While in high school, you may be faced with the decision of choosing your career or finding your so-called “passion.” But when you are so young and naive, it is hard for society to expect you to make such a hard decision.
While struggling with this myself, I came across a book called ‘Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You.’ You might have come across this book before as I had briefly mentioned it in my list of book recommendations. But the book offers such insightful information that it’s worthy to dedicate one full blog post to this book.
Be So Good they Can’t Ignore You is a book by Cal Newport that talks about passion and how to choose a career. He debunks the well-known advice of ‘following your passion’ and interviews a lot of people who are satisfied with their job and tries to find the reason that they are happy or found the work they love. Turns out, it is not their passion that leads them to be satisfied but rather the notion that these people worked hard in their jobs, and have become so capable in the career they are pursuing that they become happy. In other words, they have become so good that individuals can’t ignore them and that in turn leads to job satisfaction and success (skills trump passion).
Over the course of the books he introduces 4 key rules for you to follow:
1) Don’t Follow Your Passion
2) Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
3) Importance of Control.
4) Think Small, Act Big. (Importance of Mission).
So the next time you feel stuck with the hard choice of picking a career, always remember that not everyone has one set passion and can have many different hobbies and passions. But in the end, the amount of effort and work you put into the career you’re pursuing becomes the criteria of job satisfaction.
Sources 1/2/3/4