15 Jul Be Rare and Valuable: So Good They Can’t Ignore You – By Cal Newport

At Integrated Staffing, we have spent our summer quarantine reading books to help us pass the time, but more importantly to make us wiser, grow our passion, and become a better, more impactful resource.  A gem of a book that really stands out to us and offers a new concept on how to approach your job, work and career is So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport.

The question at the heart of this book is…how do people love what they do for a living? It is an important question to ask as we spend most of our lifetime working.  If we do not find a job that we love, we miss out on a significant amount of joy in our lives.  The author, Cal Newport, recognized the importance of this question. So much so, before starting his career, he interviewed people who loved what they did for a living.

To his surprise, he found out that many of the people who loved what they did for a living, did not have a pre-existing passion for it.  It appeared over the years, as they got more experience, more competent at their jobs, their passion grew.  This seems to go against our conventional wisdom.  The advice we hear is follow your passion.  If Cal Newport is right, following a pre-existing passion, was no more likely to lead you to a career full of passion than simply going into one of many fields that you are mildly interested in.

To back up his findings, he looked at the latest research on work satisfaction.  He came upon an extensive study by Yale researcher, Amy Wrzesniewski, PhD, who surveyed people across professions to see who saw their work as a calling that they were passionate about and who saw their work as a job simply to the pay their bills.  She discovered the same percentage of people across all professions, identified their work as a calling.

The real reason why people are passionate about their work, is that they routinely experience these 3 traits:

• Creativity – means that that they have opportunities to improvise their work and implement their ideas.
• Control – means they have some say over how, when, and where their work gets done.
• Impact – means their work has a positive influence on their co-workers or clients/customers.

If you go into your career, because you’ve always had a passion for it, but you fail to experience these 3 work traits, your passion will fade away and you will hate what you are doing.  So, if creativity, control, and impact are the keys to sustaining a level of a passion in your work, how do you acquire these work traits?  These 3 work traits are rare and a valuable skill set.  If you want something rare and valuable, you have to offer something rare and valuable in return. The big question then is…how do you develop a rare and valuable skill set?

1) Scrap the passion mindset and adopt a craftsman mindset.  Cal Newport says that passion mindset is problematic.  It causes people to think…what can the world offer me?  If the job is not providing you with a sustain level of passion, you will start to look for the next best thing.  This makes it exceedingly difficult for you to gain a valuable experience and, therefore, gain a valuable skill set.  The craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world.  Those with a craftsman mindset dedicate themselves to constantly improving their craft so they can be uniquely valuable to their team, their company, and their clients/customers.  They do not fret about a lack of passion at any given moment.  They know if they want to get better at their craft, the passion will fade from time to time.  They don’t ask themselves…do I have a passion for this?  They ask themselves…will I love the process of getting better at this despite how boring and tedious it becomes.

2) Take on challenging projects at work that differentiate you from your peers and force you to develop rare and valuable skills.  In the book, Cal Newport details a story of a Design Executive, named Joe Duffy.  Duffy worked for a large design firm after college and found it hard to differentiate himself from his peers.  So, he started to volunteer for challenging projects that most people were not familiar with.  A few of the projects were International logo designs.  After working on several various International logo projects, Duffy became the “go-to” person in his company for International logos. He was then recruited by another design firm to lead an International logo design group.  In his position, he had creative control over his work and more flexibility in his work schedule, and his passion escalated.  Joe Duffy eventually started his own design firm and had a significant impact on the design world. He   experienced a sustained level of passion because he took on challenging niche projects that other people were not willing to do and learn.  In doing so, it forced him to learn rare and valuable skill sets, creating a passion for his work and succeeding in it.

3) Approach your work using the principles of deliberate practice.  Deliberate practice is the gold standard for improvement, developed by renowned psychologist, Anders Ericsson.  If you want to become rare and valuable, you must incorporate the principles of deliberate practice into your daily work routine.  The best way to accomplish that is to carve out periods of undistracted focus where you push your abilities to the edge of what your are capable of by continually cycling between moments of comfort and discomfort and then getting immediate feedback and guidance from people who are more experienced than you (like coaches and mentors).  Just as you would go to the gym focusing on lifting weights to build muscles, you need to approach your work in the same matter and with the same intensity to build skills.

By adopting a craftsman mindset, and taking on challenging projects to improve your abilities, you will quickly become rare and valuable within your team, with your organization, and within the marketplace.

All that said, the question for you is…are you rare and valuable in your position?  This is a great question for any profession you work in and this book is fantastic read with incredible insight and a new way to look at your job or, better yet, your craft.  This book is a great recommendation for someone looking to make a career change or turning their current job into a passion.