A talk by the author of So Good They Can't Ignore You, which was advised to me a while ago but I forgot to pick it up. In his talk he explains the main argument of his book (here's a summary of it). I'm interested in what other people think of it.
I don't like watching internet videos all that much, but based on the title I have to strongly disagree. I allowed myself to be swayed into not following my passion for reasons of practicality during undergraduate school. It was a terrible choice, and I was miserable, despite making more money than most of my peers. So I quit, went to grad school to really do what I wanted, and now, life is awesome. My advice is not just to follow your passion, but to do so in a way that makes monetary sense. Or, figure out what you love, and then figure out how to make money doing it. It's simple. If you can get up everyday, and be excited to get to work, you've made it in life. Not saying my job is always fun in the traditional sense of the word, but I overall love what I do, and I'm doing what I always wanted to do as a kid. It's awesome, and I recommend that strategy to anyone who wants to be happier.
Devil's Advocate: * Encourages a hyper-competitive individualistic mindset which in some cases, while producing individual excellence, can come at the cost of worse overall outcomes for everyone within the community you operate, ironically including yourself. * Places the responsibility (and the blame) for individual outcomes completely on the individual, without mention of external influnces, like health crises, educational opportunities available, social networks, luck, etc. * Does not account in any way for those who have devoted themselves to a singular subject for a long length of time and not succeeded professionally. I sense a heavy double standard here. When people who operate like this do become successful, they retain or grow their passion for their craft, and it appears like a symbiotic confluence. But when they fail to become successful, they can become desititue, and lose or blame their chosen craft for the outcome they face. It's just as easy (even more easy, actually, in many fields) for this outcome to happen (though it isn't mentioned), and for them or others to, in 20-20 hindsight, label their starting passion for their craft as "misdirected". * This isn't the most substantial criticism, but the choice of what craft to pursue is one directed by some level of "interest" anyway, even if it isn't your first "passion". Everyone chooses the path they want to take as some acceptable combination of that they're "passionate" about and what they believe the ultimate payoff of that path will be. The author is simply urging us to choose relatively less abstract/more practical paths than we've been culturally programmed to want. * The requirements for happiness outlined in the book summary are multi-variate, and it may be impossible for a person to attain what they feel is sufficient amounts of all of them simultaneously for the person to feel professionally fulfilled. * This is an idea tailored for those who will eventually specialize in a topic (combined with the fortuitous continued demand for that area of business) to such a degree that all the happiness.. things.. fall into place. It is not an idea that will work for those who want to be average, or feel they can only attain not-world-class levels of mastery in any particular subject. * Along that line ("fortuitous continued demand for that area of business") of thinking, as the labor force and technology become more and more specialized, the time it takes to master a topic will only grow. As there may be many years before one see the first profits (not progress, that'll happen along the way- I'm talking about profit) from the pursuit, there may be few or no short-term indications that the pursuit is worthwhile, in the sense of leading to profit. Exploring existing markets for what skills they currently value and working towards them may also not be enough, as entire markets and industries are revolutionizing and remaking them faster than ever before. Predicting the correct future job opportunities and having the ability to learn fast enough to train into them may slowly grow more and more difficult, for the reason of accelerating technological change. * Adopting this "craftsman" mindset instead of the passion mindset and being willing to practice the hard things for years without payoff requires start-up capital in a sense. It requires you have the resources to do it. The outline mentions this (?) that "mission capital" is required, but doesn't say where it needs to come from, other than implying it might have to start off small enough at first to be sustainable. * Some of the other parts are really about "time management", i.e. how one is supposed to successfully organize their time/habits to be successful once they've decided on a particular action they want to take as part of the overall path ("how" to do, not "what" to do).
First off, he mentioned that this is primarily about knowledge workers, which happens to be a highly competitive market where individual qualities are of importance. That said, His argument is a response to the advice often given to (young) people on what to do with their lives. Follow your passion has nothing to do with external factors either. Does it need to be an idea for those that want to be average? It's not just for the extremely talented either: this is more a path to become better than your competitors than to become the world's best at what you do. Maybe the passion mindset works for some people: that doesn't confirm it as a good rule to live by. Besides, the passion mindset is even worse on the point of reaching happiness: if you just follow your passion, the rest will come by itself! I think the craftsman mindset is better to reach happiness because through increased experience and expertise, you are more capable of arranging your situation in a way that you like best. E.g. if you're a really good designer, you are valued more and can afford to turn clients down that you don't like, which increases your happiness. Where do you get this from? Of course the first part of one's journey into a new field is riddled with inexperience, but that doesn't mean you won't make any money off it. This technique is about self-improvement more than anything. The time management techniques are him describing how to translate these general ideas into practice.Places the responsibility (and the blame) for individual outcomes completely on the individual, without mention of external influnces, like health crises, educational opportunities available, social networks, luck, etc.
This is an idea tailored for those who will eventually specialize in a topic (combined with the fortuitous continued demand for that area of business) to such a degree that all the happiness.. things.. fall into place. It is not an idea that will work for those who want to be average, or feel they can only attain not-world-class levels of mastery in any particular subject.
and being willing to practice the hard things for years without payoff
I must have missed this in the lecture, but it's certainly implied. This, however, doesn't mean the advice he gives will lead to the outcome they want, as I'll explain below. That second is just an extension of the first. As globalization continues and markets open, everyone may be forced to become competitive in global terms. The linchpin criticism is that neither is the solution people are actually looking for in the labor market today. The worsening working conditions leading to less compensation, personal autonomy, peer recognition ("relatedness"), etc. are driven by an oversupply of labor even for specialized knowledge economy jobs (ask science PhDs), which individual action directed towards becoming relatively more competitive in comparison to their peers, while good for the individual, isn't ultimately a sustainable solution, because it doesn't address that problem. In some cases you do, and in some you won't. Artists laboring in obscurity before their big break might be one example, which again speaks to the double standard of this advice (the ones that succeed do so because they had correctly identified a specialization and took all the right "craftsman" steps that would result in high career satisfaction, but if they fail it's because they illogically pursued something they were too "passionate" about rather than practical about). I don't think the idea that really is what is happening in many of these cases of the people whose pursuits don't pan out. I've know people who've compromised their passion with practicality when choosing a career path, taken all these hard work "craftsman" steps aimed at improving their mastery of (not their love for) their subject, become world-class and still not attained the results even close to what they expected. For example, in my country, individuals who went to highly ranked laws schools did not get the professional results they wanted, because the market for the law profession collapsed faster than they could even complete their education. -- If you, individually, do want to excel in a field, yes, he is definitely pointing towards the right ways to do it, given some luck and support. But if credential inflation without increase in average job satisfaction is an indication, in the wider view, it's not a sustainable recipe for the growth of everyone's happiness.First off, he mentioned that this is primarily about knowledge workers
It's not just for the extremely talented either: this is more a path to become better than your competitors than to become the world's best at what you do.
Follow your passion has nothing to do with external factors either... I think the craftsman mindset is better to reach happiness because through increased experience and expertise, you are more capable of arranging your situation in a way that you like best.
Of course the first part of one's journey into a new field is riddled with inexperience, but that doesn't mean you won't make any money off it.
if you just follow your passion, the rest will come by itself!
Yeah, but not a necessary extension for happiness. That's an important difference. Within reasonable limits, if you specialize you become more valuable. That some markets are oversaturated is unavoidable, but even within science PhDs there is probably opportunity to become better at what they do. I highly doubt it's a homogenous group of people. On the other hand, in the argument tree I linked in the opening post, he talks about a third of the way down about when the craftsman approach fails: if there are few opportunities to distinguish yourself. Some positions are just too obscure or specific to be filled by a driven individual. I think you're Dutch too, judging by your name and this example. If that's true, you know as well as I do that most of the students go to law school because they think it will land them a nice job or because they don't know what to study, not so much because they aspire to be great at their work. They don't fulfill all the requirements laid out by the author for intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Besides that, you make the mistake of judging the outcome by judging the method. If the way you approach challenges and problems is good, but it fails because of external factors (other people), can you really blame the individual when their methodology is fine? If I have a 90% chance of getting a good job that I like from studying somewhere, but I happen to fall in the 10% that don't because of factors that I didn't foresee, does that mean I made the wrong decision? In case of the law students: they know very well that far too many people study law school and it doesn't stop them, because if you put enough useful effort in and are intrinsically motivated they can and will rise above the mean.That second is just an extension of the first.
The linchpin criticism is that neither is the solution people are actually looking for in the labor market today. The worsening working conditions leading to less compensation, personal autonomy, peer recognition ("relatedness"), etc. are driven by an oversupply of labor even for specialized knowledge economy jobs (ask science PhDs)
For example, in my country, individuals who went to highly ranked laws schools did not get the professional results they wanted, because the market for the law profession collapsed faster than they could even complete their education.
He doesn't really say anything, and he doesn't say it in a dramatically uninteresting way. Perhaps more importantly, he bases everything he says on case studies of supreme ascendancy - if you're looking for a model of a computer programmer, "Steve Jobs" isn't exactly the median. It also seems like a vague distillation of a few other like-minded books. Dan Pink. Gladwell. The former, in my opinion, is worth reading; the latter not so much. "Follow your passion" is a poetic way to say "do the shit that's fun." I have no idea why anyone would ever call that "bad advice."
Maybe I found it interesting because I didn't reflect on my skillset in combination with the goals I have before, I just followed my interests. I don't know Gladwell or Pink enough to know whether this is a rehash of them. What books from Dan Pink would you advise? What I got out of it is that I should focus on improving my skillset to achieve long-term happiness, as doing work that you're good at, that provides challenges and is fun, is the most satisfying work. Just focussing on what is fun isn't a good strategy.
I think anyone who advertises a "one size fits all" strategy is selling books, not offering advice. Drive by Dan Pink is well worth reading. Here's a taste: Beyond that, the real question is this: what do you want out of life? I wanted to be a musician, dammit. Problem was, I really like synths and piano and shit and any sort of music like that was forbidden in my house growing up. No pianos, no piano music. So I was pretty far behind to begin with. Then, while learning to mix my own synth stuff, I took a course on mixing. When I transferred down to Seattle I ended up mixing in clubs. Still not a rawk star by any stretch of the imagination, but about 50 hours a week were spent amongst those who were trying to be (and more than a few that actually were - I'n'I got stories). The most important thing I learned is that for 99% of the people who are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be rawk stars, the best they'll ever get is "cover band." And yeah - they're making music for a living. But I bought an SY-99 off a dude with an Ensturzende Neubauten tattoo that played in a reggae cover band for a living. You think he really liked playing Marley four nights a week? On the flip side, I didn't have to make any money with his keyboard. So was I "following my passion" when I goofed around for four hours at a time on a Yamaha while also designing shock/pace leads for biomedical implantation? I say FUCK YES BITCH because A) I was having a helluva good time and B) biomedical engineering made me feel a lot more passionate than HVAC. It's all a balance. You need to focus on the shit that feeds your dreams and the shit that feeds your belly. Always try to align the two. Always figure out ways to bring them closer together. Do that and you can't go wrong. Abide by some wonk who says "don't follow your passion?" That's how tragedies happen. Like, literally Death of a Salesman and Ordinary People and American Beauty.
Will check that book out when I have the money to buy a book. Doesn't that depend on what you call passion? You could say that you didn't follow your passion (to become a musician) but found something related to it that was economically more viable. What would've happened if you followed the advice of 'follow your passion' and did become a musician? That you now ended up happier wasn't something that you knew beforehand, as far as I can tell. Any big names? Were they much different then compared to their fame now? Yeah, I think I don't agree with him that we should abandon passion altogether, nor go practical all the way. For me, I am often too passion/interest focused and might do good to improve my money-making abilities. Which is hard, but at least I'm building a nice CV.(and more than a few that actually were - I'n'I got stories)
Always figure out ways to bring them closer together.
There are libraries, you know. I recommend them wholeheartedly! It absolutely depends on what you call "passion." That said, if you haven't defined "passion" you probably shouldn't tell people not to follow it. For that matter, what does "follow" mean? You think I didn't try to become a professional musician? Back when Death Cab for Cutie was called Pinwheel I mixed their first album; I would have been the keyboardist for a band that would have given Cornershop a run for their money if my girlfriend hadn't forbid me (long story). They broke up instead. But I also "followed" other "passions."
I prefer to buy books when I can, to better support the authors and the local independent bookstores. And it's nice to have them. Maybe I communicated unclear. I didn't mean to start a definition war, neither to say that I wholeheartedly agree with the author. The way I read your comment was that you wanted to become a musician (your passion) and didn't, instead you went for engineering (as practical as it gets) with mixing as the fun part. It seemed to me like you didn't follow your passion, whatever it may mean. But a sentence or two later you say you did "follow your passion". So I thought there might be a mistake from my side, a different perspective on what passion actually means. I'm exploring what I think it means, using the not-so-invigorating talk as a backdrop. You seem filled with stories! If you ever make something like Bl00's Bedtime Stories, I'll be the first to buy.
It's all good, yo. All I'm saying is that it IS a definition war and that absolutes are stupid. And you're right - I got a practical damn degree 'cuz I didn't want to have to depend on my parents for money. And I'm down with the discussion, I just think it's important to know what we're talking about. I don't think the author knows what he's talking about. I've got a novel that's 70% edited. I was encouraged to write it by a guy who spends his days sitting on top of the NYT bestseller's list. We'll see how we do.