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Follow Your Passion is Terrible Advice. Here’s Why.

2022-11-27 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 18:34 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Work and career · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, His medical past, Aimed at students

In a Book Club episode on Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You, Ali argues that following your passion is bad career advice: get so good they can't ignore you by building rare and valuable skills (career capital), cash them in for autonomy, and expect passion and a mission to follow.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: following your passion is bad advice; Book Club on So Good They Can't Ignore You

  • ★★★ Ali calls following your passion really bad advice: the classic "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is not true. — 00:00:00

    “Following your passion is really bad advice.”

  • ★★ Ali read Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You in 2016 while still a medical student, and it significantly shaped what he decided to do with his career. — 00:00:00 · Cal Newport

  • ★ This Book Club episode, in Ali's ongoing series distilling highlights from his favourite books, gives four key points from So Good They Can't Ignore You. — 00:00:00 · Book Club · first in: 2021-12-09, The Book That Changed My Financial Life 🤑
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport points out that Steve Jobs, who told people to follow their passion, did not do so himself: in his early 20s he was into Zen Buddhism and would otherwise have become a monk. (hedged) — 00:00:29 · Cal Newport

00:00:40 — Key point one: don't follow your passion

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): The model of So Good They Can't Ignore You: if you become so good that they can't ignore you, you will find a career or job that you love. — 00:01:18
  • ★★ Taking what you love and making it your job, Ali says, is generally the quickest path to becoming miserable at it. — 00:01:18
  • ★★ In an interview Ali watched, Ed Sheeran said that now music is his career he looks for things outside it to enjoy, such as painting, because music has become work. — 00:01:47
  • ★★ A huge video game streamer recently told Ali he would do anything not to have to make a video: his passion for gaming has been sucked dry by making it his job. — 00:01:47
  • ★★ The things people are passionate about are generally not things they can reliably make a career of, Ali says: when he was young he was passionate about World of Warcraft, but could never play it for a living. — 00:02:17 · World of Warcraft
  • ★ These days Ali is passionate about playing the guitar, but says he is bad at it. — 00:02:46
  • ★★ Ali says it is generally inadvisable to choose a career path expecting to be the one in a billion who succeeds at something like playing video games or the guitar. — 00:02:46
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport's final point on passion is that passion takes time to build. — 00:02:46 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ A study of administrative assistants by the psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski found that the biggest predictor of passion for the job was how long they had been doing it. — 00:03:15
  • ★★★ After reading So Good They Can't Ignore You in 2016, Ali, unsure which of about 25 medical specialties to choose and passionate about none, decided with consultants' advice to pick one, get really good at it and change his mind later if needed. — 00:03:44
  • ★★★ To new YouTubers Ali says not to worry about making videos on what they enjoy, but to get good at making videos first, then see whether they enjoy it. — 00:03:44
  • ★★ Generally, Ali says, the better we are at something, the more passionate we are about it; making videos is not much fun at the start because you are bad at it. — 00:04:13

00:04:24 — Key point two: develop a craftsman mindset

  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport says a desirable job comes down to three things: it is creative, it is impactful, and it gives you autonomy or control over your life and schedule. — 00:04:43 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ Ali adds a fourth trait of a desirable job: it seems fun on the surface, like video gaming or being an artist, unlike accountancy. — 00:04:43
  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Since desirable jobs are contested, Cal Newport argues you need career capital, meaning rare and valuable skills, which you can cash in for a desirable job. — 00:05:12 · Cal Newport

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): The craftsman mindset is the pursuit of rare and valuable skills, focusing on becoming so good they can't ignore you; it is the opposite of the passion mindset. — 00:05:41

    “the craftsman mindset is the pursuit of rare and valuable skills”

  • ★★ In a winner-takes-all market such as music, basketball or YouTube, Ali advises spending your time not on developing a passion but on getting so good they can't ignore you. — 00:07:09

  • ★★ Timing and who you know matter in music and to an extent on YouTube, Ali says, but thanks to the internet being really good at the thing increasingly makes success more likely. — 00:07:09
  • ★★ Jim Collins (quoted): In Good to Great, Jim Collins finds that good and great companies had similar numbers of lucky breaks, but the great ones had a higher return on luck. — 00:07:38
  • ★★ Return on luck applies to careers, Ali says: which YouTube video the algorithm promotes is partly luck, but a creator whose videos are really good can turn a viral video into long-term growth. — 00:08:07
  • ★★ Ali suggests that most careers people want are not winner-takes-all markets but what Cal Newport calls auction markets, a term Ali does not much like. (hedged) — 00:08:36 · Cal Newport
  • ★★★ Plastic surgeons Ali befriended as a medical student and junior doctor interested in plastic surgery told him success in the field does not track grades or surgical skill but career capital such as marketing yourself and networking. — 00:09:35
  • ★★ The plastic surgeons told Ali that his web design and video production skills were rare in medicine, and that offering them to a team, charity, organisation or research group would make him more valuable. — 00:10:18
  • ★★ Skills that synergise with your main job without being your main job, Ali says, are another way of building career capital. — 00:10:47
  • ★★ Among skills that synergise with many careers Ali names design, video production and editing, public speaking, negotiation and teamwork; getting good at video games rarely helps a lawyer. — 00:11:16
  • ★★★ If you are unsure of your passion or career, Ali advises developing skills that synergise with many careers, such as statistics, AI and coding, and later cashing in that career capital. — 00:11:45

00:12:13 — Key point three: cash in your career capital for control

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport cites studies that autonomy, the control you have in a job, is one of the biggest determinants of whether you enjoy it, and career capital can be cashed in for it. — 00:12:14 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ Very junior staff such as junior doctors have basically zero autonomy, Ali says, which makes it hard for the job to be fun. — 00:12:14
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Because autonomy benefits only you, the book's model says, the world resists giving it: a boss will refuse a request to work from home, and quitting to become a YouTuber for autonomy is very hard. — 00:12:44
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport's core idea, also in Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek: once you are really good at your job, you have negotiating leverage for autonomy. — 00:13:20 · Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek, Cal Newport
  • ★★★ As an employer, Ali says he would probably grant his best team members requests for autonomy such as skipping meetings, a pay rise or six months in Costa Rica: you want to give someone really good the world to keep them. — 00:13:50
  • ★★ It grinds Ali's gears when people seeking careers advice treat autonomy, such as working from home, as a human right. — 00:14:19
  • ★★★ Ali says you cannot have a successful YouTube channel on four hours a week: millions want the job for its money, autonomy and fun, so you must get really good and put in real work. — 00:14:48
  • ★★★ To get a job you enjoy, with passion and autonomy, Ali says you may have to work harder than those around you, putting in shifts on weekends or evenings to learn skills, especially while young. — 00:15:18
  • ★★ Ideally, Ali says, find a job where you are paid to learn; this is partly why people advise changing jobs every couple of years, as the learning curve flattens. — 00:15:45

00:16:42 — Key point four: finding a mission

  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport says the most interesting missions are found at the cutting edge of a field: you become really good first, and a mission emerges over time. — 00:16:44 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ Ali is not fully sure he agrees with Cal Newport that a mission emerges once you are good, but finds the idea broadly reasonable. (hedged) — 00:17:13 · Cal Newport
  • ★★★ A common mistake of young people, Ali says, is wanting meaning from day one straight out of university with no skills; jobs feel meaningful once you get really good at the specific thing. — 00:17:13
  • ★★ Ali calls Shortform great and says it does not sponsor the video: he reads its summaries to revisit books he has read and to decide whether to read a book properly. — 00:17:42 · Shortform

00:17:55 — Shortform summary of the book and a video on job applications

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Cal Newport · career capital · craftsman mindset · So Good They Can't Ignore You

Also: People: Amy Wrzesniewski · Ed Sheeran · Jim Collins · Steve Jobs · Tim Ferriss

Projects: Book Club

Works: Good to Great · The 4-Hour Workweek

Concepts: Plastic surgery · return on luck

Products: Shortform · World of Warcraft

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