Before he wrote those books, he wrote the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You and a couple other books about how to be a straight A student.
First off, I wanted to say that I don’t like this book. I don’t like Cal’s “expertise” nor his evident bias throughout this book. You will see my disdain for Cal and his writing in the rest of this review, so I apologize ahead of time if that upsets. you.
Cal starts this book off with a viewpoint of not believing in passion, and he never challenges that viewpoint other than few anecdotes.
My View On Cal
You might tell me that I am less successful than Cal so what do I know. However, at the time Cal wrote this book he was only a blogger and a graduate student. The reason he wrote the book is because he was about to become a computer science professor.
Before plunging into a boring career in academia, he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t missing anything by not following his passion. He went out there and found evidence to make himself comfortable with this.
There is a gaping hole the size of the universe in Cal’s argument. The argument is called art. What else would you say that artists are doing than following their passion? Many little kids like Justin Beiber find an art that they love doing and they follow that for the rest of their lives. Justin Beiber did not need to go to school or corporate job to build his musical skills. It was a passion within him that he couldn’t hide. Another blatant category of artists that follow their passions are rappers. There is no skill trajectory for rappers. Rappers can rap about money, crime, women, etc. Many times they are viewed as social outsiders. Most people would not go into a rap career unless it was their passion. Passion exists. Just because Cal Newport is one of the most bland people on the planet with no passions does not mean people with passions need to ignore those and go build some skill that is viewed as “useful” by Cal Newport.
Since Cal Newport can’t be possible talking about artists, I think he is targeting people like himself. People who have no passions in life but are still trying to survive. To these people he says, don’t worry passion doesn’t exist. Let me show you the way. He shows the reader the way to success through 4 rules and various “laws” under those rules. I don’t understand why there are laws under rules and what the difference is, but whatever.
Cal’s 4 Rules For Career Success
Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion
First rule of passion club? Don’t follow your passion. He provides to sick examples of why not to follow your passion. One is a woman who follows her passion for yoga and a man who follows his passion to be a monk. Both ended up broke and unhappy. It become evident in these stories that these people didn’t have passions. They were just finding ways to channel their emotions into a spiritual path hoping that spirituality would solve their inner emptiness. They didn’t think about how they’d pay their bills or generate revenue.
Cal also tries to prove the passion hypothesis as a hoax built by a publishing company.
He cites the birth of the passion movement to the book What Color Is Your Parachute that came out in the 1970’s. This book is supposed to help people navigate career change and find a more fulfilling job. It isn’t supposed to help you pursue your passion which is what Cal says it does.
He said this books started the whole what is your passion movement, but many other reviewers of this book have already stated that What Color Is your Parachute is based on uncovering your skills and then finding the job that suits your skills. Cal Newport obviously did not read this book or do his research here.
After he brushes aside the passion hypothesis as a hoax, he then tells you the steps to be successful since passion does not exist in the universe. This leads to rule number 2.
Rule #2 Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
He’s obviously obsessed with Steve Martin and cites something Steve Martin once said as the path towards life fulfillment — be so good they can’t ignore you. Basically, choose a “useful” career or path in life, and develop unique skills in that career or path.
He said that Steve Martin just worked hard until he ultimately became good at comedy and the banjo and this is what Steve Martin tells other people to do as well when doling out career advice.
In order to be like Steve Martin, Cal encourages you to develop a craftsmen mindset.
He urges people to develop a craftsmen mindset and not a passion mindset. In other words, try to understand what you can offer the world and not what the world can offer you. This entails building skills up in whatever career you are in.
He then goes into traits that define great work.
Creativity, Impact, and Control – In order to find great work you need to have these three things. I find this hilarious. This is how you know that Cal Newport has never had a real job and this why so many people follow their passions. They want to pursue their dreams so that they have impact in control.
In order to love your career, you will then have to use those unique skills to develop career capital. Once you have career capital, then you can cash it in for more control to feel more fulfilled.
Unfortunately, Cal says there are some scenarios where its not worth building career capital. He says to avoid jobs where you:
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have few opportunities to distinguish yourself
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focus on things that you view as useless
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work with people you don’t like
That’s easy. That basically describes most jobs in America. I love this book.
I think what Cal is trying to say here is find a job where you enjoy the people you work with. In my experience, in order to be able to do what Cal wants you to do to build skills, you need to find a boss that values you and takes interest in your career. You can do almost anything in your career if you boss or bosses value you and look out for you.
Cal then goes on to provide examples. The first one is a tv screen write and the second is a guitarist. He says both worked up from the bottoms of their industry and practiced deliberately. I agree with the deliberate practice concept. In order to master any skill, you need to practice deliberately. You can’t just blatantly apply the 10,000 hour rule and hope you come out a millionaire. You need to focus on what you are doing well and where you need to improve. You need to constantly work improving yourself to set yourself apart.
Rule #3 – Turn Down Promotion
This rule is a confusing rule. Turn down a promotion what does that have to do with not following your promotion. What Cal says is that you need to work on gaining control of what you do and how to do it in order to develop skills, so you need to avoid promotions.
Promotions will only distract you and give you more responsibilities that will take away from your ability to become better at what you do .
He says there are a couple of traps to avoid while trying to gain control. In order to gain control, you first need to gain career capital. Career capital comes from skills so you first need to build those up. The second trap is that companies want you stay on the standard career track once they like. They won’t want to allow you to have more autonomy once they realize you are good. He encourages people to avoid these 2 traps.
I agree with the second trap. As you people realize you are a good worker, more people come to you with problems to solve. Especially poor performing employees and superiors. They like utilize skilled employees to do difficult work while they take the political capital from you.
This is where Cal stuffs a law into the book. The law of financial viability. He references Derek Sivers who is a well known entreprenuer and blogger. Derek Sivers tells people not to follow their passion until it if financially viable and Cal agrees with this. Again I cite artists as a reason this is wrong. I agree that people should always pursue financial independence and profit when pursuing passions. It’s ok to pursue passions if they aren’t making money at first. All you have to do is look at musicians and other artists. Do all movie makers and rappers make money before they pursue their craft? No they get better at their passion until enough people are aware of them and pay them to perform or pay them for their art.
Rule #4 Think Small Act Big
This whole section is about having a mission. Here Cal provides an example of a doctor that didn’t want to be a doctor but enjoyed helping people out. He encourages people to find a mission in order to keep them moving forward in their careers. To me this whole section sounded like passion. I just feel like Cal has a bias against passion even though he essentially points to it in several places throughout the book. How can you have a mission if you have no passion for anything?
In this section, Cal inserts another Cal rule. You must follow the law of remarkability. In order to be successful and make money, you must be remarkable. You must be completely unique and different than others in order to succeed? Not sure why this in this section, but it’s a rule so make sure to follow it.
What I believe
You should not follow your passion if you have no passions. You should also not follow your passions if you have zero plans for monetization. You need to be able to monetize what you love to do or at least be open to brainstorming how you can monetize your passion. Cal loved following people who had no plans on monetizing their ideas. These people often could not hold jobs anywhere else. This wasn’t a problem with the passion principle. It was a problem with people that aren’t committed to something or hard working.
Follow your passion. Put your back against the wall and pursue your dream. you only have one life. If you don’t have a passion, then pursue financial freedom until you find out what you like doing.
