So Good They Can't Ignore You

Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You is a book that rejects the oft-quoted advice to “follow your passion”. Instead, it suggests one to be “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, a quote originating from the comedian, Steve Martin, during an interview segment with Charlie Rose.

I read this book in spring of 2023, amid the backdrop of multiple rounds of layoffs in the tech industry. My goal is to summarize this book with the main points, as well as include some of my personal takeaways. Hopefully, you will find this review interesting and thought-provoking for your own career development.

Passion hypothesis is flawed and dangerous

Newport explains why the passion hypothesis is flawed and even dangeous. He uses Steve Jobs as an example of someone who was not passionate about technology before he founded Apple. Months before he founded Apple, Jobs was in India practicing Zen Buddhism and exploring spirital enlightenment. In addition, Newport adds that the passion hypothesis is dangerous as it convinces people about a magical job just waiting for them to discover. And when people don’t find it, they may suffer from “chronic job-hopping and crippling self-doubt”.

Build rare and valuable skills (craftsmen mindset)

Newport explains that to build up career capital, one needs to build up rare and valuable skills. Similar to the supply and demand of a market, when one possesses rare and valuable skills, it opens opportunities to work that have great traits: creativity, impact, and control.

It helps when one adopts the craftsmen mindset — one where one focuses on what he or she can offer to the world, as opposed to focusing on what the world can offer them. This is similar to the John F. Kennedy quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Newport uses Ira Glass as an example where Glass’s voice may not have been the typical radio host voice, but his unique editing skills allowed Glass to “push the boundaries of radio”.

Three disqualifiers of a job

On a tangent, Newport mentions three disqualifiers for a job that fosters the craftsmen mindset:

1. Job has few opportunities for you to build on those rare and valuable skills.
2. Job does something useless or actively bad.
3. Job forces you to work with people you don’t like.

Deliberate practice = strain + immediate feedback

Newport explains that being good requires not just long hours of practice, but rather a deliberate practice towards specific skills. With musician Jordan Tice and chess players, he found that deliberate practice involves:

1. Strain (discomfort)
2. Receiving immediate feedback

5 steps to getting good

Newport outlines five steps:

1. Decide What Capital Market You’re In.
2. Identify Your Career Type.
3. Define “Good”.
4. Stretch and Destroy.
5. Be Patient.

Two types of capital markets: winner-takes-all and auction

First, decide which capital market you’re in. According to Newport, capital markets can be split into two: winner-takes-all and an auction. Winner takes all is when one skill matters most, such as script-writing ability in television writing. Auction market is less competitive. It’s where each person may generate a unique collection of skill sets, such as a venture capitalist’s expertise in carbon markets for a venture capital firm.

Second, focus on what skill sets to gain. A winner-takes-all market boils down to that single skill set, but an auction market is one where there is more flexibility. You can accrue multiple tangential skills, such as becoming knowledgable in energy markets and the venture capitalist world, as is one of the example career profiles covered in the book.

Third, once you identify the skills to have, you should define what “good” means, as a goal. For a television write, “good” meant being able to have a good script to land a role.

Fourth, once you have a goal to work towards, you have to continue deliberate practice, which is marked with strain and feedback.

Lastly, being patient is about taking the time to hone the skills and be focused on the endeavor. Avoid any new pursuits that can derail your progress.

Trap #1: Avoid trading for more control until enough career capital

He uses an example of a student (Jane) who wanted to create a series of websites to fund her lifestyle, but dropped out of college, which posed difficulties for her. Another example is Lisa Feuer who gave up a career in marketing and advertising to start a yoga business, despite only having a monthlong yoga certification as the only experience. The author suggests this was rather bleak (although I do wonder if they, as a result of these “failures”, have gained something valuable, nonetheless).

Trap #2: Society will resist giving you more control when you have enough career capital

The second trap usually occurs when you have enough career capital to have more control in how you work. When this happens, the employer may resist your efforts to have more control. The example cited here was a senior QA engineer who was very successful in the company. At some point, she requested a thirty-hour-a-week schedule to do a part-time degree in philosophy. The company eventually allowed her to do so, but they resisted her move and did not appreciate it. Later, when she quit the job and moved into part-time freelancing, she was very good at her job, so her client wanted her to work full-time. However, she saw it as a loss of control and rejected it. The second trap, as a result, is when one’s employer tries to prevent them from having more control as one acquires more value.

(In my opinion, this seems like a natural result of being good at something: people will want more of your time and capabilities to help them with something. While this is a good problem to have, it means one has to be better at time management. This idea was discussed prominently in another book I read, Essentialism, which I may share more about another day.)

The law of financial viability

Newport explains that differentiating between the two traps is difficult. If one is pursuing more control in their career and met with resistance, how does one distinguish if the resistance is because they are falling into the first trap (to heed) or the second trap (to ignore)? The short-answer is — what the author calls — the law of financial viability, which means that if someone is willing to pay money for what you do, then you are on the right track. The author suggests that money acts as a neutral indicator of value, which affirms whether your work contained enough career capital to pull off.

Why to have a mission and how to find them

Newport posits that people who have a mission are more satisfied in their careers. He argues that finding a mission without having enough career capital is not sustainable. This leads him to wonder how missions are found or decided. He reasons that since innovations are commonly found in fields that were adjacent to it, it requires one to be at the cutting edge — or to have become some subject matter expert — to discover them. He suggests one to work on gaining skills to be at the “cutting edge”, and then dedicating one to a mission found in the adjacent field with vigor.

Make small bets with law of remarkability

Newport adds that in order to validate a mission is tracking onto success, it’s important to make small bets, which are small, achievable projects to explore possible ideas. The example cited here is about an archaeologist (Kirk French) who found a mission to popularize archaeology through a series of seemingly undirected actions. For instance, this archaeologist ended up hosting a TV show about receiving phone calls from audience members and going to their backyard to see if they have valuable fossils. This person didn’t decide to create a TV show from the beginning; instead, they initially tried a few things: attempted to digitize an old film about archaeology, shoot a documentary, etc. These small bets allowed him to learn more about the space, while opening up new possibilities.

Newport adds that the small bets should include — what he calls — the law of remarkability, which is that the project must be so remarkable that people will talk about it. This appears to be similar to the idea of virality in this age of social media, etc. The example cited here is a Ruby programmer (Giles) who created a remarkable music-creating program that propelled his career. Newport also cites Seth Godin’s concept of a “purple cow”, an idea that a purple cow would have a wow factor that distinguishes itself from the typical brown cow.

Concluding thoughts

In general, this book was interesting to read. It had plenty of anecdotes that took longer than I would have liked, but overall the message was pretty clear and straightforward. Since the book presents many actionable advice, what’s left is really applying them to one’s career to see if it works well.

One thing I wanted to do here was apply to my own profession of software engineering. In discussing whether a career capital market being either winner-takes-all or auction market, software engineering is probably more like an auction market, where a combination of skills are necessary to be considered a “good” software engineer, such as not only being reasonably competent at coding, but also being an effective communicator. In addition to the soft skills, a software engineer who understands a particular business domain really well, such as finance/banking or healthcare or e-commerce, etc, coud also be considered more valuable. Or, if a software engineer — most likely frontend-leaning — becomes also skilled in UX concepts, they could also implement better user interfaces. With software engineering, there are some skill sets that complement well that are worth pursuing. No matter what the skills are, it’s important to be so good they can’t ignore you, that’s for sure.

Thanks to Albert K. for reading drafts of this.