So good they can’t ignore you

This is one of the books I read from same author of “Deep Work“, professor Cal Newport. Like many other books about “personal growth” (not to be confused with useless books that promise you to become rich and famous in no time or to defeat a disease just with the power of your mind), the “return on investments” are usually higher if read during the school period, even if a young adult (or an adult not so young anymore) can receive benefits from reading: the latter can leverage on their past experience to apply and adjust faster than a young human being. You can already find a lot of summaries of this famous book, this will just be my style. As usual, my comments and thoughts are on parenthesis, not to be confused with the words of the author. With this in mind, let’s start.

0 – The passion of the Monk

Thomas journey searching for meaning (see also Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”), starting with a travel to Zen Mountain Monastery (after getting degrees in philosophy and master in religion), searching answers for the “koan“. He discovered that this was what life as a Zen monk offered: increasingly sophisticated pursuing on this one, core insight – the path to happiness (intended as “what you do for a living”) is more complicated than answering “What should I do with my life?” (for more, see Alan Watts, Jordan Peterson or “It’s OK not to look for the meaning of life” by Zen monk Jikisai Minami – and many, many others).
“Why some people end up loving what they do, while so many others fail at this goal?” (I strongly suggest here to read “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, with examples like the old woman living in a farm in Valle d’Aosta, Italy, and Joe, the welder in a railroad company; plus all the concept of “loving the process” and “enjoying the path”). This book documents what Cal discovered when trying to find an answer. In a brutal way, in an extreme nutshell: you need to be good at something to offer a skill for a good job. The title was inspired by a quote by Steve Martin. Remind that the book doesn’t provide “ten steps to follow”, but it’s a tool, more or less like Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You (with interactive mind map!).

Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion

1.1 The passion of Steve Jobs

• From his 2005 Stanford Stadium speech: “you’ve got to find what you love… the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle”
• Western society lionize who follow with courage their passions and pity the conformist “cowdards”
• “Follow your passion” might just be a terrible advice
• Follow what Steve Jobs did, not said!
  • He was interested in tech only because they promised quick cash (so, in other words: it could have been anything, also cars or sex-toys, Jobs was not really interested in electronics)
  • He was just an unresolved wannabe-zen-artist that was lucky enough to find (with a person in common) a real “genius” (dedicated worker) like Steve Wozniak, a real graduate in electronics, interested and competent
  • They started it as a side-job, while still keeping their normal jobs
  • Lesson: Jobs didn’t follow his passion (maybe to become a hippie teacher in Los Altos Zen Center), rather he followed money/business

1.2 Passion is rare

• The more you try to seek examples of the “passion hypothesis”, the more you’ll find it’s extremely rare
• Have a look into Roadtripnation interviews
  • It turns out that “just follow the passion” is rare
  • Hard work for a lot of time
  • Some people start something because they want more options (you can expand this concept reading Nassim Taleb’s “Antifragile”)
  • Don’t go out with idea of building an empire, set goals for yourself at being the best at whatever you do (see also: “The subtle art of not giving a fuck”)
  • You can have a ton of interest and lack focus (do a favor to yourself: don’t get caught by “multipotentiate” narrative), you’ll never be sure
• Passions related to job are rare (a 2002 study by Vallerand found that less than 4% of interviewed uni students had interests somehow related to something useful at work – the others: dance, hokey and so on)
• Passion takes time (for this in details, see the estimated 10.000+ hours to become a professional, in contrast with “The first 20 hours” by Josh Kaufman)
  • Wrzesniewski identified:
    • job: a way to pay the bills;
    • career: path toward increasingly better work;
    • calling: a work important in your life and in defining you.
  • Wrzesniewski found out that it’s NOT the kind of job (doctor, teacher, other) that is important: it’s the number of years spent on the job.
• Passion is a side effect of mastery
  • TED talk “On the surprising science of motivation”, Daniel Pink (author of “Drive”) refers to Self-Determination Theory , SDT:
    • Autonomy: feeling on having control
    • Competence: feeling that you’ ‘re good at what you do
    • Relatedness: feeling of connection to other people (you can go deeper reading John Cacioppo’s “Loneliness”)
  • The first 2 are related and there’s no need of pre-existing passion, just practice and being good

1.3 Passion is dangerous

• Starting with Bolles’ “What color is your parachute?”, 2 main concepts:
  • figure out what you like to do and then find a place that needs people like you
  • you can control what you do with your life, so pursue what you love
• In 2000s, Google’s Ngram Viewer shows increasing of those phrases like “follow your passion”, that’s why millennials expect a lot of “meaning” and fulfillment from their job (ending with disappointment)
• A 2010 conference board survey in US shows 45% of US citizens are satisfied with their job, a decreasing percentage
• Robbins-Wilner’s 2001 book “Quarterlife crisis” shows dozen of young (20-30yo) people deeply dissatisfied or lost in their job:
  • Lesson: passion can be dangerous!
• There are a few exceptions like pressional athlete of really rare gifted professional starting their interests at a very young age, but for the majority of people, “follow your passion” is just a bad advice

Rule #2: Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

2.1 The clarity of the Craftsman

• Main definition
  • Craftsman mindset: focus on what value you’re producing in your job
  • Passion mindset: focus on what value your job is offering you
• A musician, playing every day, become so experienced that there’s a confidence that comes out and it’s something that the audience smells
• (note that also the opposite can be true: when you’re insecure, people smell it!)
• Only way to get noticed is being so good they can’t ignore you
  • Skills much more than appearance or instrumentation or others
  • “The tape doesn’t lie”
• Once you become good, usually there’s no arrogance in it: “you create something meaningful and then present it to the world” – Jordan Tice
• Passion mindset isn’t good:
  • We rarely recognize what we truly love
  • Most works we find aren’t so challenging and interesting
• (so: be proactive, instead of just searching what the world is offering you – don’t ask what the job can do for you, but what you can do for the job… no, OK, I want too far)
• When you start something “different” (e.g.: entertainer) you have to fight the “cloud of external distractions” (comparison you make with your friends’ normal jobs)
• Just focus on what you produce
  • Then your passions follow

2.2 The power of Career Capital

• Great work (rare and valuable) traits
  • Creativity
  • Impact
  • Control
• Focus energy/time to a complete product
• The biggest obstacle between you and your work is a lack of courage
• Before taking courage, be sure you have acquired the needed skills
• Exception: traits that disqualify applying the craftsman mindset:
  • Job with few opportunities to distinguish yourself from others by developing rare valuable skills
  • Job focuses on something you don’t like or think it’s bad
  • Job involving people you dislike

2.3 The career capitalist

• To succeed as a TV writer:
  • write a lot
  • write good
• To get a job (see case of Mike Jackson, interviewed since he was introduced by his friend’s girlfriend)
  • make friends (so: the importance of visibility and building/maintaining a valuable network, but with meaning)

2.4 Becoming a Craftsman

• It’s not just the number of hours you spent (like the 10K hours Gladwell highlighted in “Outliers”), but rather how much effort and how much discomfort are you gonna will to face
• “Deliberate practice” (coined by Anders Ericsson in 1990s)
• With a few exceptions (athletes, musicians, chess players – with competitive structures and training regime), in other fields it is difficult to notice progress in a direction
• If you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better
• Solicit feedback from professionals and colleagues
• Take projects beyond your current comfort zone
• Spend time on what’s important, not immediate (you can use tools like Eisenhower’s Matrix)
• Habits:
  • Decide what capital market you’re in
    • Winner-take-all: only one thing matters (e.g.: be compelling to readers, writing good) and all people competing for it
    • Auction: each person can generate a unique collection of types of career capital (e.g.: maybe you’re not sure what you want to do, but just sure “it has to do with…”, so set out to gain any capital relevant to it)
  • Identify your capital type
    • Look for “open gates”: something (e.g.: experiences with a professor, a project, …) to get fast into a direction
  • Define “good”
    • Geoff Colvin (editor at Fortune) wrote: “deliberate practice requires good goals”
  • Stretch and destroy
    • Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable
    • This is what make difference between doings things we know already well and improving in something difficult
    • If you don’t feel uncomfortable, you’re probably stuck at an “acceptable” level
  • Be patient
    • You stretch yourself day after day and then, after years, you suddenly look up and realize: “Hey, I’m pretty good at it and people are starting to notice it”

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

3.1 The dream-job elixir

• Red fire farm story. Why farm life (after Ivy league or prestigious career) is so appealing?
  • Control on their lives
  • Autonomy
• Autonomy can lead to better results, if you are in a ROWE company/situation
  • Returns-Only Work Environment
• Giving people more control over what they do increases, engagement, sense of fulfillment
• After acquiring career capital, invest this capital in the traits that define great work

3.2 The first control trap

• Dangerous to pursue more control in your working environment before acquiring career capital to offer in exchange
• Importance of focusing on how to embrace a sustainable lifestyle before start committing to an “alternative” way of living
• One of the main errors: people that want to quit their 9-5 job just for the sake of it, to write a blog on their alternative lifestyle (big red flag!)
• Enthusiasm alone is not rare and valuable (a lot of people have the desire to achieve something, very few of them really put the time and effort to do that)
• (be aware don’t end up like the “wannabe digital nomads” with blog/channel without any content!)

3.3 The second control trap

• When you feel stuck in a barely decent job (e.g.: repetitive and not challenging), try do not fall in temptation of just breaking away to follow some “non-conformist path”.
• Lulu Young was a developer involved in QA
  • she studied and applied automation
  • she requested to study (philosophy)
  • she left (their employer refused since she became skilled and so valuable) for an unknown startup
  • then she left again to become freelancer, even if a lot of people wanted to hire her
    • she could have been a VP riding a Porsche but with the ulcer, now she is happier
  • when you acquire career capital so you can get meaningful control over your working life, you become valuable enough to your current employer that they will try to prevent you from making the change
  • Courage is needed, but timing is crucial:
    • too faster and you’ll fall in the 1st trap

3.4 Avoiding the control trap

• Derek Silvers demonstrated at a 2010 TED that a leader is someone that doesn’t fear to seem crazy in front of a crowd, starting dancing half naked
  • the first one who follows him is crucial: he’s making the first a leader, so other will see it’s not just one crazy man dancing, then they will follow
  • this is how someone create a movement
• 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 not, move on.
    • money is a neutral indicator
    • hobbies are excluded: if you like them, just continue

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

4.1 The meaningful life of Pardis Sabeti

• Pardis is happy and find energy also for activities extra-work because her work (professor) is a “mission”.
• Staying up late to save your corporate ltigation client to save the company a few millions can drain your energies, but staying up late to fight diseases can leave you more energized, even to start other hobbies and projects.
• Mission is hard
  • Hardness scares off the daydreamers and the timid, leaving more opportunities to those seriously willing to take the time to carefully work out
  • (Randy Pausch said: “The brick walls are there for a reason: The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people“)

4.2 Missions require capital

• Ideas come in “adjacent possible” (chemical original meaning from Stuart Kauffman)
  • That’s why science advance in the adjacent possible and it happens that scientists in different parts of the world discover/invent something equal or similar: they start with similar context and background and direction
• A good career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough
  • An innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field
• You need to be close to your cutting edge before jumping in something new: hence, the importance of a career capital
• Passion is needed, but usually when you ask people what is their passion, usually they have it wrong
• Think small, act big
  • think small: focus on a narrow subject for a long time
  • act big: once you reach the cutting edge, go after it with zeal
  • Don’t do the opposite, like starting thinking big without career capital

4.3 Missions require Little Bets

• Many have a big career capital and also potential missions, but few actually build their career around these missions
• Story of archeologist Kirk French
  • Started listening to a call from someone claiming to have found something valuable, than it came the idea of discovering people potential treasures, so filmed and so, when HBO was finding an archeo series, asked to his department and he sent his films, so he did it on the TV
• Peter Sims, after studying a lot of innovators, found that:
  • instead of following a big idea or plan the whole project, make a methodical series of little bets on what might be a good direction
  • you will find unexpected avenues and receive quick feedbacks, little failures and little wins, to arrive at extraordinary outcomes
  • each bet can last max a few months

4.4 Missions require marketing

• Story of Giles Bowkett
  • He had background in studio engineering (involving aleatoric music) plus he was a programmer
  • “Working from home is kind of lame when you don’t have roommates, a girlfriend, or even a dog” (well, it depends a lot if you’re introvert, if you have other interests and so on)
  • He read “Purple cow” by Seth Godin and a book highlighting the importance of open source software, so he decided to combine:
  • Archaeopteryx: AI in ruby to create dance music, released open source
• Be remarkable
  • Only a solid useful program is not enough to be noticed
  • Launch it in a venue that supports such remarking (an infrastructure that helps spreading)

5 Conclusion

• Deliberate practice like Feynman
• Research bible routine: once a week, summarize an interesting meaningful paper relevant for your research in a “bible” (for that, I strongly suggest you to build a “second brain” or personal knowledge system)
• Hour-tally routine: dataviz your amount of hours of deliberate practice over months
• Theory-Notebook routine: buy a really expensive notebook to write down your brainstorms, since it’s expensive, it will give you a sense of value
• “What’s your secret? Simple: call me any Friday night in my office at ten o’ clock and I’ll tell you” (listen again to Randy Pausch’s last lecture)
• System in 3 levels
  • top: tentative research mission – a rough guideline
  • middle: exploratory projects
    • small enough to be completed in less than a month
    • forces to create you a new value (e.g. master new skill and produce results that didn’t exist before)
    • produce a concrete result that you can use to gather concrete feedback
  • bottom – background research
    • expose yourself weekly to something new in your field (talk, paper, …)
    • at least weekly, free walk to think about it
• Thomas (story at the beginning), after the Zen 2 years, returned back to his job in bank, but with more awareness, that translated into better work
  • Noticed by his boss, he was promoted
  • Now he has lots of responsibility, he’s sure it’s not the same of reaching illumination, but he also know that anything else can’t lead to what he thought, so he’s happy anyway
  • he’s finally free from the constant draining comparisons he sued to make between his current work and some magical future occupation waiting to be discovered
  • Working right trumps Finding the right work
    • No need to find the perfect job, but find better approach to the work already available
• (being good is not to be confused to be said we’re good when we’re young, with this useless and even harmful habit to say everyone is good and special, as highlighted in “The subtle art of not giving a fuck”)

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