So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

Find this review - and some more - on my website here.
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This book falls into the category of books that I like to call "Fast-food books". They won't necessarily make you healthier or your mind sounder, but it'll feel really good while you're eating them. There's only so many anecdotes you can digest. The most common criticism that people have with these kind of books are that they could've been summarized in a much shorter format - probably a blog post or two. The same applies here - only the irony is that it is BECAUSE of those blog posts and the reaction it generated that prompted the author to write a whole book about it.

Probably should have let the blogs say it all.

Well, now that my rant is over, I'd like to list some of the positive things that I got out of this book. While tiring at times, reading through the different stories and the paths ordinary people take to become successful made me appreciate the importance of THINKING about your career. For people in my field (software developers), it can be a daunting task to get ourselves out of the autopilot and start questioning things - which includes the choices that we've made for our own careers. But doing exactly that is an important and necessary step towards achieving a fulfilling career.

Give this one a read if you haven't obsessively read all those countless Quora and Medium posts. Otherwise, skip it.

I'm between jobs right now so I figured I might as well read this. I came into it having heard that it was the book about how it's more important to be good at what you do than to like what you do.

I came into it with the following mindset:
- It makes sense that, to have a job that is good, you should yourself be good at doing stuff. So getting good at doing stuff should be your top priority!
- However, it seems important to believe in the mission of your work. Shouldn't this be your top priority, too?

So one big question for me was how to reconcile those two points. I think Cal Newport does it fairly nicely. The basic argument is that desirable job traits such as mission alignment and creative control are things you need to buy with "career capital" i.e. being good at something useful. I buy it. The rest of the book has a bunch of examples and tips, as well as various stories about people who've succeeded or failed. They flesh out the argument, but also are easily skimmable - part of the reason this is such a quick read :)

Another question I had while reading this book was: is this idea, that all you need to do to succeed is to build skills, appealing because it seems simple? As I read, my answer to this is two-fold:
- Yes, it is appealing because it seems simple. The alternative that I can think of, that introspection is the key, seems very difficult. Especially introspection from a relatively unskilled perspective.
- The idea put forth in the book is a little more nuanced than how I just framed the question; I think the point is that skill-building is the foundational work for all the other stuff you might want out of your working life.

Lastly, this book is full of advice on how to actually put the ideas in it into practice. I don't think the advice is easy to take, but it's there, for what it's worth.