#78： The Myth of Following Your Passion With Cal Newport
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett McKay sits down with Cal Newport to talk about his new book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You." In this book, Cal takes on advice we see all over the place when it comes to your career and argues that it's actually bad advice and can actually make you miserable in your work.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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While I'm excited about today's guest, I guess I'm always excited about our guest,
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but this one in particular, I've been following this guy's blog since I was in law school.
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That was a long time ago, six years ago, eight years ago, seven years ago about.
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Anyways, his name is Cal Newport and he has a blog called Study Hacks where he writes about
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how to succeed in school. He's written a whole bunch of books about being an effective,
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efficient student. So if you're a college age guy or high school age guy, definitely recommend
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checking out those books by him. But today we're going to talk about a book that he wrote two years
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ago called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And in this book, Cal takes on this advice we see a lot
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all over the place when it comes to your career. And that advice is if you want to find meaningful
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work and make lots of money and blah, blah, blah, blah, all you have to do is follow your passion.
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You find your passion, you follow it. And once you do that, everything will just magically
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be okay. But he makes the case that that can actually be really bad advice and it can actually
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lead to frustration and angst and anxiety about your career. And instead, he looks at what the
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research says about what gives us or what gives us a feeling of fulfillment in our work and what we
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can do to cultivate that feeling. So we're going to talk about that today. And so this is, I'm really
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excited about it. This is something I think every young person in particular needs to hear. If you're
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in that point in your life where you're trying to figure out what you're going to do with your
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career, this podcast is for you. Even if you've been at your career for 10, 15, 20 years, you're
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going to find some information in here that will, I think, challenge some of the assumptions you've
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had, maybe reduce some of the anxiety you've had about yourself and whether you're in the right job
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or not, and things that you can do to turn the job you have right now into a job you love and that
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you're passionate about. It's not about finding, it's about cultivating. We're going to talk more
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about that right now. So stay tuned. Cal Newport, welcome to the show.
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All right. So you've been writing online for a long time now. It's something I've been following for a
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while. Your study hacks blog came in handy for me while I was in law school. And so for any of our
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listeners who are in college or grad school, definitely recommend you go check out Cal's blog
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for content on studying and planning and things like it's super great information. But today we're going to
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talk about this book that you published back in 2012. That's right?
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Yeah. It was sort of like Martin Luther hammering his treatise on the door because it's sort of an
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article of faith nowadays that if you want to find meaningful work, you have to follow your passion.
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And you make the argument in your book so good they can't ignore you that that's actually can be
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really bad advice and can make you miserable. So can you explain why following your passion can
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Well, the first thing to make clear is that there is a difference between the goal of ending up
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passionate about what you do for a living and the strategy of following your passion. Now people
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often mix those up. But for our conversation, it's very clear that I'm separating these two things
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because I think the goal of ending up passionate about your work is a fantastic goal. And that book
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is actually about how do people actually accomplish that. The actual strategy of following your passion,
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however, I do think reduces the chances that you'll succeed with that goal. It will reduce the
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probability that you'll end up passionate about your work. And there's really two strikes against it.
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So the first strike is that it assumes that most people have a pre-existing passion that they can
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identify and then use as the foundation of career decisions. If you don't have a pre-existing passion,
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that advice doesn't make any sense. We actually don't have a lot of evidence that most people do.
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So what's the harm of that advice? Well, if you're like most people, and you don't have a pre-existing
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passion, then if all you've heard is follow your passion, and everything will be okay, you're going to be
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left alone, confused, and anxious. The second strike against this piece of advice is that it's
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based on this seemingly intuitive syllogism that if you really like something and then do that for
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your work, that you'll end up really liking your work. But it turns out that we actually don't have
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a lot of evidence that that's true. If you look at the decades of research on workplace motivation
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and satisfaction, we see pre-existing interest for your work actually plays a very small,
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if perhaps non-existent role, in whether or not you'll actually like that subject, you'll actually
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like that as a career. That there's many other factors that have nothing to do with a pre-existing
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match of something you like to your job. There's many other factors that play a much bigger role
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if your interest is ending up passionate about your work. So again, if all you tell someone is follow
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your passion, then what happens when they match some strong interest to their work and they don't love it?
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They're left anxious, they're left confused, they're left frustrated again. So I think this
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advice is a red herring. It's way too simplistic. It's a childish look at a very adult topic, which is
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what's the reality of how people in the real world build true, meaningful passion for their work?
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Yeah. And another strike against it, and you kind of hit on this in your book as well, is that
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you might be passionate about something, but no one wants to pay you money for it, right? You can't make
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a living from it. Like you could be passionate about, like there's this guy, Brett Kelly always
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talks about, I'm passionate about waffles, but it's kind of hard making money eating waffles for a
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living. Yeah, that's true. And even then, even when you're saying that, it's still assuming, okay,
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but if you could somehow make a living off of it, that that would be good. But we don't even have
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evidence that that's true. You know, I love craft beer. And even if I could make a living off of it,
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that pre-existing love for craft beer does not say that I'm going to love doing that for a
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living. There's plenty of passionate amateur bakers and photographers who are miserable when
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they open professional bakeries or photography studios, because passion and work has very,
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very little to do with, hey, how much did you like the topic that your work deals with ahead of time?
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Well, what about like all these super successful people, right? That, you know, tell you, oh,
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you just follow your passion, right? Everyone like around this time, graduation time and starting off
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school, they, they, everyone's always sharing like the Steve Jobs commencement speech where he's
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like, follow your passion. Or like you have the guy, Richard Branson, in charge of Virgin,
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whatever, airlines and records and his empire. So he's always, oh, just follow your passion and
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you'll, you'll make money. What do you, what's your take on those guys? Well, it's true that if you
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look out in popular culture, at least if you, you think about what you've seen in popular culture,
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uh, the idea that lots of famous happy people are advising you to follow your passion, that does
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seem true. But I think there's three different things that, that are going on to make that a
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reality. Uh, the first is a lot of these people are misquoted or misunderstood. So Steve Jobs is the
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perfect example of that. He said in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, uh, you know, you should do
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something that you love. Don't settle for work that you don't love. And people assumed he meant
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follow your passion, but that's not actually what he was saying. And we know that for two reasons,
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one indirectly, because that's not what he did. Uh, he stumbled into Apple computer at a time where
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he clearly had no preexisting passion for technology entrepreneurship. He developed that
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passion later in the more complex ways that people do. And two, I uncovered an interview transcript with
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his biographer, Walter Isaacson, where Isaacson says, yeah, in Steve Jobs waning years, I asked him
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specifically about this piece of advice, follow your passion. And Steve Jobs responded, and I'm
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quoting, this is Isaacson quoting Jobs. Uh, it's not all about you and your damn passion, right? You
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need to get out there and try to make a dent in the universe. That's what matters. So Steve Jobs was not
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saying follow your passion. He was misquoted. The second factor that goes on in this phenomenon is that
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a lot of people who end up passionate about what they do make that subtle shift I talked about in the
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beginning of our interview in which they equate the strategy of following a passion with the goal
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of ending up passionate about what you do. So when the Richard Branchins of the world say,
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follow your passion, often what they really mean is, Hey, you should set the goal of ending up
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passion, being passionate about your work. You know, don't sell yourself short, but those are two
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very different things. Then third, there are some people who do have a clear preexisting passion.
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They follow it and things work out. And we happen to hear a lot from them. So I'm not saying this
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advice never works. It's just how, how, uh, how often does it actually work is, is actually pretty
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rare. So those three, those three factors create this whole echo chamber out there in culture that
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where it seems like this is all that people are saying. Gotcha. So I guess there's like some, uh,
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survivor bioship and like, what's that called? The survivor fallacy. Yeah. There's some survivorship
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bias and yeah, but it doesn't matter if an effect exists, uh, when you're looking at an event space,
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what matters is what's its frequency. Sure. Okay. So, um, just to be clear,
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with recap, we're not saying that you can't be passionate about your work. It's just how you
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pursue that attainment of passion is sort of flawed. Um, so you make the argument that instead
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of like following your passion, you should, uh, cultivate your passion. Um, and we're going to
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get into more details, but this is very, very broadly. I mean, what does the research say out there
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that, you know, we, what things we can do to cultivate a passion in our work?
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So the type of factors we know from the research that lead to a sense of passion for your work
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include, uh, a sense of autonomy, a sense of competence or mastery, uh, a sense of connection
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to people or a mission, uh, a sense of impact and a sense of creativity. General traits like those
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lead people to feel passionate about your work. So broadly speaking, your goal should be to maximize
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those type of traits in your working life and passion will follow. And I mean, this is something
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that's, I think important to point out as well. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to like
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start your own business and become an entrepreneur. You can find, be passionate about your work. Even
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if you're working a corporate gig or you're working for a university or a government job. Um, I mean,
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I guess the research is if you have those type of attributes, you listed out, you can develop a
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passion about your work. Yeah. And I think that's liberating about this idea is that those traits
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are quite agnostic to the specific type of work. They really have very little to do with,
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have you matched your work to a preexisting interest or is it a certain type of work? It
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just says, if you can have these traits at high levels, you will probably have passion for your
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work, whatever it is. Yeah. I think that is super liberating. Cause I know there's like a lot of,
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you know, cause I interact with a lot of young guys and there's like this pressure on them,
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right? To like, you got to find something that is your life's calling and you have to be your own
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boss and you have to, um, you know, be location independent and like, and it's, that's a hard
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thing to do. And they, they just sort of struggle and it's, yeah, like you said, they feel frustrated
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and anxious when they can't achieve that. And they, they feel sort of bummed out because they're
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working, you know, a corporate job, like a stiff, but you can actually have very, a very fulfilling
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light work life working that corporate job. Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you can get autonomy,
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if you can get competence, great things happen. So I tell a story in the book, for example, where I
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take two, uh, corporate advertising executives, these are real people, uh, who at similar points
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in their life had this moment of crisis where they're thinking, okay, am I happy? Is this the
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thing I want to do? Uh, one of those executives, and these were sort of junior executives at the time,
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uh, quit to start a yoga studio. She was saying, well, I love yoga. I'm passionate about yoga. Maybe my
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problem is advertising. It's not my passion. Let me go open a yoga studio. The other executive said,
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um, I'm going to find some specialty in here, uh, that I'm just going to own that I'm going to
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dominate because then I'll have more control over my working life. And I can get away from the type of
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stuff I don't like in this job and do more of the stuff that I do like. And what ended up happening
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to these two people is that the woman who started the yoga studio, uh, that quickly failed because she had
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no particular high level expertise in yoga. And in the profile I found about her at the end,
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she was waiting in line for food stamps. The guy who worked on a specialty became, uh, one of the,
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the world's experts in international brands. And the profile I found about him talked about how he
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had this great setup where he had his own essentially autonomous business, but within the umbrella of a
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larger business. So he didn't have the stress of the risk of running your own shop. And he was talking
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about the, the ski house that they had built where his whole family would come and stay with him for the
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whole summer on the, on this lake in Wisconsin. He had this very fulfilling, happy life. Uh, so it's
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two people at a fork in the woods. One of them said, I bet I can transform this job into something I
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love. And the other said, well, I just got to keep doing something new until I immediately love it.
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And we see there is a huge difference in the outcome. The person who said, I can make this job
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into something I love ended up doing much better. Yeah. And so this idea of, uh, mastery, right?
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Becoming the best at what you do is kind of where the title of your book came from, right? So good.
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They can't ignore you. Actually it was Steve Martin, right? You came up with that line.
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That's yeah. That was his advice to entertainers wanting to succeed in the entertainment industry.
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Yeah. And that you gave those examples. It reminds me a lot of my dad. My, so my dad was a federal game
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warden, um, which was basically, it was a government job. He was a bureaucrat. Um, during the fall season,
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he got to go out and like check duck hunters, which he, which was nice. But for most of the time,
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he was just like in an office writing memos, doing paperwork, doing interview, you know,
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depositions, you know, just, it was like really boring stuff, but he did it for 35 years, but
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like he loved his job. And I remember I was, I just, I was just, I was having like a frustrating
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point in my life where I was just like, man, this work is so boring. I don't know how, how can I,
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how can I find fulfilling work? And I asked my dad's like, dad, you've been doing this
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for 35 years. How do you still love your job? Even though for most of the time you just write
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papers and write memos. And he says, well, I just take one day at a time and I try to be the best
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that I can be. And that's why I enjoy what I do. And, uh, it's like really simple folksy advice,
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but like I, when I, once I, as soon as I started applying that, like things turned around for me,
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it just became a lot, I don't know, just lifted off this, uh, anxiety to find out what my,
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my calling was. And I just try to focus on what I could do now.
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's this great interview with, uh, Richard Bowles who, who wrote
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the book, uh, what color is your parachute, which helped bring in a lot of this thinking
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because it was one of these first books to say, Hey, you got to figure out what you're supposed to
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do. What color is your parachute? And this great interview he did, uh, I think it was for fast
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company magazine. He said, when I wrote this book in the 1970s, when I first had this idea that you
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should sit down and really try to figure out what you're supposed to do. He said, people thought it
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was a dilettante exercise. So our parents' generation, especially our grandparents' generation,
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none of this would have made any sense to them. Yeah. What do you mean you're sitting down and like
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really trying to figure out like what you're meant to do or not meant to do? Who said you were meant
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to do something, you know, get a good job, do it well, you know, uh, have some pride in your work.
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It was a, that folksy wisdom. I think, you know, we now see validated with science is actually a much
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smarter way to build a fulfilling career. All right. So you have, um, in the, in your,
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in one section of your book, you talk about different mindsets of approaching work. Uh,
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one is the, the craftsman mindset and the others, the passion mindset. Uh, can you kind of just briefly
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explain what the differences are between the two and how can you develop a craftsman mindset?
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Yeah. So the craftsman mindset is where you approach your work, asking the question, what value
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am I bringing to the world? And the passion mindset by contrast, which is more common these
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days is the mindset of asking what value is this job bringing me? You know, is this what I'm meant
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to do? Do I love it? What are they offering me? My argument is that the craftsman mindset is what's
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going to lead you to work that you love. And the simple framework is this. If you get really good at
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things, you produce real value for the world, you will gain more control over your working life.
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If you have more control over your working life, you can steer it towards those traits like
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autonomy and impact and connection and mission, uh, that we know lead people to really love their
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work. You connect those two things together. It says, if you have a craftsman mindset, you're more
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likely to end up loving what you do for a living. Gotcha. And the passion mindset, you're just going
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to keep shopping, right? You're going to keep shopping. Yeah. Yeah. And you're never going to be
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satisfied. And I want to say, I think the key, uh, the key there's two, if I had to summarize
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everything I'm saying down to like two key points of what I found, I mean, I think the first key
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point is that traits like autonomy and impact and mission is what matters. And the second key point
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is that those traits are rare and they're valuable. They're hard to get. People don't just give them
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away. It's hard in our economy to have a job that has great autonomy or gives you a great sense of
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mastery or mission or connection. Uh, therefore the glue that holds these ideas together is you have
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to have something valuable to offer in return. And that's why my book is so centered on, you need to
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have a craftsman mindset. You need to get really good at something. It's not because just being good
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at something by itself means you'll love your work. It's that that is your leverage to get these rare
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and valuable traits into your life. You have to have something to offer in return. And in the job
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economy, that's your skills, you know? So you have to get good step one. And then step two, you have to
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use that as leverage to make sure that you can get lots of autonomy and mastery and these other
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traits in your working life. That's my sort of simple formula that replaces follow your passion.
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Yeah. It reminds me of, um, what's that guy's name? Writes the marginal revolution blog. Has that
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book? Yeah. Average is over. Tyler Cowen. Yeah. Yeah. His whole, yeah. Average is over, right? Like
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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
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you. Yeah. And it's not that, that, uh, just being really good means you'll love your work,
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but it's, that's your foundation without that foundation. If you just run around saying,
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do I love this? Do I love that? You know, the answer is going to be no. Yeah. No one is handing
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out. Sure. Like the economy is not going to say, Oh, you want to just sort of, you know, work from home
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with a web business and, and within a month be making a great salary and live all over the world.
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The market says, I don't care. Yeah. It's an incredibly brutal economy. What are you doing? That's
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excellent. And then, you know, it takes a long time to get good at things. So this craftsman mindset,
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uh, is really the first step towards, towards realizing those goals. Yeah. I think that's a
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good thing to point out too. It takes a long time. So I feel like a lot of young people,
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they want to just right out the bat, have a salt, like an awesome career. Um, but it, that can take,
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um, years to develop decades. Yeah. Which is why it's so dangerous to just tell people,
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follow your passion because if you emphasize the match is all that matters, then people expect
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to rewards as soon as they make the match. In other words, they will be conditioned to expect
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to love their work on the first day at the job, if they chose the right job. And that's so far from
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reality that you're really setting up a whole generation for chronic anxiety and job hopping.
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Yeah. And so, yeah, I like this idea that you talk about as far as, you know,
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having that craftsman mindset of developing career capital. Um, and I think, um, what's her name?
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I talked to her. She wrote, um, something about 20 somethings. I forgot her name. Anyway,
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she has something like a identity capital, but I like your, I like career capital because it applies
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to work. Uh, can you talk about like what career capital is? Yeah. That's the metaphor I use to make
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it easier to think about this strategy of mine. So if the strategy is get good and then use that as
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leverage to gain desirable traits in your working life, uh, the metaphor that helps you visualize
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that is this notion that, uh, as you build up increasingly rare and valuable skills, you, uh,
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gain more of this fictitious quantity that I call career capital. And just like monetary capital,
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you can then invest it as you grow it into the traits that are going to give you real returns in
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your life. So if you want, um, a really desirable trait in your working life, such as you completely
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decide on your own, what you work on and when that's going to require a lot of career capital.
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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
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this job. I don't have much skill. So what I need to do is build up my supply of career capital until
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I have enough to exchange for this trait. So it just gives you a sense of, uh, an easier way to
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measure where you are and where you need to get in order to make these career moves.
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So career capital includes things like, I mean, it even includes like college, right? And things you
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might be doing in college right now. Um, and then internships you might have right after college. Is
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,
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
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
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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.