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.