Am I So Good They Can’t Ignore Me?

As I have moved into the personal finance blogging community*, I have seen a lot of people who appear to have followed their passions.  Isn’t that what we’re told to do?  At the very least, lots of people have escaped the 9-to-5 cube life by pursuing a passion.  Aren’t we all aiming for that?

Not necessarily, according to Cal Newport.  His book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, argues that following one’s passion is bad advice and can actually make things worse.

An Aside

I set a goal for 2019 to read 20 financial books.  I’m pretty sure I started 20.  Unfortunately, I only finished maybe three.  I started this one in December.  I made a point to finish it.

Mostly, this was because I didn’t want to like this book.

The Crux of So Good They Can’t Ignore You

So Good They Can’t Ignore You has a pretty simple main idea:  walking away from a stable job to pursue one’s passion is not always good advice.  In some cases, it can lead in the completely wrong direction.  The book’s Amazon summary goes so far as say:

…a focus on passion over skill can be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.

Mr. Newport has the requisite stories of people who followed their passions, only to see it blow up in their faces.  Maybe going in that direction isn’t so lovely after all, eh?

Why I Disagreed

There are several anecdotal accounts in the book about people who have applied what Mr. Newport calls the “craftsman mindset”.** At first glance, some of the decisions the people in these accounts made to get where they are today, at least to me, appeared to be from much more of a passion mindset.  That just left me more confused about the whole thing, especially when the book takes the viewpoint that

Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before.

Some of the anecdotes didn’t seem to jibe with this idea, at least to me on the first reading.***

Does the Craftsman Mindset Work For My Job?

Mr. Newport speaks in the middle of his book about three disqualifiers for applying this craftsman mindset.  One of them jumped out at me:

The job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable.

Some of my readers know that I am a design engineer.  My employer,**** as well as many others in the same field, thrives on doing lots of projects fairly quickly.  This doesn’t really leave a lot of time for distinguishing oneself.  Furthermore, a lot of these projects involve doing the same thing, over and over.  It’s a good job, but it can become repetitive and, frankly, boring.

There are only so many sets of building plans one can see without needing a break.

Don’t get me wrong: there are certainly ways for people to distinguish themselves in these projects.  Unfortunately, they are typically through screwing up, or by taking an inordinate amount of time to complete what should be a simple task.  (Yes, I know of people who have lost positions for both of these.)  Obviously, if these are the only ways to distinguish oneself, then perhaps this job doesn’t lend itself to the craftsman mindset.

But Perhaps Cal Newport Was Right

In thinking about what So Good They Can’t Ignore You said, I’ve decided that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Newport has a point.  Maybe I could make myself a bit more indispensable where I am.  This would fall into the “bloom where you’re planted” basket, which speaks, yet again, to my need for increased gratitude.

And let’s be completely honest here:  I have not had a great attitude about my job.  I could go into why I have good reasons for this (and I do), but I’m still poisoning my current performance with the attitude.

Another reason for me, at least, not to follow my passion, is that, for the moment, I don’t really have a passion with which I could replace my current income.  If that isn’t a compelling reason…

So What Will I Do?

In thinking about my job in the six weeks since I started writing the first draft of this post, a couple of obvious solutions have presented themselves.  For me, the first solution is that I can learn a new (to me) design software for my field.  (Those of you in my field can probably guess which one.)  And, quite honestly, I could probably do with learning the building codes a little better, or at least refreshing the knowledge I already have.

If nothing else, these solutions will increase the efficiency and quality of my work.  Even better, it could help increase my income as well.

Suffice it to say, So Good They Can’t Ignore You certainly made me think about my situation (and my attitude).  And think hard.

 

* The outskirts thereof, I would say.
** The craftsman mindset, as he defines it, is to ask the question “what can I offer the world”?  This is asked in conjunction with building up career capital.
*** I have the book on reserve from my local library, so that I can have another look.
**** As soon as I wrote the phrase “my employer”, I knew that I would have to remain somewhat anonymous from here out.
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