A review by dunguyen
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport
3.0
I am a bit conflicted by this book. One hand I do agree with it, on the other hand, I also disagree with it. In So Good They Can't Ignore You, Cal Newport takes on passion. He argues that passion and following passion is dangerous as it leaves people disillusioned and sets them up for failure. He introduces something called Career Capital which is actually just skills and experience and argues that building skills and experiences lead to a greater chance to eventually get you to work that you love.
So why am I so conflicted by this book? I think he makes valid points that acquiring skills will ultimately lead you to get to interesting work. But on the other hand, I think he dismisses passion too easily. For Newport passion always leads to failure evidenced by him cherry picking one example which goes to almost be definite proof. Perhaps the world isn't so simple to boil down to one path? The way I read this book was that it had a preference for going the same established way that everyone else has gone down. Newport seems to have a clear preference for education and working up career ladders which is perhaps not that surprising seeing as he's a professor at Georgetown University.
I think this book is excellent for those who don't quite know their passion or perhaps feel stuck in their current situation. The principles are great, build your skills, combine your skills into new combinations, ensure that the skills you have are the ones that are sought after. But don't pay too much attention to the parts about passion as it seems the passion part of the book is the least interesting part.
So why am I so conflicted by this book? I think he makes valid points that acquiring skills will ultimately lead you to get to interesting work. But on the other hand, I think he dismisses passion too easily. For Newport passion always leads to failure evidenced by him cherry picking one example which goes to almost be definite proof. Perhaps the world isn't so simple to boil down to one path? The way I read this book was that it had a preference for going the same established way that everyone else has gone down. Newport seems to have a clear preference for education and working up career ladders which is perhaps not that surprising seeing as he's a professor at Georgetown University.
I think this book is excellent for those who don't quite know their passion or perhaps feel stuck in their current situation. The principles are great, build your skills, combine your skills into new combinations, ensure that the skills you have are the ones that are sought after. But don't pay too much attention to the parts about passion as it seems the passion part of the book is the least interesting part.