So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Key Concepts

The four rules

RULE #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion

RULE #2: Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Or, the Importance of Skill)

RULE #3: Turn Down a Promotion (Or, the Importance of Control)

RULE #4: Think Small, Act Big (Or, the Importance of Mission)

Don’t just follow your passion; instead build skills

The Passion Hypothesis: “The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you’re passionate about and then find a job that matches this passion.” (p. 4)

“There is, however, a problem lurking here: When you look past the feel-good slogans and go deeper into the details of how passionate people like Steve Jobs really got started, or ask scientists about what actually predicts workplace happiness, the issue becomes much more complicated. You begin to find threads of nuance that, once pulled, unravel the tight certainty of the passion hypothesis, eventually leading to an unsettling recognition: “Follow your passion” might just be terrible advice.” (p. 6)

“Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion.” (p. 13)

“Here’s the CliffsNotes summary of the social science research in this area: There are many complex reasons for workplace satisfaction, but the reductive notion of matching your job to a pre-existing passion is not among them.” (p. 14)

“Conclusion #1: Career Passions Are Rare” (p. 14)

“Conclusion #2: Passion Takes Time” (p. 15)

“Conclusion #3: Passion Is a Side Effect of Mastery” (p. 17)

Building skills requires adopting a craftsman mindset and deliberate practice

“Irrespective of what type of work you do, the craftsman mindset is crucial for building a career you love.” (p. 37)

“Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you.” (p. 38)

“To successfully adopt the craftsman mindset, therefore, we have to approach our jobs in the same way that Jordan approaches his guitar playing or Garry Kasparov his chess training—with a dedication to deliberate practice.” (p. 85)

The Career Capital Theory of Great Work

“The traits that define great work are rare and valuable.” (p. 48)

“Supply and demand says that if you want these traits you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital.” (p. 48)

“The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming “so good they can’t ignore you,” is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital. This is why it trumps the passion mindset if your goal is to create work you love.” (p. 48)

THREE DISQUALIFIERS FOR APPLYING THE CRAFTSMAN MINDSET)

1. “The job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable.

2. “The job focuses on something you think is useless or perhaps even actively bad for the world.

3. “The job forces you to work with people you really dislike.” (p. 56)

Creating more control requires first building career capital

The First Control Trap: “Control that’s acquired without career capital is not sustainable.” (p. 117)

The Second Control Trap: “The point at which you have acquired enough career capital to get meaningful control over your working life is exactly the point when you’ve become valuable enough to your current employer that they will try to prevent you from making the change.” (p. 131)

The Law of Financial Viability: “When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it. If you find this evidence, continue. If not, move on.” (p. 139)

Having a mission is great, but going after one’s mission successfully also requires career capital

“People who feel like their careers truly matter are more satisfied with their working lives, and they’re also more resistant to the strain of hard work.” (p. 152)

“A good career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough—it’s an innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field.” (p. 161)

“If you want a mission, you need to first acquire capital. If you skip this step, you might end up like Sarah and Jane: with lots of enthusiasm but very little to show for it.” (p. 163)

The Law of Remarkability: “For a mission-driven project to succeed, it should be remarkable in two different ways. First, it must compel people who encounter it to remark about it to others. Second, it must be launched in a venue that supports such remarking.” (p. 193)

Quotables

“First, when you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness.” (p. 38)

“Basic economic theory tells us that if you want something that’s both rare and valuable, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return—this is Supply and Demand 101.” (p. 44)

“Put another way, if you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better.” (p. 85)

“This is what you should experience in your own pursuit of “good.” If you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re probably stuck at an “acceptable level.”” (p. 98)

“You have to get good before you can expect good work.” (p. 110)

“The more time you spend reading the research literature, the more it becomes clear: Giving people more control over what they do and how they do it increases their happiness, engagement, and sense of fulfillment.” (p. 113)

“The more I met people who successfully deployed control in their career, the more I heard similar tales of resistance from their employers, friends, and families.” (p. 128)

Derek [Sivers] thought for a moment. “I have this principle about money that overrides my other life rules,” he said. “Do what people are willing to pay for.” (p. 137)