Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

đź“– So good they can't ignore you

22 min read

Why did I want to read it?

I read this during the last stage of my PhD, with lots of doubts about what to do next, what “my passion” was…

What did I get out of it?

The idea of a “hidden passion” of yours, waiting to be discovered, is toxic. You become passionate when you work enough on a certain topic, and you become good at it (which has connections with 📖 Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: autonomy, mastery, and purpose).

Introduction

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Fulfilling his dream to become a full - time Zen practitioner did not magically make his life wonderful . As Thomas discovered , the path to happiness — at least as it concerns what you do for a living — is more complicated than simply answering the classic question “ What should I do with my life ? ”

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you need to be good at something before you can expect a good job .

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mastery by itself is not enough to guarantee happiness : The many examples of well - respected but miserable workaholics support this claim .

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Don’t follow your passion ; rather , let it follow you in your quest to become , in the words of my favorite Steve Martin quote , “ so good that they can’t ignore you . ”

Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion

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It turns out that Jobs’s complicated path to fulfilling work is common among interesting people with interesting careers .

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“ The key thing is to force yourself through the work , force the skills to come ; that’s the hardest phase , ” he says .

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“ I feel like your problem is that you’re trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them . That’s your tragic mistake . ”

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“ People are in a rush to start their lives , and it’s sad , ”

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done . She surveyed the assistants to figure out why they saw their work so differently , and discovered that the strongest predictor of an assistant seeing her work as a calling was the number of years spent on the job . In other words , the more experience an assistant had , the more likely she was to love her work .

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Competence : the feeling that you are good at what you do Relatedness : the feeling of connection to other people

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

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Martin’s axiom gave me a reprieve from this self - promotion . “ Stop focusing on these little details , ” it told me . “ Focus instead on becoming better . ”

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I track the hours spent each month dedicated to thinking hard about research problems

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There are two reasons why I dislike the passion mindset

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First , when you focus only on what your work offers you , it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it ,

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Second , and more serious , the deep questions driving the passion mindset — “ Who am I ? ” and “ What do I truly love ? ” — are essentially impossible to confirm . “ Is this who I really am ? ” and “ Do I love this ? ” rarely reduce to clear yes - or - no responses . In other words , the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy

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craftsman mindset , you should emulate it . In other words , I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion , and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you . That is , regardless of what you do for a living , approach your work like a true performer .

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Steve Martin was so unsure during his decade - long dedication to improving his routine that he regularly suffered crippling anxiety attacks .

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The source of these performers ’ craftsman mindset is not some unquestionable inner passion , but instead something more pragmatic : It’s what works in the entertainment business .

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a young man who was driven to develop his skills until they were too valuable to be ignored .

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The traits that define great work are rare and valuable . 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 .

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When Feuer left her advertising career to start a yoga studio , not only did she discard the career capital acquired over many years in the marketing industry , but she transitioned into an unrelated field where she had almost no capital .

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Given yoga’s popularity , a one - month training program places Feuer pretty near the bottom of the skill hierarchy of yoga practitioners , making her a long way from being so good she can’t be ignored .

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Duffy , it turns out , is from the craftsman school of thought . Instead of fleeing the constraints of his current job , he began acquiring the career capital he’d need to buy himself out of them . His specialty became international logos and brand icons . As his ability grew , so did his options .

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Esta historia vale ORO

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On reflection , it became clear to me that certain jobs are better suited for applying career capital theory than others .

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THREE DISQUALIFIERS FOR APPLYING THE CRAFTSMAN MINDSET The job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable . The job focuses on something you think is useless or perhaps even actively bad for the world . The job forces you to work with people you really dislike . 7

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always seeking feedback

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Unlike Alex , however , Mike started gathering capital before he knew what he wanted to do with it .

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Mike Jackson leveraged the craftsman mindset to do whatever he did really well , thus ensuring that he came away from each experience with as much career capital as possible .

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He never had elaborate plans for his career .

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Mike literally tracks every hour of his day , down to quarter - hour increments , on a spreadsheet .

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The difference in our abilities by the age of eighteen had less to do with the number of hours we practiced — though he probably racked up more total practice hours than I did , we weren’t all that far apart — and more to do with what we did with those hours .

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Even at that young age I realized that my discomfort with mental discomfort was a liability in the performance world .

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constantly stretch himself beyond what was comfortable ,

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it was also accompanied by instant feedback .

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One camp thought tournament play was crucial , as it provides practice with tight time limits and working through distractions . The other camp , however , emphasized serious study — pouring over books and using teachers to help identify and then eliminate weaknesses . When surveyed , the participants in Charness’s study thought tournament play was probably the right answer . The participants , as it turns out , were wrong . Hours spent in serious study of the game was not just the most important factor in predicting chess skill , it dominated the other factors . The researchers discovered that the players who became grand masters spent five times more hours dedicated to serious study than those who plateaued at an intermediate level .

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“ Most individuals who start as active professionals … change their behavior and increase their performance for a limited time until they reach an acceptable level . Beyond this point , however , further improvements appear to be unpredictable and the number of years of work … is a poor predictor of attained performance . ” 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 .

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in most types of work — that is , work that doesn’t have a clear training philosophy — most people are stuck . This generates an exciting implication . Let’s assume you’re a knowledge worker , which is a field without a clear training philosophy . If you can figure out how to integrate deliberate practice into your own life , you have the possibility of blowing past your peers in your value , as you’ll likely be alone in your dedication to systematically getting better . That is , deliberate practice might provide the key to quickly becoming so good they can’t ignore you .

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I’m learning a new mathematical technique — a classic case of deliberate practice — the uncomfortable sensation in my head is best approximated as a physical strain , as if my neurons are physically re - forming into new configurations .

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it’s less about paying attention to your main pursuit , and more about your willingness to ignore other pursuits that pop up along the way to distract you . The final step for applying deliberate practice to your working life is to adopt this style of diligence .

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This is why Martin’s diligence is so important : Without this patient willingness to reject shiny new pursuits , you’ll derail your efforts before you acquire the capital you need .

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

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Giving people more control over what they do and how they do it increases their happiness , engagement , and sense of fulfillment .

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enthusiasm alone is not rare and valuable

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is not the type of decision she could have gotten away with if she had followed a traditional career path to become a stock - owning , Porsche - driving , ulcer - suffering VP .

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she succeeds in this effort where others have failed — for example , Jane from the last chapter — by always making sure she has the career capital needed to obtain this autonomy .

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This is the irony of control . When no one cares what you do with your working life , you probably don’t have enough career capital to do anything interesting . But once you do have this capital , as Lulu and Lewis discovered , you’ve become valuable enough that your employer will resist your efforts .

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It’s possible that you don’t have enough career capital to back up this bid for more control . That is , you’re about to fall into the first control trap . In this case , you should heed the resistance and shelve the idea . At the same time , however , it’s possible that you have plenty of career capital , and this resistance is being generated exactly because you’re so valuable .

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“ Money is a neutral indicator of value . By aiming to make money , you’re aiming to be valuable . ”

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As Derek explained to me , he started by pursuing music at night and on the weekend . “ I didn’t quit my day job until I was making more money with my music . ”

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In some cases , it literally means customers paying you money for a product or a service . But it can also mean getting approved for a loan , receiving an outside investment , or , more commonly , convincing an employer to

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This isn’t about making money

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

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Pardis’s energy for these activities is a side effect of her enthusiasm for her work .

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Sarah became paralyzed by her work’s lack of an organizing mission . “ I feel I have too many interests , ” she told me . “ I can’t decide if I want to do theoretical work or something more applied , or which would be more useful . Even more threatening , I believe all the other researchers to be geniuses … .

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just because you really want to organize your work around a mission doesn’t mean that you can easily make it happen .

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Where Good Ideas Come From ,

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The reason important discoveries often happen multiple times , therefore , is that they only become possible once they enter the adjacent possible , at which point anyone surveying this space — that is , those who are the current cutting edge — will notice the same innovations waiting to happen .

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Scientific breakthroughs , as we just learned , require that you first get to the cutting edge of your field . Only then can you see the adjacent possible beyond , the space where innovative ideas are almost always discovered .

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From her vantage point as a new graduate student , she was much too far from the cutting edge to have any hope of surveying the adjacent possible , and if she can’t see the adjacent possible , she’s not likely to identify a compelling new direction for her work . According to Johnson’s theory , Sarah would have been better served by first mastering a promising niche — a task that may take years — and only then turning her attention to seeking a mission .

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breakthroughs require that you first get to the cutting edge , and this is hard — the type of hardness that most of us try to avoid in our working lives .

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Getting to the cutting edge of a field can be understood in these terms : This process builds up rare and valuable skills and therefore builds up your store of career capital .

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What struck me about Pardis’s story is how remarkably late it was in her training before she identified the mission that now defines her career . This lateness is best represented by her decision to still attend — and finish ! — medical school even though she was working on PhD research that was starting to attract notice . These are not the actions of someone who is certain of her destiny from day one .

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Here we discovered the importance of little bets . To maximize your chances of success , you should deploy small , concrete experiments that return concrete feedback .

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systematically studying books

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If you want to make a name for yourself in software development — the type of name that can help you secure employment — focus your attention on making quality contributions to open - source projects .

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Following Godin’s advice , Giles came up with the idea for Archaeopteryx , his AI - driven music creator . “ I don’t think there was anybody else with my combined background , ”

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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

Conclusion

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Most of these contracts paid between 10,000 , a healthy chunk of which we passed on to a team of Indian subcontractors , who did most of the actual programming work

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Motivated by my research and examples such as Feynman , I decided that focusing my attention on a bottom - up understanding of my own field’s most difficult results would be a good first step toward revitalizing my career capital stores

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chose a paper that was well cited in my research niche , but that was also considered obtuse and hard to follow . The paper focused on only a single result — the analysis of an algorithm that offers the best - known solution to a well - known problem . Many people have cited this result , but few have understood the details that support it . I decided that mastering this notorious paper would prove a perfect introduction to my new regime of self - enforced deliberate practice

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Once a week I require myself to summarize in my “ bible ” a paper I think might be relevant to my research . This summary must include a description of the result , how it compares to previous work , and the main strategies used to obtain it . These summaries are less involved than the step - by - step deconstruction I did on my original test - case paper — which is what allows me to do them on a weekly basis — but they still induce the strain

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a sheet of paper I mounted behind my desk at MIT , and plan on remounting at Georgetown . The sheet has a row for each month on which I keep a tally of the total number of hours I’ve spent that month in a state of deliberate practice

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By having these hour counts stare me in the face every day I’m motivated to find new ways to fit more deliberate practice into my schedule . Without this routine , my total amount of time spent stretching my abilities would undoubtedly be much lower

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At the end of each of these brainstorming sessions I require myself to formally record the results , by hand , on a dated page . The expense of the notebook helps signal the importance of what I’m supposed to write inside it , and this , in turn , forces me into the strain required to collect and organize my thinking . The result : more deliberate practice

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Getting things done was my priority . When you adopt a productivity mindset , however , deliberate practice - inducing tasks are often sidestepped , as the ambiguous path toward their completion , when combined with the discomfort of the mental strain they require , makes them an unpopular choice in scheduling decisions

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I also try to carve out one walk each day for free - form thinking about the ideas turned up by this background research

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As you might recall , a little bet , in the setting of mission exploration , has the following characteristics : It’s a project small enough to be completed in less than a month . It forces you to create new value ( e.g . , master a new skill and produce new results that didn’t exist before ) . It produces a concrete result that you can use to gather concrete feedback

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I try to keep only two or three bets active at a time so that they can receive intense attention

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I also use deadlines , which I highlight in yellow in my planning documents , to help keep the urgency of their completion high

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Finally , I also track my hours spent on these bets in the hour tally I described back in the section of this conclusion

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Ultimately , the success or failure of the projects pursued in this middle level helps me evolve the research mission maintained by the top level . In other words , the system as a whole is a closed feedback loop — constantly evolving toward a clearer and better supported vision for my work

Career Profile Summaries

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Overall , Pardis’s most important commitment was to patience . She didn’t try to force a direction for her working life , but instead built up her career capital and kept her eyes open for the interesting directions she knew this process would uncover .

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