Summary: In short, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” focuses on the idea that in order to find work that you love, you provide a rare and valuable skill. Rather than basing your search for work around your passions, you should focus on work built around things that you’re good at. If you’re not good at anything, start building skills.

General Opinions

The book has brought my focus back towards building marketable and valuable skills rather than focusing on whether I’d like my work or not. When I am able to do good work and am entirely focused on providing valuable solutions to my clients and team, I am almost certainly going to love my work (assuming a decent work environment is in place).

5 Highlights

1. Passion mindset vs craftsman mindset. Having a passion mindset means focusing on how your work will bring you happiness. The craftsman mindset, on the other hand, focuses on how your work will bring others happiness (or value). Happiness is often built on your interactions between others and when it comes to work, the primary focus is how well you can not only work with your team but how well you can bring value to your clients. When you’re able to increase the value you bring – whether it be improving your quality or bringing more in quantity – you’re likely to bring more happiness to others. In turn, you’re likely to become more impassioned about your work.
2. Little Bets. Launching little bets, or pet projects, are a way to test whether your skill is rare and valuable enough to bring you financial success. They don’t take long but can nudge you in a new direction, depending on their success. For research, this may be small experiments that give you important information that, when combined, leads to a much larger project with more significant findings. For business, this could be the launch of a pet product or a tweet mentioning a new service.
3. The Adjacent Possible. This idea indicates that you’re first an expert in your field. By reaching such a mastery, you’re able to regurgitate and summarize both the fundamentals and the newest ideas presented in your field. It’s only after reaching this stage that you can find specific niches within your field and propose new – rare and valuable – ideas. This is the point at which you are “so good they can’t ignore you”.
4. The Dream Job Elixir. Having control in your job (how much you work, the type of work you do, the quality, etc) is incredibly desirable but it isn’t achieved until you reach a certain skill level. Without anything to leverage for say, time off, you likely won’t have much control in your work. It’s important to note that this isn’t necessarily “control” in the sense of controlling others. It’s more-so a control over your own work. Basically, you call the shots. I thought it was interesting how, the higher up you climb on a corporate ladder, the less control you seem to have. There’s so much more riding on your image that many people have opinions over your work and you’re needed for everything and thus, have less control over your time.
5. The Law of Financial Viability (aka, will people pay me money for this?) Most people won’t pay you to do things that you already do, whether it be playing the piano or surfing. After all, you’re not providing a service if your only intention is to have fun and none of your focus is on providing a value for the public. However, if you are able to turn it around into something that is funny, useful, or interesting, then you have some basis for monetizing your skill.

3 Ways to Apply This Book in my Life

1. The Literature Bible – Similar to how Cal Newport keeps a log of research papers and conferences he attends, I intend to start a record of articles and books I read. Writing a summary for everything I read ensures that I actually understood what I read and if I don’t, it simply means that I need to go back and read more into the topic. It will also be a good source of ideas and research for other writing material.
2. Reduce stress over finding my life’s work. I am currently a civil engineering student headed for project management in the construction industry. I don’t know if this is the type of work that I will love, but I know that I’ll work hard to excel in my field. If it turns out that my company and I aren’t compatible or I am not engaged enough at work, I have no qualms with changing my life’s direction. I plan to work on other entrepreneurial projects on the side until I’m confident (and have proved) that they can support me and I can do them full-time.
3. Little Bets. I have half a dozen business ideas buzzing in my head at all times but am often unsure of how to pursue these ideas and make them into a reality. Starting now, I want to take the pressure off of going after these ideas by making it a more enjoyable, “unimportant” process that I am using simply for the sake of learning.

1 Book I Want to Read to Learn More

1. “To Weeks Notice” by Amy Porterfield – While I am in the process of building a valuable skill, I’d like to read up on digital businesses, others successes, and keep in mind key steps in the process of building a sustainable online business.