Overall, this was a good book with some provocative original ideas - but with some deep flaws.
THE GOOD
I think Newport made a great original contribution to understanding career development with his concept of Career Capital:
"The traits that define great work are rare and valuable. Supply and demand says that if you want [this work] you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital. The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming “so good they can’t ignore you,” is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital. "
Newport suggests a strategy of acquiring career capital - and then investing it in better roles.
To develop career capital,
* develop a craftsman attitude
* start "deliberative practice" - "Deliberate practice is the key strategy for acquiring career capital then integrating it into your own working life." As per the 10,000 hours philosophy espoused by Anders Ericsson and then Malcolm Gladwell..
To get more career control, understand the two control traps:
The First Control Trap
"Control that’s acquired without career capital is not sustainable."
The Second Control Trap
"The point at which you have acquired enough career capital to get meaningful control over your working life is exactly the point when you’ve become valuable enough to your current employer that they will try to prevent you from making the change."
Then, develop your mission by getting to the cutting edge of your field and spotting what is possible in the adjacent future.
THE (VERY) BAD:
In spite of the good in the book, I think Newport made several major mistakes that radically reduced the forcefulness of his book's argument.
I just want to tackle one of them here, which is his attack on the "passion hypothesis."
The Passion Hypothesis is stated as:
"The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you’re passionate about and then find a job that matches this passion."
Then Newport proceeds to tell us why this hypothesis is wrong.
Unfortunately, this "passion hypothesis" is a straw man, an artificial construction created by Newport.
According to Newport, the poster child for the passion hypothesis is Richard Bolles and his book "What Color is Your Parachute."
Newport however seems to have completely missed the point of Bolles' book - and the central point of similar books in this genre.
"Passion" was not what was at the core of Bolles' book. In fact, the word "passion" was rarely mentioned in the book.
Instead, Bolles advocated an alignment between Skills, "Knowledges," and (in different editions) either Values or Purpose, together with conceptualising an ideal work environment.
** Bolles' book placed skills at the very centre of his approach **.
For Bolles, 'skills' were NOT ignored. They were the very foundation.
To say Bolles' approach was just about "following your passion" - and doing so at the expense of skills - is either a deliberate mischaracterisation of Bolles' work, or shows an astonishingly low level of understanding of the point of view that Newport is attacking.
And it's not just Bolles who took this skills-based approach to career and business development.
Most of the common models in the 'find your career' or 'do work you love' or 'start your business' genres tend to follow something like the Jim Collins Hedgehog model - combine what you love (your interests or passions) with what you're good at (your skills and strengths) and a market need.
** For Newport to put passion VS skills as a dichotomy where you have to choose one or the other and can't have both is not representative of what people actually teach or what career seekers or business startups actually do. **
It is a false dichotomy.
In the examples he used in the book, this was so ridiculous that at one point (Ch. 5) Newport even observed his example wasn't really all that representative, and that we should understand the case examples forming the foundation of the chapter as simply a good 'metaphor.'
This isn't just a minor point. This is a gaping hole in the fundamental premise in the book - that other people tell you to just go and follow your passion, that that's wrong, and Newport alone has a different and better way.
Well, Newport's way - to focus on skills development - is along the lines what everyone else does anyway.
Newport makes some good contributions about the process of developing your skills and using them to advance your career. But his rhetorical positioning that everyone else is just about following your passion and only he can show us the 'true path' is plain wrong.
I do recommend reading this book as it has some good ideas and for me it generated some good reflections. Just be aware that there is a gaping hole in his premise around the role that passion plays in career development. And that he uses the same rhetorical device of constructing and attacking a false 'straw man' in his next book, Deep Work - so this seems to be a deliberate strategy or preference on Newport's part.
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