I used to do book reviews along time ago, but now who has time for that, right? Besides, I don’t read nearly as much as I used to.
But every so often I read a book that inspires me to want to pen and share what I learnt from it. “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport is one.
Shamefully, my friend gifted me this book, which I started to read in 2016!!!! First off, this inordinately long time spent completing the book has nothing to do with the book’s ability to engage. It’s one of those “It’s not you. It’s me” situations. We can blame my schedule, a pregnancy, infants to look after and Lagos life for that, okay. So, let’s move on….
I am glad that I picked it up again. This book spoke to me on so many levels. The primary thesis it proposes is that “follow your passion (and the money will come)” is very bad advice. In a systematic way, Cal Newport explains that passion is rare, takes time to develop and usually comes when you are good at something.
And it’s true. Think of most graduate and entry level jobs with their boring, mind-numbing, repetitive and menial tasks. Newport explains that if you leave at this stage thinking that the job is just not for you, you would be doing yourself a huge disservice. Instead, he makes the case for sticking it out and developing mastery in the work, or as he calls it, build career capital or be so good they can’t ignore you. It is when you start to get really good at something that you start to enjoy it a lot more.
The only exceptions he makes for quitting a boring job is if it:
- Offers you no opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing any rare and valuable skills
- Focuses on something you think is useless / don’t care about at all / bad for the world
- Involves working with people you dislike intensely
By adopting a “craftsman mindset” instead of a “passion mindset”, you are able to develop rare and valuable skills, which not only enables you enjoy your work more (developing passion for it), but it also gives you the leverage to negotiate for more control over your time and projects.
The book showcases some people who left their jobs in which they had built most of their professional experience “too early” to do totally unrelated work. In all cases, they failed to distinguish themselves and did not succeed in these endeavours as they had expected.
So there is definitely that note of caution being sent to people who dream of leaving their 9 to 5 to “follow their passion.” Newport says that’s a bad idea especially if you have no career capital in this new sector. Rather, develop the valuable skills that you can leverage for that freedom you desire.
Newport speaks to some people who have found meaningful work that they are passionate about and recognises the importance of building your career around a mission, but he cautions that identifying a good mission:
- Takes time and mastery (and sometimes involves some mis-steps along the way)
- Requires taking little bets i.e. you try out small, manageable projects and learn from them (as opposed to working yourself up to one major project)
I thought about my career trajectory and starting the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC).
Growing up, I could not identify one clear path that I wanted to pursue. Rather I had so many interests and was confused about which to pursue. One mistake I made, which many do, is thinking I had to pick one thing to do for the rest of my life and that one thing had to satisfy me completely.
However, after being encouraged by a conversation I had with a lecturer from the University of Lagos, who told me that my course of study was not going to bind me to a career path and to feel free in exploring, learning and trying out new things, I ended up studying Economics. And once I had committed to studying economics, I discovered computers.
And really, my story has been one of paying attention to my interests, developing my skills and following the path to the next opportunity. So, I understand now that different career choices could have made me happy, particularly if I stuck with them long enough to become really good at them and develop enough career capital to command more creativity, impact and control.
When people see me running a nonprofit that I founded, they assume it’s what I wanted to do all my life. I did not. They also think that I enjoy my work 100%. No, there are aspects of it that I would be more than happy not to do.
I didn’t just up and quit my job to start W.TEC. Well, I did, but I had some years of experience working in the nonprofit space and doing the kind of work that I wanted to with W.TEC. I had started small projects for girls and built experience running them and dealing with all the highs and lows that came with it. I had gotten a (very tiny) grant and commendation from nonprofit peers before I up and left my paid employment to start W.TEC. It was still a crazy move, but not one that I could not have recovered from, if it didn’t work out.
And since starting W.TEC, we turn 12 this year (where did the years fly to?), it has been the fulfillment of a series of many small bets placed and learning from them?
So, what didn’t I like about this book? It was very repetitive, which is either a good or bad thing, depending on where you sit on the attention spectrum. For the more forgetful of us, his repetitions help to drive home the message. If you aren’t then, you might be tempted to think he is filling up pages.
The examples of the people who failed at following their passions were mostly lame. For example, the woman who quit her job after taking some hours of yoga classes to open a yoga studio for children or the college student who dropped out to set up a nonprofit to make the world a better place or something like that… On reading that, you thought: These people deserved to fail – passion or no passion.
It felt that Newport was trying so badly to paint a picture of what can happen if you follow your passion, but those examples just felt too extreme. Most people would be somewhere in the middle with their aspirations, I feel.
Then by the time I read the conclusion, I realised that Newport was just about to start his first real job post-college. So he wasn’t speaking from a place of much professional experience himself to even know what it must be like to work in a humdrum job and thinking of breaking free.
Yes, yes, I know, he is a researcher after all and he did run a web design business with his friend while in high school, but still it felt like it was coming from a very privileged place. My lingering post-read feelings were of the book being rather more academic than something more true to life that makes its points in a realistic and resounding way.
However, the central idea of developing career capital through time, patience and deliberate practice and of discovering your mission by becoming highly skilled in an area and through a series of small bets were the most valuable for me.
And you can be sure that I won’t be quitting my job anytime soon.
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