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.