Cal Newport's Craftsman's Mindset

[ULFBERHT]

I'm reading "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. In the first portion of the book, Cal argues for adopting what he calls the "craftsman's mindset",  or the idea that gaining and refining professional skill is more important than being initially passionate about what you do. Through the acquisition and refinement of skill, he claims, the things that make people most passionate about their work (autonomy, creativity, influence) tend to follow naturally. He contrasts this with the "passion mindset", or the idea we that we must find our true passion and a job that matches it. He criticizes this notion because career passions are rare, and passion tends to develop proportionally with mastery.

I really don't have much of a problem with his argument. I've always felt like I've had a hard time identifying "my one thing", so to see an argument for skill over passion laid out reasonably comes as a little bit of a relief. My one hangup here is this: shouldn't you like, if not love, the thing you've dedicated your time to mastering?

I recently took a Linux system admin class. I didn't need it for my degree, but in my job I've kind morphed into a catch-all tech guy since I've learned some coding (apparently once you learn to code, people think you can do IT stuff, sys admin, fix printers, troubleshoot networks, etc), so I figured I'd give it a shot and see if I could come up with any useful skill at the end of it. I fucking hated it. I hated it so much I withdrew from the class. Navigating directories from the command line, setting privileges, the man and pinfo pages, I just couldn't stomach it. It was so boring.

I don't mean to shortchange Newport's argument here, but by his logic, would I have learned to love Linux sys admin had I stuck with it for awhile longer and gotten good at it? I don't know. Maybe. But frankly, I'm not going to spend 4-8 hours a day for the next ten years doing it to find out.

So, my question is: shouldn't you find something you can stomach grinding on for years and dedicate yourself to that? Isn't that what passion is? I think the craftsman's mindset argument is valid, and being excellent at what you do is vital for mastering your life purpose, but I don't think that I can accept that it's a matter of acquiring the skill alone, based on my recent experience.

[Sahil Pandit]

@ULFBERHT Man this is a great question...

I think Cal made it a point to undermine the "passion mindset".

There is a lot of people who chase passion naively and it comes back to bite them...

I don't think you have to LOVE the thing you want to master, per say, but there needs to be room to grow, mature, expand, and overall develop that "craftsman mindset" like you mentioned.

I would like to hear what other people have to say about this as well. 

[ULFBERHT]

@Sahil Pandit I would suspect that the titillating, boner-iffic excitement of a new career dies down after awhile, much like the intense passion one feels at the outset of a promising romantic relationship. That isn't what I mean, I guess. You can't be totally on fire for something day in and day out. But I can't get past the idea that even if from practice session to practice session your love for practicing the saxophone, for example, rises and falls, in general and on average you should love playing and practicing the saxophone. Otherwise, what are you even doing?

[Leo Gura]

@ULFBERHT I address this point in the LP course.

The bottom line is, you will not have the perserverence to master a thing unless you enjoy doing it. There has to be an underlying love/passion/fascination. It just isn't always glaring when you start.

Check out the LP course. It will change your life as far as building a career goes.

[ULFBERHT]

Thanks for clarifying @Leo Gura. I'm working through the course right now. Figured I'd get a jump on the reading while I'm doing the exercises.

[Joseph Maynor]

I like these kinds of metaphors.  They're very instructive.  You go have different kinds of people functioning in different kinds of contexts and scenarios.

Here's the best one:

The quitter, the camper, and the climber.

(1) The quitter is the dabbler.  The person who doesn't stick with anything long enough to ever get leverage.

(2) The camper is the lazy-fuck.  Typically these people demonstrate some skill at something, but they top out at a level that is below their capacity.

(3) The climber is the performer.  This is the guy who's all in and makes it look easy. 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[electroBeam]

why not do both?

Master a craft that you are passionate about?