The better alternative to the passion mindset

How adopting the craftsman mindset has changed my attitude towards work for the better.

source: @aurasky_ via Twitter

I’ve heard about Cal Newport’s Be So Good They Can’t Ignore: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love years ago, but only read it this week. I guess the title has thrown me off — I didn’t want to read a demotivating book that tells me how the “Dream Job” that will make me happy and fulfilled does not exist, but that instead, I should just work hard. As someone who struggled with finding passion throughout her life, but who also has high expectations for her career, this was the last piece of advice I wanted to hear.

But I’m so glad that I finally read it. Even though I already realized how the cliché advice of “follow your passion” is flawed, Newport opened my eyes to just how flawed the passion mindset from which this advice stems from is, and how dangerous the consequences of adopting such mindset could be. But this book is not a pessimistic wake-up call that tells you that this is it, you just have to suck it up and be content with whatever job you’ve got. The real value it offers is the alternative mindset that Newport suggested, which is surprisingly liberating. Although I wish that I had read this book sooner, I still found this mindset shift to be relevant to my current life/career stage.

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Newport’s first thesis is that matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter. How you do your job is more important than what your job is. And if you do it right, then passion will follow. Not very sexy, I know.

He defines the passion hypothesis, which is that in order to thrive, we should ask ourselves “who are we really?”, and connecting that to work we truly love. This has become the most popularized career advice in the last 2 decades. Steve Jobs’ famous “do what you love” Stanford commencement speech has amassed close to 40 million views on YouTube. But Newport reveals that Steve Jobs actually started out passionate about Zen Buddhism, and got into technology only as a way to make quick cash. As he became successful, his passion grew, until he became the most famous advocate of “doing what you love”. This pattern of passion growing along with career development is much more common than developing a career from a pre-existing passion.

Newport continues to debunk the passion hypothesis and warns readers of the dangerous consequences of building your life around a passion-centric approach by arguing the two main problems it engenders.

“Follow your passion” has became the default career advice. Source: Google Ngram

Problem 1: When it comes to our career, the first problem that we encountered when we subscribe to the passion mindset is that we become hyperaware of what we don't like about the work, leading to chronic unhappiness. “This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition, are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy - these come later. When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you're assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle.” I, agree. 🙋🏻

Problem 2: The other problem with the passion mindset is that the deep questions driving it — “Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?” are impossible to confirm. We are thus stuck in a perpetually unfulfilled, unsettled, and confused position, wondering what we should really be doing with our life, and questioning if we are wasting everyday by not finding that dream job.

While the passion mindset seems to be the default one that most people adopt these days, and that we simply have to accept that there is no dream job and that we should just suck it up, Newport argues that it is possible to create work you love by adopting the craftsman mindset.

Passion mindset: what value your job offers you

Craftsman mindset: what value you're producing in your job

Adopting the craftsman mindset, Newport argues, will liberate you from confusion and the feeling that you're missing out on life. Instead of the perpetual questioning of whether your job is your true passion, you shift your focus towards “becoming so good they can't ignore you”, regardless of what you do. Not only will this give you the clarity and peace of mind, but by practicing so, your work will become more enjoyable.

An argument against the craftsman mindset is that it only works for those who already have a passion. Only then would you be willing to grind out long hours with little recognition, whether it is practicing guitar or coding. But Newport argues that regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopting the craftsman mindset will be the foundation on which you'll build a compelling career. “Adopt the craftsman mindset, and then the passion will follow.”

We all want jobs that are creative, impactful, and allow us control and autonomy. These traits, though valuable, are rare in the real world job market, especially in entry-level positions. But basic economy theory tells us that in order to get something that’s rare and valuable, we need to have something rare and valuable to offer in return. You want good things in your working life? You need to be good yourself. How? By acquiring career capital.

Career capital: currency of desirable work. The rare skills, experience, and knowledge you build overtime that give you leverage in the market.

This is not a summary of Cal Newport’s book, so I won’t detail all the things you need to do in order to build career capital. But I do want to share how adopting this craftsman mindset did help me to gain clarity on my current career aspirations.

What I found was that forgoing the passion mindset not only gives you peace of mind at your current job, but also makes the decision of switching job easier. This may sound counterintuitive at first — let me explain. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who wants to switch job because the current one feels unfulfilled, but is paralyzed by thoughts of: is the new job really going to be what I wanted? What if it also ends up being underwhelming? Will I regret? Will I just keep hopping jobs and never find what I really like? Does the dream job even exist?

But the craftsman mindset actually makes this decision easier. Instead of basing my criteria off of something that is hard to validate (will I enjoy the new job more than the current one), my new criteria is, will the new job allow me more opportunity to practice craftsmanship, and is this an area that I would like to invest career capital in. It doesn’t have to be what I’m passionate about (or what I think I will be passionate about). But the skills must be something that I value. Looking back at my very short professional career, this is what I intuitively thought when I undertook a coding internship two years ago. Coding was something way outside of my comfort zone and would give me borderline panic attacks. But I intuitively knew that pushing outside of my comfort zone was a good thing, and that technical skills were something that I highly valued, even if I knew I didn’t want to be a developer for a living.

Here’s the plot twist. After that internship, I thought it was time that I pursue something that I’m more interested in, now that I’ve confronted my biggest fear. But as I took on roles that I was way more comfortable at, I realized that although I felt more confident and relaxed, I was not at all more fulfilled. There might be some nuances and factors that I’m ignoring here here, but I think one reason why using passion, or even interest, to evaluate a career choice will not necessarily lead to a compelling career is that we judge job satisfaction by how fulfilled it makes us feel. And often, this is only possible when we’re stretched a little beyond our capacity. But the things that we think we’re interested in are usually what come natural to us. This is not to say that you should actively pursue a career in something you hate and suck at… it’s more some food for thought to outline the unclear correlation between doing what you think you’re good at (in early career at least), and a compelling career.

Back to the book. Although Newport’s first thesis which is that “following your passion is a bad advice” is arguable and not always true, the alternative he suggests — the craftsman mindset, will always trump the passion mindset regardless of the work you’re doing. This message is especially relevant for the young and naïve, like myself. Rather than going on a journey of “finding yourself”, job hopping, committing fully to a field that interests only you but not the market, or “courageously” quitting your 9-5 to pursue your freelancer dream when you only have enthusiasm to offer, it’s liberating to know that I can just settle on a “good enough” job (provided that it allows me to gain career capital valued by the market and myself), focus on increasing that career capital, and passion will eventually come. And I think the key part here isn’t that passion is the end goal. But that this is a much better alternative, pragmatically speaking, then actioning out of the passion mindset. Newport is not saying that you should never step off a safe career path and instead pursue a more compelling existence. It’s about the mindset shift: “It’s a fool’s errand to try to figure out in advance what work will lead to passion”. Of course, there are exceptions. Some people will have a pre-existing passion and have built a compelling career around it. But for me at least, I find it way more useful and liberating to adopt the craftsman mindset at this stage in my life.

Newport, C. (2012). Be so good they can't ignore you: Why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love. Business Plus.

Random afterthought: while reading the book I couldn’t help but think about how Newport’s advice is close to the education and values I received when growing up in China. But ever since I moved to Canada 15 years ago, I’ve been more and more subscribed to the passion mindset. That being said, I think that even if I had remained in China, this change is inevitable as the Chinese has also been adopting this Western view. But that’s another topic for another day!

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Favourites of the Week:

Read: Optimise for Usefulness by Cedric Chin — Cedric’ blog is my favourite discovery of the week! So much pragmatic wisdom.

Listened: A Fresh Take on Tech in China from Your Undivided Attention (hosted by Tristan Harris!) — This episode was SO enjoyable to listen to, and indeed it was a (much needed) fresh take on tech in China. It explained why despite the seemingly oppressing digital authoritarianism, China has a much healthier digital ecosystem than the one in America. And that, as a consequence, Chinese citizens embrace the digital life much more than Americans. “When you leave China, you feel like you're going backwards. You have to think, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm going to a developing country now. This phone is not going to do everything for me.’ ” So true 😂

Have a great weekend!

Ingrid

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