So Good They Can't Ignore You

So Good They Can’t Ignore You sheds some much needed light on the “follow your passion” myth and shows you that the true path to work you love lies in becoming a craftsman of the work you already have, collecting rare skills and taking control of your hours in the process.

When finding himself having to decide between a job at Microsoft, a professorship at Georgetown University, and a career as a full-time writer, Cal didn’t deliberate anxiously for weeks, which is what most people would have done, in order to not choose the wrong one.

Not buying into the myth that he had only one true passion to follow, in which he would flourish, he knew that he would eventually come to love any of the three.

Cal says that whether you love your work or not is mostly based on expertise and experience.

He knew that all three career paths would start out rough initially, but that as long as he worked hard, practiced a lot and kept acquiring new skills, he’d eventually learn to love his work – so he just picked the one where he liked the location the most and could stay close to his girlfriend, the professorship.

That’s because according to self determination theory, intrinsic motivation, which we often connect with passion and being satisfied at work, comes from three things:

Autonomy – some sense of control over your time Competence – the feeling that you’re good at your work Relatedness – connecting with other people in the process

That means as long as you work hard and eventually become a master of your craft, you can thrive and learn to become passionate about any job you choose.

The likely reason why 43% of Americans are unhappy at their jobs, is that they constantly ask themselves what they want, instead of asking “What value can I bring to my job?”. Once you start listening to Steve Martin and try to “be so good they can’t ignore you”, you’ll be so busy trying to deliver quality work that you won’t even have the time to deliberate what your true calling is. Speaking of deliberate: Deliberate practice is the way to develop the autonomy and competence you need to boost your intrinsic motivation levels. It’s the kind of practice that keeps you in a state of flow, where your work is hard enough to make you uncomfortable and forces you to learn, but not so much that frustration wins you over. When you become a craftsman you’ll seek out those problems at work which you can almost solve, but not quite. This will help you focus on developing new skills while staying motivated, until you eventually…