - not one of them so far says anything like "I hated this work but I'm so good I can't quit".
I agree that being a craftsman is a key element AND defining what craftsmanship is does not always mean 10,000 hours.
Tim Ferris, iPhone apps, and multiple startups have happened in way less than 10K hours.
Career capital also makes sense - and 10K hours isn't needed.

He critiques the Parachute book - that following passion is a bad idea.
I've read the book and actually understanding your passion points to a ton of different kinds of jobs. It's actually quite clever. It doesn't mean that any one of them will be magic for you - you still need to be a craftsman. I do like the craftsman idea.
I'm going to finish the book - may edit this review.

After the first few chapters, I wanted to throw this book down in frustration. Repetition, simple writing, larger fonts, and wide margins are a recipe to annoy me.

But I forced myself to slog through this book and am so glad that I did. Because as it turns out, it's exactly what I needed in this time of my life as a burnt-out overachiever frustrated in my career but lacking the skills and framework to be truly excellent without destroying myself in the process.

Cal's book has given me just that: A solid, repeatable framework for excellence. He introduced key concepts to me: "career capital" (your expertise and skills), "adjacent possible" (where innovative ideas are born), and "deliberate practice" (that intense period of focus where deep learning and mastery happens). His book breaks down a very simple process for creating excellence, and describes the key ingredients of what is required to have a happy, fulfilling career. He describes a very basic model to follow to cultivate excellence and discipline through an effective combination of time management, practice, and free-form thinking sessions. I particularly found the conclusion very useful, where he describes how he applied the four rules to his own life and gives concrete examples.

Highly recommended for anyone stuck and looking to make a major change.

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love is two things:

1. A thorough debunking of the "passion" hypothesis ("follow your passion", "do what you love the money will follow").

2. An alternative approach summed up by the title, which Newport calls the "craftsman" hypothesis.

This is a simple but powerful change of perspective.

As Mike Rowe says, "just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you won’t suck at it."

Newport's advice is instead to first, stop sucking at what you do. Then you may have a passion worth following.

As someone who has struggled with the question of mission and meaningful work, I wish I had found this book ten or even twenty years ago.

I was interested for a few chapters. Good book but it sounds very very elitist and focuses on what already happened. No mention of LUCK. Some people are luckier than others. This book probably applies to 0.0001% of the freaking population. Basically the book title itself is the whole summary of the book. What if you are so good and they still ignore you? Ha

I finished reading the book over the weekend, and I've read several people in this series of reviews posing the question - "why should you pursue skills over passion just because you're "good at it"? If you actually read the book, this is not what Newport is proposing at all. Newport advised a career counselor in a recent blog post to tell students to ask themselves not "what am I good at or passionate about?" but rather "what skills am I willing to master?" He's basically purporting that it's important to set yourself apart from the crowd by getting REALLY GREAT at a skill you are already somewhat familiar with or are willing to pursue wholeheartedly - skills that are marketable and lucrative in today's job market.

We all know by now that no job is perfect, even one you really love, and I agree with Newport's assessment that a primary ingredient for a career that most people enjoy is Control (over time, production, your work), and this book gives you some great insight on how to acquire that ingredient.

I for one have already come up with a plan for how to begin implementing his ideas - such as using Deliberate Practice to develop skills I need to be marketable, and to build more Career Capital in areas that I need it. It's not enough to jump on the "personal branding" bandwagon. You have to have a brand that people want to buy-in to. "So Good..." was the boost I needed to reorganize my career efforts.

The core idea is sound, but ideas are not fully developed. When I arrived at the end of the book my reaction was "Is this the end? This felt more like an incomplete blog post than a book that is ready to publish".
Shame on the editor and publisher.

My two best friends have both managed to start a business and crash and burn within the first few years. This reality scared me away from a more ambitious career path until I read "So Good They Can't Ignore You." Cal's insights and beat-down of the "Career Passion Theory" are brilliant. This book is a must read for anyone wanting more out of life than the 9-5 grind. Highly recommend.

The book IS that good but writing style is painful at times. Don't agree with all but boy did I get some real gems from this book. Cal, you are brilliant in your thinking and summarizing ideas. The delivery is confusing at times and redundant​. Get a good editor because you rock!!!!!

The author makes some excellent points, and I agree with most of what he says. I am the same age as Newport, so I've had the experience of people offering me the career advice of "find your passion" or "do what you love and the money will follow" many, many times. I've also watched people my age embark on ambitious projects with unearned confidence because they have found their passion, only to be broke and miserable within a year. Newport's argument -- that it's better to build a unique set of skills beyond what other people have developed and then leverage that skill set to develop an interesting career over time -- offers a different path to success.

My criticism of Newport's book is that it would have made a great, feature-length article in the New York Times magazine section or GQ. It did not need to be an entire book. As other reviewers have noted, most of the supporting evidence is anecdotal and most of the main points are made numerous times throughout the book.

Still, it's worth a read.

Ok. All the way through the book Mr Newport argues that "follow your passion" is a bad advise, instead you should put all your efforts and dedication to become "so good they can't ignore you"= meaning so good you'll get paid good money and get more flexible in working hours etc.

However the author failed in the roots of his own concept. He suggested you should't be focused on finding your passion just work hard, very hard and eventually you'll love what you do when you become real good at it. Ok, now how do I choose what that thing should be? Just go for one of the top 10 jobs from the salary rankings or what?

And most importantly, where I am supposed to find the motivation to work really really hard (in order to become "so good the can't ignore me"?)
What Mr Newport doesn't realize is that all the people he presented in the book (including himself) were passionate about their jobs. At the very least they were really interested in their fields. The only difference that really differentiated them from the rest is dedication and persistence, but hey it's not a new idea at all.

Quite frankly there is not a single chapter in the book which would give any practical advice on HOW to CHOOSE the career path, it's all bout how to become good in the path which has been already chosen.

Besides the book is very repetitive, like going over and over the same ideas thousand times will make them more convincing...

It's also quite impossible to contact Mr Newport for further explanations, so you pretty much left alone with a fancy, but rather irrelevant theories. I guess we shouldn't expect anything more practical from a PhD anyway...

This book attempts to explain that skills are far better to pursue than one's passion but at no point in his work does he ever take the time to first define what one's passion is. He makes the gross assumption that people are innately born with passions about something and heedlessly follow the old saw "one must follow their passion and everything they ever wanted or wanted to accomplish will naturally fall into place". He gives no regard to the possibility that some people have no idea what they are passionate about until they stumble upon it and then once discovered they pursue it. What is wrong with that?
I just get the impression this work was written for the sake of writing something to fulfill some requirement placed upon him and he's hoping no one will be smart enough to see the flaw in his reasoning.
Don't waste your money.

I thought about not reviewing because I'm competitive and I don’t want anyone to get a leg up on me. But this book is so good as to be "remarkable" and it has been the only book that has subdued my great career-choice anxiety. Anyways, to start off I'm going to tell you about where I was before I read this book.

I graduated from a university in 2010 with an English degree and have been adrift ever since. I've had a few different jobs but nothing distinct, valuable, or anything I really liked. Since 2008 I have been freaking out about my career. I saw a future midlife crisis in every job I had. I fought hard to pin down my "one true passion" so I could pursue it relentlessly as a career, but my many passions left me confused. My confusion and passions led me to spread my energy over uncompleted projects and I would feel even more despair at my aimlessness.

Not only that but I would become depressed by looking at the successes of my peers on social media. "I've been promoted to Lead Social Media Manager!!!" - Bertha. "Bought a brand new baby... my new Audi!" - Peter. "Congratulate Betsy on her new job: Executive Assistant".

I would often wonder, "What is their secret? How are they becoming so successful? How do they have enough money to buy the beautiful Audi that I want? Why oh why do they have to post Facebook pictures of them happily cruising around in its glorious gloriousness in the sunshine with their expensive Ray Bans on?!?!" I thought that if only I knew what my "one true passion" was, I could be successful like them too.

What I didn't realize is that the whole foundation of my career-finding thought process was wrong! I devoured this book and Cal taught me where I was going wrong. You don't need to "find your passion" to start building a great career. Passions are often fleeting and ever-changing. What you need is to work hard to build a valuable career, and then passion for your job will find you.

Cal outlines all of the steps of building a successful and rewarding career in this book. His insights are based on interviews and life stories of people who are great at what they do and love it too! Some reviewers argue that the stories that back up Cal's steps and tips are just that, stories and tales. But I argue: how can such a complex and subjective thing such as building a successful career be studied scientifically? Until someone figures out how to do that, this book is the best thing since sliced bread!

After reading this book my blood pressure decreased, my cortisol levels went down, and there's a strange stretching sensation on my face... I'm smiling! Cal's no-nonsense approach to building a career is so honest and clear that it’s refreshing and comforting to someone who has tried to find her "true passion" for four stress-filled years. If you've been lost since graduating, or are still in school, or even if you're older and still haven't found your "true passion", I greatly recommend this book!

I want to directly thank Cal because I haven't been so anxiety-free about my career since I was a little kid. I’m currently working as a waitress but I’ve applied to quite a few jobs and have been going to interviews. All the jobs I’ve applied for can help me develop valuable skills and start building a successful career. Only time will tell if this book has really helped me, but for now I’m smiling, laughing, and scheming to start building a successful career that I will eventually become passionate about.

P.S. Make a career-building diagram after reading this book. I just made one and it really helped solidify the points Cal made, and made the path to my future satisfying career clearer. Tip for Cal: if there are any new editions coming out, add a visual diagram to summarize everything at the end.

Cal Newport has a counter intuitive strategy for getting your "dream job" - focus on your work instead of your passion.

It is the strategy of the indirect approach - it is difficult to get what you want directly. Good jobs are rare and the competition for them is fierce. It turns out my dream job is your dream job; we both want control, impact, and connections. You don't get a dream job just by asking.

You get a dream job when you are so good they can't ignore you. Getting that good requires deliberate practice. Working right trumps the right work. Becoming world class requires a "craftsman" approach to working. Your skills earn you "career capital" that you can cash in to land your dream job. Cal uses the practice habits of world class athletes to illustrate how only deliberate practice can elevate performance beyond the "acceptable" threshold. Cal's deliberate practice methods include dissecting the corallary arguements of the most difficult proofs and making a ceremony of recording his development in a fancy journal.

Cal also acknowledges that world class skill might not be enough. You need demand for your supply of skill. You need to market yourself - to be remarkable. Being remarkable means being on the edge of your field with the skills to solve the adjacent problem. Cal promotes taking little bets on adjacent problems rather than big gambles - you can't predict how valuable your solution will be.

Cal's approach isn't fast and isn't easy. It can be "quick." It seems that two years of deliberate practice is enough to start to separate you from the pack and start your trajectory towards your dream job.

Provides good insights on why working right is better than finding the job you are passionate about. It also provides clear steps, with many examples, on achieving working right. The examples Cal provides on how he applies these steps in his own life is very helpful.

I feel compelled to write this review, my first for the store, after reading the book in one evening. In short, do not buy this book. Read the summaries and other reviews that can be found all over the self-help blogosphere, and you will have pulled all of the useful information. This "book" is essentially 5 or 10 anecdotes, repeatedly and repetitively illustrated from different angles to supposedly illustrate new ways to view your work and work life. This could have been boiled down to 20 pages. The writing is sophomoric, and based on his credentials, does not match the intellect I am sure he possesses. Additionally, he writes the book as if everyone has gone to MIT, or Harvard, or Stanford, and that if these people can do it, so can you. Anyone without a technical, ivy-league degree need not apply. The most important question, of WHERE to being applying the craftsman mentality (current job, new job, go to college etc.) is never answered. Very disappointed; first and last self-help book I will ever read.

By far from the reviews I have read on here as well as having read some of his books, I believe this books seems quite theoretical in nature.

However it would be interesting to see whether or not this person has really experienced it himself. Otherwise I think this book is just not practical for a lot of us to follow.

Not to mention, a lot of people aren't like him in his unconventional ways.

I would agree that following your passion is dangerous by itself. But at the same time, I believe there should be a balance between what we love, what pays and what is realistic. That is my 2 cents I think would be best.

If you don't feel like reading the whole book just know this: "passion for your job increases with the longer you stay at it and the better you get."

This is a refreshing reminder to STOP worrying about whether your career is providing you with all the happiness you require, but instead focus on things you DO and can control, like getting amazing at what you're working on and making a difference in your industry.

In the end, that's the stuff that gets you out of bed in the morning.

I stumbled upon this book recently when I was trying to set directions from the career crossroads I am in. I had been tired of 'follow your passion' advice - I could not find strong passion for a job or career for the past 15 years. The booked offered a new perspective on career management - on how focused skill development can make you successful. This book doesn't have scientific research or data to support the new theory. But the author presents a compelling case for a skill-focused approach to your career and he comes out successful in that. The author has provided few career profiles to drive home the concepts but the profiles are over-used in some places. The summary section (for each rule) is a great idea - it helps collect the learning and retain them.
Overall - it is a good read. The book presents a new approach and sets the reader free to implement it (I am happy that it didn't have a 7-step implementation program that could kill the idea). You will not be disappointed with the book. You will at the least get a new perspective. I am embarking on a new career path after reading this book - let us see how it goes.

I really like the "linchpin" review for this book.
The individual insights are simple and rather self-evident but it's that very thing, the fact that it's a series of simple rules put together that makes it so powerful.
it constitutes a practical strategy you can retrofit in your own life, regardless of your profession.

Truly the most important read I've come across in a few years.

I would recommend this book for individuals pursuing higher education, that are feeling overwhelmed about not yet identifying a career passion. I enjoyed the real life examples debunking the "passion hypothesis", as well as description of individuals for which passion pursuit failed. As with any recommendation, it is important to evaluate how the advice fits into your own life. However, I think there is excellent advice in this book about hard work and becoming an expert in your own niche, especially in a culture that is moving away from hard work and towards a view of entitlement. This book will encourage you to identify your valuable skill-set, and move towards a career with more autonomy.

If you want to do work you love, follow your passion is bad advice. Instead, get good at something rare and valuable and cash in for the career traits of control and mission.

Mission answers the question what should I do with my life? You can find a mission in the adjacent possible of the cutting edge of your field.

This book should be required reading for all college/university students.

Anyways I feel so jazzed by this book it is as if someone put nitro inside me and I am about to zoom off into happiness and the future like a race car. Why? Because the book debunks the idea that people must "follow their passion" or else they are wasting their time and life.

I've been struggling with failing at this because honestly I really don't know what my passion is. Did I ever? And I also firmly believe that many of my passions are things I enjoy as hobbies and wouldn't want them to become my bread and butter. It's a life balance thing for me. I don't mind work and passion being separated and what I am passionate about has nothing to do with my needs and values in a workplace, meaning the 2 may not even be compatible. The book touches on this.

This book says it's OK not to follow one's passion as work. It even dares to say that it is DANGEROUS to follow your passion in terms of work. The book is not saying that there are no successes among people who followed their passion (Think Wayne Gretzky) but notes that this this sweeping generalization is not the case for most people which it backs it up with specific examples and research.

What is helpful is the book lists models of thinking to replace the passion thesis, one is the craft based model. I am a huge fan of the craft based model because in my work as a curator I actually know artists working in craft who exemplify this model. A whole book could be written just on the myth in the art world that success comes from some channeled muse and one great artwork that gets someone famous. UGH. I know some pretty amazing artists who earn solid money because they follow their craft, their skill and work every day to painfully perfect this and be better.

The book says most people are happy when they feel competent at what they do. Makes sense. We are each happiest when we are good at something because then we offer the world a skill we have honed and will find it desired and even sought after. Again, following several case studies of people (especially musicians) the book gives the advice that if we push through the work we are not loving in order to get through to a higher level of skill, it will provide us with a tangible asset, or career capital we can leverage.

Not that all jobs we are not loving are good for us, book also explains when a career may just not be a good fit. In this book has some pretty amazing and radical ideas (when compared to the passion led thinking predominant today) for example it says, "Figure out what you have to offer the world, not what the world has to offer you" Because if you believe the passion followers your mystical dream job is floating out there in the magical new age world if you would just throw everything away and open your heart to something totally new. It may work for some people but not many This book is more along the thinking of the 10 000 Hour Rule. Good! Plus the title is a reference to actor/musician/writer/comedian (more?) Steve Martin which is always a good start. How would Steve Martin have fared if he had to follow his passion? Which one would he have picked and thrown all the rest away for? Martin is a perfect example of someone who cultivated skill in many areas he was passionate about and has realized success in all of these. Who better to refer to in the title of this book?

I feel a huge mental block lifting…. suddenly I am feeling it is OK to try to rebuild my career with the skills I have honed, oh yes there will be changes but the book gives me permission to be happy and successful using the tools I already have in my tool box.

This is an awesome book to be recommended especially to students or those in a mid-career crisis. Very important voice in this one-sided world we currently live in that is advocating a passion based rationale for career.

Finally someone who is talking sense (in my opinion).

So Cal, can you please write your next book debunking how "sending positive energy to the universe" and "if you aren't living the life you want it is all because you don't have a vision board, visualizations or open heart" ? THANK YOU!

This book changed my life. I absolutely loved it. I read it, anylized and I start seeing the results in my life. It's not about "not following your passion" as you may easily think. Newport asks you not to be blind. Keeping strongly to, what you belive, your passion is, you can miss some opportunities connected to what you love, but that you've nevere thought of before. Thank you, Cal. I won't miss them.

Cal has written a clear treatise on his ideas about work. The idea that you work right rather than seek the right work is an empowering one. My only critiques of this presentation of Cal's ideas are that it falls into the same patterns of all these kinds of pop culture books by being overly redundant. I understand that this is a hazard of the genre, but I had hoped an iconoclast like Cal could find another way. Also, I would love to see a simple diagram/overview of his ideas and techniques, much like the GTD one-page diagram in "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. If your message is simple enough to be repeated as often as it was in this book it would make an excellent diagram for people to refer to on a regular basis. The book is worth the read, but unlike the case study paper Cal talks of analysing for weeks, it does not require or reward a deep reading.

I have read other two books written by the author and liked them very much. One of the characteristics of Cal Newport's books is their target: younger generation.The other two books provide a variety of detailed practical skills to be so good at being VERY smart at school with both high school students and college students.Here this time, the author expands his original idea of how to be so good finally into the workplace students have to hunt after graduation. After you have read this book, you'll see how to be so good at being REMARKABLY outstanding at work regardless of any special "ideal" job you have in mind.It's an amazing book for the young in the midst of finding their way through this difficult time as well as their teachers and parents.

Cal Newport's clever and thoughtful book is an interesting take on the seemingly tried and true advice about doing what you love. He examines different career trajectories to compare and contrast what actually makes people find satisfaction in their work. Not surprisingly, the answer to career happiness is not so cut and dry. From looking more closely at how people come to find this elusive goal, he discovers that there are specific qualities which are generally required, and simply searching for "the thing you love" is unlikely to provide results.

From a young age, Mr. Newport has offered his readers a different slant on what is supposed to be common wisdom. His writing style is clear and succinct, and if he continues on his current trajectory, his writing will be along the lines of a Gladwell "Outliers" - showing us how to look at our lives more clearly by challenging our assumptions.

I really wanted to love this book. I have been reading Cal's blog since its inception and have read his "yellow" and "red" books many times over. When he started this idea on the blog, I thought it would be great. While the ingredients are there in this book, the execution, especially the writing, is beyond disappointing. Every point is belabored, and the exact same points are made in successive paragraphs and pages. It felt like a nail was being hammered into my brain. It was also very roundabout -- instead of striving to keep addressing his assumed critics in every chapter, he should just get his point across. While I did find the latter half of the book better than the first half, I felt as if I could get the necessary information from the chapter summaries.

I also have two qualms about the book:

1. It feels as if this book is posited to those who are in the position to create career capital, such as ivy league graduates, and not someone who is just trying to get by and can't leave their job of flipping burgers. How can people in less fortunate positions get the capital to be remarkable? I must admit, I have not thought long enough about this observation to flesh it out, but if anyone has thoughts on this, let me know.

2. Also, it seemed as if the majority of the subjects in the book did have passion to do something before they had the capital. While they did have a craftsmans approach, this seemed to be a necessary action to pursue what they were passionate about in the first place. In addition, in his caveat section for the method, it basically says that if you don't like the job and coworkers (more specifically, if they see it as useless or it can't help them get career capital), don't do it. Again, if one must take such a job to support themselves, are they then helpless? And if they don't like the job, ie are not passionate about it, and you recommend them to quit, what does that say about the importance of passion? It would have been better to explicitly say that while passion is good, it is not good enough.

I am open to changing the review if I could get some of my questions and concerns answered, but this is how I feel at the moment.

SO GOOD THEY CAN'T IGNORE YOU is the latest book by Georgetown Professor Cal Newport, author of the Study Hacks blog. This is a tremendously valuable book for anyone who is looking not for a job, but a career that offers control, autonomy, and gives you a sense of fulfillment. SO GOOD gives you the step by step plan to achieve it.

The subtitle of this book reveals the author's main theme: "Why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love." This is a unique idea that rejects the current popular advice of "follow your passion." Even today on a WSJ blog, the CEO of Zipcar, Scott Griffith, is quoted saying,

"If you really don't have passion for what you're doing, quit. Go find something. I was interested in technology and transportation when I was in junior high school. It may not be that clear to everybody, but we all kind of know what our passions are pretty early in life, and if you can figure out a way to align your avocation with your vocation, the sky's the limit for your career and your happiness." ("Zipcar CEO: `If You Don't Have Passion For Your Job, Quit,'" Leslie Kwoh, Wall Street Journal, 9/19/12)

Newport rejects this idea, claiming that quitting your job to follow your passion is at best unrealistic, and at worst, dangerous for your long-term success. Instead, Newport stresses the pursuit of skills, not passion. But not just any skills. He focuses in on what he calls "career capital": the specific, valuable, and marketable skills that will separate you from the rest of the pack and let you define the terms of your career.

I think at this point, we've all heard the notion of it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. But not all practice hours are equal. Newport suggests using a concept called "deliberate practice"-practice that pushes you beyond your comfort zone, that stretches you, that forces you to improve-to achieve those career capital skills. Although difficult, it is far more effective than other means of practice, Newport argues.

Once you have mastered these skills, you can start defining the terms of your career, giving yourself the control and autonomy many crave but few achieve. Of course, once you've picked up a few skills, you're not scott free at this point. Newport highlights two traps. The first is thinking you have enough career capital too early in your career. In other words, you jump without looking: you start your own business before people are willing to pay you for your skills. The second is acquiring so much capital that your boss will not want to let you go, in effect pushing you in a direction that offers you less control and autonomy even though it may come with a new title, new office, and maybe even a raise. But Newport offers a solid plan to avoid these traps. Moreover, Newport also offers advice on building a career not based on passion, but one that you become passionate about.

Not too long ago, I stopped working at a law firm to become a freelance writer. Writing is always something that I've really enjoyed, so I was a perfect example of someone who followed their passion. And although I possessed writing skills, I lacked the other skills necessary for a freelancing life (marketing know-how, references, a pile of clips, etc.). In other words, I didn't have the complete career capital package. I fell into Newport's first trap. I've been working my way out of it ever since. SO GOOD is the book I wish I had when I first started thinking about transitioning from the law firm to the freelancer life. I would have been able to hit the ground much faster. But Newport offers enough concrete tips in SO GOOD, that I think I can make up for the lost time and separate myself from the other writers out there.

But don't think this is just a book for people who are thinking of becoming writers or bloggers or lifestyle coaches or whatever new job the latest web gurus are touting. Not only does Newport profile writers and musicians, but also a biologist, venture capitalist, archeologist, and various other entrepreneurs. In SO GOOD, Newport offers a plan that can work for anyone. It's a short read, and while there are definitely times when Newport repeats himself (he summarizes passages that you have read only a handful of pages earlier for example), the lessons are specific and useful. When you finish reading SO GOOD, I can almost guarantee your career plans will have changed for the better. The will be better defined and likely more productive. Read it, learn it, use it. Discover your dream job by developing your skills.

pre-ordered and received it today, finished reading in one sitting

i have been a long time reader of studyhacks, owned and read all other cal's 3 books, however this is probably the most controversial and thought-provoking publication.

the book started with a guy called thomas who 'escaped' to monkhood as he 'thought' that it was his passion. thomas was not happy when he was a monk. the book ended with thomas leaving monkhood, changed his mindset towards work and worked happily managing billion-dollar project. if cal has taken one step further and truly believed that skill trumped passion, he would have argued that there was a possibility that thomas had not put in the 10000 hours in the zen practice, and thus have not become a monk who was 'so good they cant ignore you'. what if thomas has changed his mindset towards his work of being a monk? cal has taken the meaning of monkhood as being somehow of a lifestyle of the escapees.

cal wrote that using the slogan of 'passion vs skills' was a good marketing skill. based on the controversies and arguments raised, i believe that he has succeeded. however this is also the exact pitfall of the stand. in most parts of the book, we can clearly see a black-and-white thinking, where we need to always choose between passion and skill. i believe that they go hand-in-hand. partly, cal's passion in finding out this research question that he had - 'passion vs skills' had motivated him to put in the hours and hard work to find for the answers.

we can understand from the book that cal's 'passion' is really to follow the respectable path of being a professor. this has driven him to reflect and put in the work to be an associate professor in georgetown university today. if only hard work matters, he could have developed his skills and work somewhere else, but not as a professor. again, passion and hard work goes hand in hand, and there is no use of discounting 'passion' in the slogan and in most parts of the book.

nevertheless, this book has delivered the point of, if you do not have the career capital (ie enough marketable unique set of skills after 10000 hours of deliberate practice), do not follow your heart 100% to pursue your dream lifestyle.

i look forward to new posts and books from cal in the future. and hope that he can continue his passion and hard work in improving our work habits and mindsets.

This is one of those books you would wish you had read in your younger days, way before you embarked on a journey to find your "true passion". Cal Newport makes a very coherent and excellent case for an alternative to the highly predominant passion hypothesis. Very highly recommended.

There are some good concepts like career capital but I found the author's tone very arrogant. Real working environment is much more complicated, The examples given do not cover the real world well. The claim that following your passion can be dangerous is ridiculous.
It is the opposite : Following your passion is critical for your success...

This is a series of case studies highlighting stories to support his theory. Cal does not use research to form his theory, however. His first example of a failure is a women, as are most of his examples of how to do things incorrectly. This book was not worth my time.

Great book, no fluff, just good content.

It's full of tried & true wisdom of how hard work is what pays off in the end, no promises of shortcuts or workarounds. But the book comes through where it matters - great strategies of implementing hard work to get the most out of it.

I'm excited to put this wisdom to use. Thanks Cal!

I think this book has some useful information contained in it. However, I don't think it should be this long and has more than 10 chapters. You could easily sum it up in about 20-30 pages. The writing style is a frustrating experience for me. It's like the author is trying to sound fancy, yet it's not. It's a mix between academic writing style and fancy writing style and I really don't like it.

I'd been following Cal's website for the past year or so. This book is a wonderful condensation of what he's been writing about. The book is easily accessible and notably non-academic. Cal's writings have been particularly important for me as a graduate student who's constantly plagued with questions of 'is this program really for me?' or the insecurity of telling people I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. More importantly, Cal's insights have reassured my belief in my own abilities without the hang-ups of finding a 'calling'. I'd recommend this book for everyone.

I really appreciate how Cal Newport encourages you to not worry about waiting until you find the perfect career, the perfect opportunity, the perfect business model, or the perfect team. Instead he encourages you to start moving and through rapid testing to discover what you can become good at that people will really value.

If you've been paralyzed by perfectionism, I highly recommend you check out this book.

This book is probably worth the $11 paid through ibooks, but little more.
As an avid reader of performance enhancing books, I found this book somewhat flat. I admit that the material is decent. In fact, I agree with much of what the author states. However, I was turned off by the fact that he begins the book by disagreeing with the words of Steve Jobs, and then proceeds to back that up with stories of relatively unknown individuals.
There are far too many long-winded case studies that seem more designed to fill pages, than to support the argument.
In addition, I found myself asking throughout the read, "What are the qualifications of this author?"

The book told you what other books are about. In details the book tells you that whatever you do on your job. Get more education in that area. Keep improving in that area. That is how they get so good that they could not ignore you.

Great reading for educated elites looking to blow their own horns. The book can be summed up in one sentence: Get an Ivy League degree, use those connections, work more hours than everyone else, and wait for luck to strike.

I agree, hard work and dedication are important,however, many people devote their lives to their careers and don't make it to big time positions like those profiled in Cal's book. Most of us are groveling for a job at McDonald's. How about profiling people that go from NOTHING to SOMETHING, because SOMETHING is all you can expect in this economy( Unless you attend an Ivy League school and use Mommy and Daddy's connections).

This book left me with little hope and much frustration. It is a sad expose on the growing chasm in America between the haves and have-nots. I'll be returning it.