The Art of Manliness - #78： The Myth of Following Your Passion With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.760 While I'm excited about today's guest, I guess I'm always excited about our guest,

00:00:22.440 but this one in particular, I've been following this guy's blog since I was in law school.

00:00:26.000 That was a long time ago, six years ago, eight years ago, seven years ago about.

00:00:30.960 Anyways, his name is Cal Newport and he has a blog called Study Hacks where he writes about

00:00:36.920 how to succeed in school. He's written a whole bunch of books about being an effective,

00:00:41.400 efficient student. So if you're a college age guy or high school age guy, definitely recommend

00:00:46.020 checking out those books by him. But today we're going to talk about a book that he wrote two years

00:00:50.420 ago called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And in this book, Cal takes on this advice we see a lot

00:00:58.180 all over the place when it comes to your career. And that advice is if you want to find meaningful

00:01:03.320 work and make lots of money and blah, blah, blah, blah, all you have to do is follow your passion.

00:01:08.900 You find your passion, you follow it. And once you do that, everything will just magically

00:01:12.460 be okay. But he makes the case that that can actually be really bad advice and it can actually

00:01:18.420 lead to frustration and angst and anxiety about your career. And instead, he looks at what the

00:01:27.040 research says about what gives us or what gives us a feeling of fulfillment in our work and what we

00:01:32.580 can do to cultivate that feeling. So we're going to talk about that today. And so this is, I'm really

00:01:37.480 excited about it. This is something I think every young person in particular needs to hear. If you're

00:01:42.380 in that point in your life where you're trying to figure out what you're going to do with your

00:01:45.980 career, this podcast is for you. Even if you've been at your career for 10, 15, 20 years, you're

00:01:52.420 going to find some information in here that will, I think, challenge some of the assumptions you've

00:01:57.160 had, maybe reduce some of the anxiety you've had about yourself and whether you're in the right job

00:02:02.400 or not, and things that you can do to turn the job you have right now into a job you love and that

00:02:08.420 you're passionate about. It's not about finding, it's about cultivating. We're going to talk more

00:02:11.620 about that right now. So stay tuned. Cal Newport, welcome to the show.

00:02:18.560 Thanks, Brett.

00:02:19.340 All right. So you've been writing online for a long time now. It's something I've been following for a

00:02:24.440 while. Your study hacks blog came in handy for me while I was in law school. And so for any of our

00:02:30.860 listeners who are in college or grad school, definitely recommend you go check out Cal's blog

00:02:35.920 for content on studying and planning and things like it's super great information. But today we're going to

00:02:40.760 talk about this book that you published back in 2012. That's right?

00:02:44.960 That's right.

00:02:45.480 Yeah. It was sort of like Martin Luther hammering his treatise on the door because it's sort of an

00:02:52.660 article of faith nowadays that if you want to find meaningful work, you have to follow your passion.

00:03:00.020 And you make the argument in your book so good they can't ignore you that that's actually can be

00:03:05.920 really bad advice and can make you miserable. So can you explain why following your passion can

00:03:12.240 possibly make you miserable with your work?

00:03:14.280 Well, the first thing to make clear is that there is a difference between the goal of ending up

00:03:22.560 passionate about what you do for a living and the strategy of following your passion. Now people

00:03:29.360 often mix those up. But for our conversation, it's very clear that I'm separating these two things

00:03:33.400 because I think the goal of ending up passionate about your work is a fantastic goal. And that book

00:03:38.680 is actually about how do people actually accomplish that. The actual strategy of following your passion,

00:03:44.760 however, I do think reduces the chances that you'll succeed with that goal. It will reduce the

00:03:50.600 probability that you'll end up passionate about your work. And there's really two strikes against it.

00:03:54.720 So the first strike is that it assumes that most people have a pre-existing passion that they can

00:04:02.180 identify and then use as the foundation of career decisions. If you don't have a pre-existing passion,

00:04:07.280 that advice doesn't make any sense. We actually don't have a lot of evidence that most people do.

00:04:11.820 So what's the harm of that advice? Well, if you're like most people, and you don't have a pre-existing

00:04:16.220 passion, then if all you've heard is follow your passion, and everything will be okay, you're going to be

00:04:21.880 left alone, confused, and anxious. The second strike against this piece of advice is that it's

00:04:27.820 based on this seemingly intuitive syllogism that if you really like something and then do that for

00:04:35.660 your work, that you'll end up really liking your work. But it turns out that we actually don't have

00:04:40.720 a lot of evidence that that's true. If you look at the decades of research on workplace motivation

00:04:45.700 and satisfaction, we see pre-existing interest for your work actually plays a very small,

00:04:51.580 if perhaps non-existent role, in whether or not you'll actually like that subject, you'll actually

00:04:56.000 like that as a career. That there's many other factors that have nothing to do with a pre-existing

00:05:01.160 match of something you like to your job. There's many other factors that play a much bigger role

00:05:05.260 if your interest is ending up passionate about your work. So again, if all you tell someone is follow

00:05:09.900 your passion, then what happens when they match some strong interest to their work and they don't love it?

00:05:14.700 They're left anxious, they're left confused, they're left frustrated again. So I think this

00:05:18.840 advice is a red herring. It's way too simplistic. It's a childish look at a very adult topic, which is

00:05:25.440 what's the reality of how people in the real world build true, meaningful passion for their work?

00:05:32.540 Yeah. And another strike against it, and you kind of hit on this in your book as well, is that

00:05:36.400 you might be passionate about something, but no one wants to pay you money for it, right? You can't make

00:05:42.220 a living from it. Like you could be passionate about, like there's this guy, Brett Kelly always

00:05:46.940 talks about, I'm passionate about waffles, but it's kind of hard making money eating waffles for a

00:05:52.660 living. Yeah, that's true. And even then, even when you're saying that, it's still assuming, okay,

00:05:57.920 but if you could somehow make a living off of it, that that would be good. But we don't even have

00:06:02.300 evidence that that's true. You know, I love craft beer. And even if I could make a living off of it,

00:06:08.420 that pre-existing love for craft beer does not say that I'm going to love doing that for a

00:06:13.220 living. There's plenty of passionate amateur bakers and photographers who are miserable when

00:06:18.320 they open professional bakeries or photography studios, because passion and work has very,

00:06:23.160 very little to do with, hey, how much did you like the topic that your work deals with ahead of time?

00:06:28.240 Well, what about like all these super successful people, right? That, you know, tell you, oh,

00:06:31.660 you just follow your passion, right? Everyone like around this time, graduation time and starting off

00:06:36.720 school, they, they, everyone's always sharing like the Steve Jobs commencement speech where he's

00:06:41.000 like, follow your passion. Or like you have the guy, Richard Branson, in charge of Virgin,

00:06:45.420 whatever, airlines and records and his empire. So he's always, oh, just follow your passion and

00:06:50.820 you'll, you'll make money. What do you, what's your take on those guys? Well, it's true that if you

00:06:57.080 look out in popular culture, at least if you, you think about what you've seen in popular culture,

00:07:01.700 uh, the idea that lots of famous happy people are advising you to follow your passion, that does

00:07:07.720 seem true. But I think there's three different things that, that are going on to make that a

00:07:11.860 reality. Uh, the first is a lot of these people are misquoted or misunderstood. So Steve Jobs is the

00:07:18.020 perfect example of that. He said in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, uh, you know, you should do

00:07:24.440 something that you love. Don't settle for work that you don't love. And people assumed he meant

00:07:28.740 follow your passion, but that's not actually what he was saying. And we know that for two reasons,

00:07:33.440 one indirectly, because that's not what he did. Uh, he stumbled into Apple computer at a time where

00:07:39.280 he clearly had no preexisting passion for technology entrepreneurship. He developed that

00:07:44.200 passion later in the more complex ways that people do. And two, I uncovered an interview transcript with

00:07:50.040 his biographer, Walter Isaacson, where Isaacson says, yeah, in Steve Jobs waning years, I asked him

00:07:57.000 specifically about this piece of advice, follow your passion. And Steve Jobs responded, and I'm

00:08:01.940 quoting, this is Isaacson quoting Jobs. Uh, it's not all about you and your damn passion, right? You 0.99

00:08:08.020 need to get out there and try to make a dent in the universe. That's what matters. So Steve Jobs was not

00:08:12.800 saying follow your passion. He was misquoted. The second factor that goes on in this phenomenon is that

00:08:17.880 a lot of people who end up passionate about what they do make that subtle shift I talked about in the

00:08:23.780 beginning of our interview in which they equate the strategy of following a passion with the goal

00:08:30.580 of ending up passionate about what you do. So when the Richard Branchins of the world say,

00:08:35.400 follow your passion, often what they really mean is, Hey, you should set the goal of ending up

00:08:40.100 passion, being passionate about your work. You know, don't sell yourself short, but those are two

00:08:43.560 very different things. Then third, there are some people who do have a clear preexisting passion.

00:08:49.600 They follow it and things work out. And we happen to hear a lot from them. So I'm not saying this

00:08:54.820 advice never works. It's just how, how, uh, how often does it actually work is, is actually pretty

00:08:59.480 rare. So those three, those three factors create this whole echo chamber out there in culture that

00:09:03.120 where it seems like this is all that people are saying. Gotcha. So I guess there's like some, uh,

00:09:06.900 survivor bioship and like, what's that called? The survivor fallacy. Yeah. There's some survivorship

00:09:12.560 bias and yeah, but it doesn't matter if an effect exists, uh, when you're looking at an event space,

00:09:17.880 what matters is what's its frequency. Sure. Okay. So, um, just to be clear,

00:09:23.040 with recap, we're not saying that you can't be passionate about your work. It's just how you

00:09:27.340 pursue that attainment of passion is sort of flawed. Um, so you make the argument that instead

00:09:32.420 of like following your passion, you should, uh, cultivate your passion. Um, and we're going to

00:09:37.760 get into more details, but this is very, very broadly. I mean, what does the research say out there

00:09:42.240 that, you know, we, what things we can do to cultivate a passion in our work?

00:09:47.980 So the type of factors we know from the research that lead to a sense of passion for your work

00:09:52.560 include, uh, a sense of autonomy, a sense of competence or mastery, uh, a sense of connection

00:09:59.120 to people or a mission, uh, a sense of impact and a sense of creativity. General traits like those

00:10:05.140 lead people to feel passionate about your work. So broadly speaking, your goal should be to maximize

00:10:10.760 those type of traits in your working life and passion will follow. And I mean, this is something

00:10:15.580 that's, I think important to point out as well. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to like

00:10:19.880 start your own business and become an entrepreneur. You can find, be passionate about your work. Even

00:10:24.840 if you're working a corporate gig or you're working for a university or a government job. Um, I mean,

00:10:30.860 I guess the research is if you have those type of attributes, you listed out, you can develop a

00:10:35.280 passion about your work. Yeah. And I think that's liberating about this idea is that those traits

00:10:40.280 are quite agnostic to the specific type of work. They really have very little to do with,

00:10:46.340 have you matched your work to a preexisting interest or is it a certain type of work? It

00:10:50.440 just says, if you can have these traits at high levels, you will probably have passion for your

00:10:55.860 work, whatever it is. Yeah. I think that is super liberating. Cause I know there's like a lot of,

00:10:59.640 you know, cause I interact with a lot of young guys and there's like this pressure on them,

00:11:02.900 right? To like, you got to find something that is your life's calling and you have to be your own

00:11:09.220 boss and you have to, um, you know, be location independent and like, and it's, that's a hard

00:11:15.840 thing to do. And they, they just sort of struggle and it's, yeah, like you said, they feel frustrated

00:11:19.940 and anxious when they can't achieve that. And they, they feel sort of bummed out because they're

00:11:24.500 working, you know, a corporate job, like a stiff, but you can actually have very, a very fulfilling

00:11:29.720 light work life working that corporate job. Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you can get autonomy,

00:11:34.860 if you can get competence, great things happen. So I tell a story in the book, for example, where I

00:11:39.960 take two, uh, corporate advertising executives, these are real people, uh, who at similar points

00:11:47.700 in their life had this moment of crisis where they're thinking, okay, am I happy? Is this the

00:11:52.320 thing I want to do? Uh, one of those executives, and these were sort of junior executives at the time,

00:11:57.880 uh, quit to start a yoga studio. She was saying, well, I love yoga. I'm passionate about yoga. Maybe my

00:12:03.400 problem is advertising. It's not my passion. Let me go open a yoga studio. The other executive said,

00:12:08.480 um, I'm going to find some specialty in here, uh, that I'm just going to own that I'm going to

00:12:13.400 dominate because then I'll have more control over my working life. And I can get away from the type of

00:12:17.780 stuff I don't like in this job and do more of the stuff that I do like. And what ended up happening

00:12:23.060 to these two people is that the woman who started the yoga studio, uh, that quickly failed because she had

00:12:28.260 no particular high level expertise in yoga. And in the profile I found about her at the end,

00:12:33.240 she was waiting in line for food stamps. The guy who worked on a specialty became, uh, one of the,

00:12:39.440 the world's experts in international brands. And the profile I found about him talked about how he

00:12:45.580 had this great setup where he had his own essentially autonomous business, but within the umbrella of a

00:12:52.300 larger business. So he didn't have the stress of the risk of running your own shop. And he was talking

00:12:57.560 about the, the ski house that they had built where his whole family would come and stay with him for the

00:13:02.600 whole summer on the, on this lake in Wisconsin. He had this very fulfilling, happy life. Uh, so it's

00:13:08.060 two people at a fork in the woods. One of them said, I bet I can transform this job into something I

00:13:13.560 love. And the other said, well, I just got to keep doing something new until I immediately love it.

00:13:17.040 And we see there is a huge difference in the outcome. The person who said, I can make this job

00:13:20.720 into something I love ended up doing much better. Yeah. And so this idea of, uh, mastery, right?

00:13:25.840 Becoming the best at what you do is kind of where the title of your book came from, right? So good.

00:13:30.960 They can't ignore you. Actually it was Steve Martin, right? You came up with that line.

00:13:34.460 That's yeah. That was his advice to entertainers wanting to succeed in the entertainment industry.

00:13:38.920 Yeah. And that you gave those examples. It reminds me a lot of my dad. My, so my dad was a federal game

00:13:44.960 warden, um, which was basically, it was a government job. He was a bureaucrat. Um, during the fall season,

00:13:51.840 he got to go out and like check duck hunters, which he, which was nice. But for most of the time,

00:13:56.280 he was just like in an office writing memos, doing paperwork, doing interview, you know,

00:14:01.420 depositions, you know, just, it was like really boring stuff, but he did it for 35 years, but

00:14:05.880 like he loved his job. And I remember I was, I just, I was just, I was having like a frustrating

00:14:13.280 point in my life where I was just like, man, this work is so boring. I don't know how, how can I,

00:14:17.640 how can I find fulfilling work? And I asked my dad's like, dad, you've been doing this

00:14:20.860 for 35 years. How do you still love your job? Even though for most of the time you just write

00:14:25.440 papers and write memos. And he says, well, I just take one day at a time and I try to be the best

00:14:30.900 that I can be. And that's why I enjoy what I do. And, uh, it's like really simple folksy advice,

00:14:37.200 but like I, when I, once I, as soon as I started applying that, like things turned around for me,

00:14:41.800 it just became a lot, I don't know, just lifted off this, uh, anxiety to find out what my,

00:14:46.540 my calling was. And I just try to focus on what I could do now.

00:14:50.840 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's this great interview with, uh, Richard Bowles who, who wrote

00:14:55.600 the book, uh, what color is your parachute, which helped bring in a lot of this thinking

00:15:00.160 because it was one of these first books to say, Hey, you got to figure out what you're supposed to

00:15:04.040 do. What color is your parachute? And this great interview he did, uh, I think it was for fast

00:15:08.680 company magazine. He said, when I wrote this book in the 1970s, when I first had this idea that you

00:15:12.860 should sit down and really try to figure out what you're supposed to do. He said, people thought it

00:15:16.700 was a dilettante exercise. So our parents' generation, especially our grandparents' generation, 0.97

00:15:22.220 none of this would have made any sense to them. Yeah. What do you mean you're sitting down and like

00:15:26.140 really trying to figure out like what you're meant to do or not meant to do? Who said you were meant

00:15:29.640 to do something, you know, get a good job, do it well, you know, uh, have some pride in your work.

00:15:34.560 It was a, that folksy wisdom. I think, you know, we now see validated with science is actually a much

00:15:39.560 smarter way to build a fulfilling career. All right. So you have, um, in the, in your,

00:15:44.300 in one section of your book, you talk about different mindsets of approaching work. Uh,

00:15:49.880 one is the, the craftsman mindset and the others, the passion mindset. Uh, can you kind of just briefly

00:15:56.340 explain what the differences are between the two and how can you develop a craftsman mindset?

00:16:01.460 Yeah. So the craftsman mindset is where you approach your work, asking the question, what value

00:16:06.840 am I bringing to the world? And the passion mindset by contrast, which is more common these

00:16:13.160 days is the mindset of asking what value is this job bringing me? You know, is this what I'm meant

00:16:18.700 to do? Do I love it? What are they offering me? My argument is that the craftsman mindset is what's

00:16:24.020 going to lead you to work that you love. And the simple framework is this. If you get really good at

00:16:30.740 things, you produce real value for the world, you will gain more control over your working life.

00:16:36.840 If you have more control over your working life, you can steer it towards those traits like

00:16:41.620 autonomy and impact and connection and mission, uh, that we know lead people to really love their

00:16:47.240 work. You connect those two things together. It says, if you have a craftsman mindset, you're more

00:16:51.720 likely to end up loving what you do for a living. Gotcha. And the passion mindset, you're just going

00:16:56.320 to keep shopping, right? You're going to keep shopping. Yeah. Yeah. And you're never going to be

00:17:00.680 satisfied. And I want to say, I think the key, uh, the key there's two, if I had to summarize

00:17:05.620 everything I'm saying down to like two key points of what I found, I mean, I think the first key

00:17:09.840 point is that traits like autonomy and impact and mission is what matters. And the second key point

00:17:15.700 is that those traits are rare and they're valuable. They're hard to get. People don't just give them

00:17:22.600 away. It's hard in our economy to have a job that has great autonomy or gives you a great sense of

00:17:27.960 mastery or mission or connection. Uh, therefore the glue that holds these ideas together is you have

00:17:33.480 to have something valuable to offer in return. And that's why my book is so centered on, you need to

00:17:38.420 have a craftsman mindset. You need to get really good at something. It's not because just being good

00:17:43.000 at something by itself means you'll love your work. It's that that is your leverage to get these rare

00:17:49.480 and valuable traits into your life. You have to have something to offer in return. And in the job

00:17:53.720 economy, that's your skills, you know? So you have to get good step one. And then step two, you have to

00:18:00.180 use that as leverage to make sure that you can get lots of autonomy and mastery and these other

00:18:05.340 traits in your working life. That's my sort of simple formula that replaces follow your passion.

00:18:10.640 Yeah. It reminds me of, um, what's that guy's name? Writes the marginal revolution blog. Has that

00:18:16.860 book? Yeah. Average is over. Tyler Cowen. Yeah. Yeah. His whole, yeah. Average is over, right? Like

00:18:21.320 it's, if you want to be a success in today's economy, like you have to be so good that they can't ignore

00:18:27.460 you. Yeah. And it's not that, that, uh, just being really good means you'll love your work,

00:18:32.020 but it's, that's your foundation without that foundation. If you just run around saying,

00:18:35.800 do I love this? Do I love that? You know, the answer is going to be no. Yeah. No one is handing

00:18:41.180 out. Sure. Like the economy is not going to say, Oh, you want to just sort of, you know, work from home

00:18:46.120 with a web business and, and within a month be making a great salary and live all over the world.

00:18:50.580 The market says, I don't care. Yeah. It's an incredibly brutal economy. What are you doing? That's

00:18:55.260 excellent. And then, you know, it takes a long time to get good at things. So this craftsman mindset,

00:18:58.960 uh, is really the first step towards, towards realizing those goals. Yeah. I think that's a

00:19:02.960 good thing to point out too. It takes a long time. So I feel like a lot of young people,

00:19:06.180 they want to just right out the bat, have a salt, like an awesome career. Um, but it, that can take,

00:19:14.120 um, years to develop decades. Yeah. Which is why it's so dangerous to just tell people,

00:19:20.440 follow your passion because if you emphasize the match is all that matters, then people expect

00:19:26.440 to rewards as soon as they make the match. In other words, they will be conditioned to expect

00:19:30.900 to love their work on the first day at the job, if they chose the right job. And that's so far from

00:19:35.980 reality that you're really setting up a whole generation for chronic anxiety and job hopping.

00:19:42.120 Yeah. And so, yeah, I like this idea that you talk about as far as, you know,

00:19:44.980 having that craftsman mindset of developing career capital. Um, and I think, um, what's her name?

00:19:52.340 I talked to her. She wrote, um, something about 20 somethings. I forgot her name. Anyway,

00:19:56.600 she has something like a identity capital, but I like your, I like career capital because it applies

00:20:00.540 to work. Uh, can you talk about like what career capital is? Yeah. That's the metaphor I use to make

00:20:06.120 it easier to think about this strategy of mine. So if the strategy is get good and then use that as

00:20:12.340 leverage to gain desirable traits in your working life, uh, the metaphor that helps you visualize

00:20:17.660 that is this notion that, uh, as you build up increasingly rare and valuable skills, you, uh,

00:20:23.700 gain more of this fictitious quantity that I call career capital. And just like monetary capital,

00:20:30.020 you can then invest it as you grow it into the traits that are going to give you real returns in

00:20:34.760 your life. So if you want, um, a really desirable trait in your working life, such as you completely

00:20:40.460 decide on your own, what you work on and when that's going to require a lot of career capital.

00:20:45.840 So what you have to do is say, how much capital do I have? Oh, I don't have very much. I'm new to

00:20:49.800 this job. I don't have much skill. So what I need to do is build up my supply of career capital until

00:20:53.820 I have enough to exchange for this trait. So it just gives you a sense of, uh, an easier way to

00:20:59.400 measure where you are and where you need to get in order to make these career moves.

00:21:03.760 So career capital includes things like, I mean, it even includes like college, right? And things you

00:21:08.400 might be doing in college right now. Um, and then internships you might have right after college. Is

00:21:13.420 that right?

00:21:14.340 Yes. You can start building it right away. That's why, uh, uh, if you've majored in a specific topic,

00:21:20.540 uh, all things being equal, why is it makes sense to try to get a job in that field? Well, it's

00:21:25.460 because you already have a small foundation of career capital. So because you have some skills

00:21:29.460 interning and majoring in that field, it doesn't mean that you have to, it doesn't mean that's the

00:21:33.440 only field that you can be happy in. Career capital theory gives you this much more grounded

00:21:37.360 way to think about things. Oh, all things being equal, I already have some skills in this area

00:21:41.720 that, that reduces the amount of additional skills I need to build and sort of the, before I can start

00:21:45.920 getting good things. So it, when you apply it to a lot of different paradoxes or quandaries and

00:21:50.700 career thinking, this sort of simple metaphor actually often simplifies what the right answer is.

00:21:56.000 Yeah. Yeah. And I, I also like the point you kind of brought up in your book is that

00:21:59.820 you can develop career capital and you should find ways to, um, use that career capital you

00:22:05.540 developed. Like, so if you majored in, uh, computer science, well, it's obvious that computer science

00:22:11.100 is what you should do. But what I think is interesting too, is sort of how broad career

00:22:15.720 capital is, is like, as you develop a major or as you earn a major in computer science or whatever

00:22:20.300 else you major might major in, you're developing other skills as well. That could be applied into,

00:22:26.520 I guess, uh, other fields that are closely to related to computer science, but not directly

00:22:32.820 computer science, if that makes sense. Like, like I, like, for example, I went to law school,

00:22:37.600 but I don't practice law, but I learned a lot of skills, um, during law school, such as writing

00:22:44.200 and research and how to think analytically, um, that I've been able to kind of use in my, my career.

00:22:52.440 Um, and I, I, I guess I, I mean, all those people always ask me, like, do you regret going to law

00:22:56.620 school? And it's like, well, I mean, I guess I, in a way I do, but in a way I don't, because I

00:23:01.460 developed some skills that came in handy later on, or at least I found how to, how, how to use those

00:23:06.420 skills. Yeah. I think that's a great point that, uh, we're used to thinking about career in terms

00:23:11.580 of these broad level of categorizations, you know, industry and job and career capital thinking

00:23:17.540 gets you focused on specific skills and you break them out of these really loaded, you know, high

00:23:23.940 level categories like lawyer law school. And instead you say, uh, writing how to do intense,

00:23:30.260 deep research quickly, uh, the type of traits that we see is, for example, in the sort of the

00:23:34.680 standard classic art of manliness post. Uh, and, and I think that's really helpful because,

00:23:39.760 uh, it, it allows you to make transitions, for example, from a particular industry, maybe to

00:23:45.660 another one in a very smart way, because you can see, okay, I, maybe I don't like, um, law as an

00:23:52.140 industry, but if I can identify my skills and have some sense of how good I am at different

00:23:56.680 specific skills, you can find, uh, other industries where those apply and prevent yourself from having

00:24:01.540 to start over from scratch. Yeah. And I think as I was reading that section, one thing I brought up,

00:24:06.320 uh, one thing that brought, came to my mind was you often hear these, um, you know, stories of guys who,

00:24:12.640 you know, founded some company that allows them to like live the dream, right? Travel around the world.

00:24:17.820 And, you know, they, they talk about how they, you know, regret going to college or like, you know,

00:24:22.620 you shouldn't go to college and they advocate going to college because I didn't graduate from

00:24:25.860 college. I dropped out, look at me, I'm still a success. And the thing that I've always pointed

00:24:30.180 out, or I've always thought it, usually the guys who are talking about this sort of thing, like

00:24:33.820 they got into Princeton or they got into Harvard. Um, and then they dropped out and it's like,

00:24:39.460 they probably, because they got into Princeton or Harvard, they developed like career capital that,

00:24:44.700 um, allowed them to drop out and still be a success. Yes. And they often had a round of

00:24:50.220 massive investment in their company before they dropped out. You know, no one, I'm not impressed

00:24:55.740 about Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard. I mean, he, he had been there for a couple of years and his

00:25:00.660 company was obviously had huge potential. It wasn't a super bold, risky move, but yeah, I agree with

00:25:07.140 you. There was often a great potential for them to get in there in the first place. And they often

00:25:11.160 then worked really, really hard while there to build up the specific skills that they used in

00:25:16.160 their company. And also a lot of people drop out of college and, uh, it's a terrible decision.

00:25:20.760 Yeah. So we really got to worry about survivorship bias. There's, there's a lot of career capital that

00:25:25.380 is built in college, uh, that is hard to build without it. Yeah. So yeah, I guess people who are

00:25:31.840 listening, you know, if you hear people say, don't go to college, you know, think twice, you know,

00:25:36.540 don't just take it on the face value, look into it a little bit deeper, I guess is the,

00:25:40.200 is the word of wisdom there. All right. So, um, you talked about mastery, um, autonomy,

00:25:45.940 is a big part of cultivating work you love or control. And, um, I think many, most people like

00:25:51.700 intuitively understand this, like they want, you know, they'd be happier if they were their own

00:25:56.020 boss. So they want to become entrepreneurs. They want to become, you talk about people who want to

00:26:00.800 become farmers, um, in Vermont. Uh, yeah, it's funny. So my wife and I, we love Vermont. Like we go

00:26:06.780 there every summer and that's kind of the big joke amongst Vermonters is that you have all these

00:26:10.840 people from Manhattan who are burnt out and they decide I'm going to become a farmer and life's going to

00:26:15.560 be wonderful. And they're a complete failure. Um, so, so let's talk about those Vermont, those, 0.94

00:26:22.620 those New York banker turned Vermont farmers. Uh, why do they fail? I mean, they're successful

00:26:29.040 bankers. Um, why can't they cut it in farming and why can't they have control of their life by being

00:26:34.680 a farmer? Right. So it is, uh, as you point out there, the appeal of farming and I, and I, I spent some

00:26:41.220 time with some of these farmers and writing this book, uh, to try to understand this, the, the appeal

00:26:45.420 of this lifestyle is for the most part, the autonomy, which our intuition and research tells

00:26:51.060 us that you have this autonomy over what you do and why that's incredibly beneficial. So that's what

00:26:55.460 draws, you know, the burnt out cliche wall street stockbroker to buy the farm, uh, in New York or in

00:27:02.840 Vermont is that that drive for sort of more autonomy, uh, career capital thinking allows us to really

00:27:09.740 understand what's going on here because career capital thinking tells us that yes, autonomy is

00:27:14.380 very valuable because of that, it is expensive in career capital terms. So you have to have a lot of

00:27:21.160 relevant skills and value to offer in return. So what happens if you quit your, uh, banking job to go

00:27:27.960 start a farm in Vermont? The issue is you made a move for autonomy. You try to buy autonomy before you

00:27:34.120 had any relevant capital to invest in it. So you're not really able to obtain it and therefore you

00:27:39.540 fail to actually build up a sustainable lifestyle in which you have that trait. So I contrasted that

00:27:46.320 in my book with a very successful farmer from, uh, Western Massachusetts. And I said, let's actually

00:27:51.700 look at this guy's background. This guy has about a decade of honing the skills relevant to farming,

00:27:58.280 including a degree in vegetable horticulture from Cornell ag school, uh, and years of leasing farmland,

00:28:06.080 small tracts of land and, and, and, uh, about a decade of experience before he took on his first

00:28:11.200 major mortgages and bought his first farm. I said, that's how people become successful farmers.

00:28:16.120 They build up the career capital first that they need in order to successfully gain an autonomous,

00:28:22.440 successful life as a farmer. Yeah. And that, the whole section about, um, how we had like this kind

00:28:27.500 of like courage culture online in particular, where it says like the only thing that's holding you back

00:28:32.660 from being your own boss is you like, you're just, you're, you're afraid. And there's a whole

00:28:37.860 industry out there designed to help you not be afraid to make that plunge into, you know, being,

00:28:43.800 being your own boss. And, uh, you talk about like lifestyle design folks in your book and like,

00:28:49.540 I guess bloggers are in that kind of, uh, that realm. And I get a lot of people cause like, you know,

00:28:54.760 I make it, that's what I do. I make it my living writing the art of manliness. And so a lot of people

00:28:59.440 think, Oh, wow, this is pretty easy. If I can just like write some posts about something that I like,

00:29:03.960 then I can eventually quit my, my job. And like, I tell them, no, it's like, it's actually harder

00:29:09.380 than that. Like I've, it took me years to get to that point. Um, I don't, I mean, yeah, it's just

00:29:15.080 that, that, that point really resonates. I see a lot of people who they like the idea of like having a

00:29:21.140 blog that just magically makes money and then they can go wherever in the world and everything's be fine.

00:29:27.460 But like, it doesn't usually work out that way. Yeah. And I think career capital thinking really

00:29:32.140 helps clarify this issue once again, because, uh, yeah, people want to, to travel the world and make

00:29:38.300 a living off of a blog because that would give them, you know, again, incredible autonomy. That

00:29:42.100 autonomy always comes back. Uh, but autonomy as we keep seeing is very valuable. It's hard to get,

00:29:47.900 you have to have a lot of relevant rare and valuable skills to offer in return. And that's why,

00:29:53.020 as you point out, I'm very critical of the courage culture online, because by telling people that the

00:29:59.380 only thing standing between you and this great autonomous life is just the courage to stick up

00:30:05.400 and say no to your boss and reject the status quo by telling people that you're ignoring the goal,

00:30:12.620 the role that career capital plays. And you're going to convince a lot of people to try to jump into

00:30:18.360 these lifestyles before they have the career capital to back it up. And the, the result is

00:30:23.780 almost always disastrous. I profiled this young woman in my book who dropped out of college to go

00:30:29.020 pursue sort of vaguely speaking, I'll just live off of my blog without really thinking about it.

00:30:33.800 And she ended up in a really bad way because, um, obviously that didn't succeed. She had no income 0.98

00:30:39.420 coming in and without a college degree, it was very hard for her to actually, uh, find a job now that

00:30:44.500 she saw that this wasn't working out. That's what happens. It's not harmless to say, just be bold,

00:30:50.420 you know, seize the day. You got it. The status quo is terrible. It's, it's all it takes is just a

00:30:55.160 little bit of courage and your life's going to be better. It's dangerous. Yeah. Don't follow the

00:30:58.640 sheep. That's the only thing like, you know, yeah. And you know, the thing about the status quo

00:31:02.180 is that a lot of things that have a lot of structure and that we thumb our nose at, uh, are actually

00:31:08.200 fantastic skill building experiences. Yeah. People will look at college and say, ah,

00:31:13.720 so status quo, so normal. I don't need college, but it actually, uh, forces you to build a lot

00:31:19.060 of skills. People will look at grades and say, oh, I don't need grades. It's all like extrinsic

00:31:23.380 motivation, but Hey, what happens when, uh, you have to fight to get an A on a problem set because

00:31:29.300 you think you need this A for, to get a job down the road that actually forces you to do really hard

00:31:35.660 thinking on this mathematics concept. And you're going to end up learning that mathematics. I mean,

00:31:40.500 this stuff actually works pretty well. I mean, I agree that you shouldn't be a sheep,

00:31:44.420 uh, but there's a lot of structures out there in the status quo that actually do a pretty good job

00:31:49.400 of helping people build skills and gain more control over their life. Okay. Well, it's on the flip side

00:31:54.000 though. Um, you talk about, so some, some people make the jump, uh, for more control too early,

00:32:00.340 but then there's some people who they're at a point in their career and their job where they could,

00:32:04.940 um, get more control. Right. Um, but there's going to be resistance either from, uh, bosses or from

00:32:12.800 customers, uh, because people don't like giving up control. Yeah. This is where, yeah, this is where

00:32:19.340 courage is relevant is it's not early where courage becomes relevant is where you actually have the

00:32:25.600 career capital, uh, to start transforming your career to have more of these good traits. That's where

00:32:31.740 you really need courage because that's where you're going to get a lot of pressure, uh, from your

00:32:36.100 current boss or from society or whatever it is to stick with whatever route is best for them.

00:32:41.180 And so courage is important, but it's not important when you're 21 and just started your

00:32:44.900 new blog. Courage is important when you're 25 and the blog is very successful and your boss is saying,

00:32:51.100 no, no, no, no, no. I'll give you a promotion. You've got to stay here. You'll get this respect and

00:32:54.580 trying to make, you know, do I really want to leverage this capital? That's when, uh, things get tough

00:32:59.820 and where courage is important. Okay. So you mentioned throughout the, um, our conversation

00:33:04.800 about the importance of mission, right? And this is something that has vexed me for a long time.

00:33:11.340 Um, trying to figure out like what my mission is because all right, like I'm a big fan of Stephen

00:33:16.760 Covey, seven habits of highly effective people. And he's sort of the guy that popularized this idea

00:33:21.060 that you should have a mission statement about your life, about your work that sort of guides you

00:33:25.420 and gives you meaning. Um, the problem I found though, with like writing me, I'll, I'll write the

00:33:31.180 mission statement, but then like, I don't really like live it. And I think you sort of address this

00:33:36.580 in your book that it's, it's hard to cultivate a mission before you actually sort of know what you're

00:33:43.620 doing. If that makes sense. Is that, is that, is that, is that the kind of the point you were

00:33:47.060 making that you have to kind of get going with your, your career before you can start developing

00:33:51.700 that overarching mission that will drive you for the rest of your life? Yeah. So, so a mission,

00:33:57.440 which I define to be an organizing principle for your whole working life, um, that can provide a

00:34:03.960 real sense of passion. It's not necessary. There's, there's plenty of people who, uh, who do build up

00:34:09.880 passion without a mission, but it is a, a good strategy for, for having passion in your life. And a lot

00:34:15.540 of people who, who love to work in life have missions and how you summarize it is exactly right.

00:34:20.220 It turns out for various reasons, when you study, um, missions in the real world, uh, study people

00:34:25.860 who have these, uh, career organizing, you know, goals, what you find is it's almost impossible to

00:34:32.660 identify a good mission until you're really good at something. Uh, so to try to sit there at the very

00:34:37.120 beginning before early in your career, or before you even start a career and say, I'm going to figure

00:34:41.860 out my mission, uh, you can come up with something, but it's almost definitely not going to be

00:34:46.020 sustainable. It's, it's probably going to fall apart. So in other words, even for something

00:34:50.340 like mission, there's no shortcut to first building up a lot of career capital. You really,

00:34:54.840 almost everything good in the career space follows from first getting really good at things.

00:35:00.720 Yeah. Yeah. That, that was, that really, uh, late's, you know, enlightened me a bit because

00:35:04.600 that's something I've just, I've, I've struggled. And I've brought this question to the people before

00:35:07.620 where she's really like the self-help books and the self-improvement books. And they're like,

00:35:10.480 yeah, you gotta have a mission, mission, mission. I'm like, I've tried this before. And it's

00:35:13.660 like, it doesn't like, it doesn't work. Like I'll write the thing and then like, it doesn't resonate

00:35:18.040 or it just, I don't, I forget about it. And cause I, I never like, in my experience and throughout

00:35:23.480 in life, it's like, I, if I join an organization that already has a predetermined mission, whether

00:35:28.240 that's a job or like a football team or like, you know, at my church, they say, here's the mission.

00:35:33.660 This is what we're trying to do. I'm like, I'm all on board. Like, okay, yeah, we're going to do that.

00:35:36.820 But when then I try to do it myself, it's, I don't know, it's like, it's hard. And I, but I think what,

00:35:42.480 what it was holding me back was a preventing me to like living that mission was that I was trying

00:35:46.680 to start before I had gotten started, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think that's, that's absolutely

00:35:53.160 what's happening until you're, uh, at the cutting edge of a field until you, you, you've immersed

00:35:59.340 yourself in a field. It's just really difficult to actually come up with a good, sustainable,

00:36:06.140 impressive, but tractable mission. You know, it's, you, you focus first on doing what you do well,

00:36:11.240 uh, and then it'll rise sort of unexpectedly, right? Cause that's how this really happens.

00:36:16.860 It's just, you, you're doing something, you're going along, you're starting to make some progress,

00:36:20.340 you're starting to get some skills. And at some point something comes up and you're like, you know

00:36:24.240 what, this is a real problem that I could solve. And then that changes everything.

00:36:28.760 So, yeah, this is a kind of recap. So finding meaningful work, work that you're passionate about,

00:36:32.740 cultivating it, uh, be good at something, develop mastery, be autonomous, find autonomy

00:36:39.820 and develop career capital, and then eventually develop, um, a mission.

00:36:46.520 Yeah. Except for, I would order it this way. So, uh, this is my computer scientist mind.

00:36:52.260 Okay. Yeah. Right. Okay. So the algorithm is, would be as followed to build, uh, you build career

00:36:58.240 capital by becoming good at things, becoming rare, mastering rare and valuable skills.

00:37:02.180 Then you can invest that capital into the traits we talked about, uh, like mastery, like mission,

00:37:08.360 like autonomy. Uh, those are all things you can get once you're really good at something and are

00:37:13.320 hard to have in your working life before. So it's this notion of build capital and then invest,

00:37:18.060 and you have to do both. Um, so if you just get really good at something, but never leverage that,

00:37:23.260 then you could still be miserable. And if you know what you want in your working life,

00:37:27.020 but never get good enough to back it up, you can also end up miserable. You really got to have

00:37:30.780 both those steps. Gotcha. So, I mean, can you talk a little bit of how you develop, you know,

00:37:35.060 use these tips in your own work? Cause, uh, you're a professor at Georgetown, you're an academic.

00:37:40.560 Um, so you didn't, you didn't decide to become a, an independent location, location, independent

00:37:45.300 blogger, even though you have a blog. Um, so what did, how did you apply these principles in your own

00:37:50.960 line of work? Well, a couple of things were important. First, I didn't sweat the decision.

00:37:55.300 So when it came down to decide what do I want to do after college, I had various options, uh, having

00:38:00.860 long internalized these concepts, I realized that that choice was not that important. Uh, you know,

00:38:06.260 what, what, whatever I chose to do, I could transform it into something I loved. What really

00:38:10.560 mattered was what happened once I got started. So the, the first thing I did is I didn't sweat the

00:38:14.620 match because I didn't think there was one right thing for me to do. Uh, so computer science, uh,

00:38:20.100 a career in academia, it's difficult, but it had some, some big potential, uh, for crafting a cool

00:38:25.500 life. So I said, let me try that. Uh, and then I've been very patient is what I would say. I mean,

00:38:29.620 I, I have absolutely noticed that as I get better at being a computer scientist, I like it more and

00:38:35.460 more. You know, my passion for this field is growing along with my skill because as I get better,

00:38:40.600 I can get more of these traits, autonomy and mastery impact, and even mission mission. I'm only now,

00:38:47.020 you know, missions are common in academia. They're so hard. I've been at this, I've been

00:38:50.740 paid to do computer science for a decade at this point. And, and only now am I starting to pull

00:38:56.340 together what might be a sustainable mission for my academic career. That's after a decade

00:39:01.300 working really hard on this. So it's, it's a lot of patience and a lot of just, let me get better.

00:39:07.500 Where can I get better? Am I pushing my skills forward? And, and, you know, that's working for me.

00:39:12.940 And my passion and my love for my work has really grown over the years. And it had nothing to do

00:39:18.340 with following some mystical preexisting passion. I think that's awesome. So I think that's great

00:39:22.640 advice for our listeners who are, you know, making those career decisions. Don't, don't sweat it too

00:39:27.300 much. Just keep developing that career capital and be patient and things will happen for you. If you

00:39:32.560 keep, keep, you can't, you gotta keep working at, I'm not saying it's going to magically happen,

00:39:36.360 but you gotta, things will happen. If you keep developing that career capital, becoming better,

00:39:39.760 you'll eventually find work or not find cultivate work. You love it. Absolutely. Right. I love that.

00:39:45.360 I think it's fantastic advice. Well, Cal Newport, it's been a fascinating conversation. Uh, before

00:39:49.740 we go, where can people find out more about your work? Uh, calnewport.com. You can find out about

00:39:55.700 my books. You can find my blog. You might have a hard time contacting me. I don't use social media

00:40:01.020 and wary of email, but, uh, you can certainly buy my book and read my stuff. Fantastic. Well,

00:40:06.180 Cal Newport, thank you for so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. All right. Thanks, Brett.

00:40:09.760 Our guest today was Cal Newport. Cal is the author of so good. They can't ignore you. Why skills trump

00:40:14.460 passion and the quest for work you love. Uh, this is one of my favorite books I've read so far this

00:40:19.440 year. Definitely recommend you go pick it up, especially if you're in college or are the

00:40:24.720 beginning of your career. Even if you're in the middle of your career, go pick up a copy because

00:40:28.320 you're going to get something from it. Really great stuff. You can also check out Cal's website or

00:40:32.860 Cal's blog, calnewport.com. Again, lots of great information, especially about studying and deliberate

00:40:39.060 practice and deep thinking and deep learning. Really, really great stuff. So go check it out.

00:40:43.760 Calnewport.com. Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For

00:40:49.940 more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:40:53.540 artofmanliness.com. And again, if you enjoy this free podcast, I'd really appreciate it. If you go to

00:40:58.980 iTunes or Stitcher or whatever it is you use to listen to your podcast and give us a review.

00:41:03.520 I don't care what it is. Just a review of some sort. And also, if you like it,

00:41:08.760 please tell your friends about us. That would help us out a lot.

00:41:12.420 So until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - August 22, 2014

#78： The Myth of Following Your Passion With Cal Newport

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