So Good They Can't Ignore You

Those four rules are the four primary sections of the book.

Each is packed with wisdom and stories of various individuals unlocking the secrets of each rule plus others who failed to do so.

Let’s take a quick look at some practical applications of the rules!

Self-Determination Theory or SDT.

If we want to understand how to create work we love, it’s a good idea to keep the three key aspects of SDT in mind: Autonomy + Competence + Relatedness.

The book is essentially a strategic guide to optimizing our intrinsic motivation—which is essential to having work you love.

Quick inventory:

• Do you feel like you have control over your days and that your actions matter?
• Do you feel like you’re good at what you do?
• Do you feel connected to other people in your work?

Autonomy. Competence. Relatedness.

How we answer those questions matters.

Cal encourages us to notice a very important thing: Science does *not* tell us that we need to match a pre-existing passion to our work if we want to find happiness in our work.

That’s actually a really good thing because that means most of us in most of our jobs can CREATE the right conditions for our autonomy, competence and relatedness to flourish.

As Cal says repeatedly throughout the book: “Working right trumps finding the right work.”

The CRAFTSMAN mindset.

I love (!) that.

Now, I think Cal gets a little more either/or about it than necessary, but there’s NO question that, ultimately, assuming the mindset of a craftsman is where it’s at.

Bottom line: Even if you happen to be blessed with a sense of purpose + passion, you BETTER be committed to mastering your craft and finding ways to meaningfully create value in the world or you run the risk of winding up broke and bitter.

(Cal shares some stories about people following their passions including a novice yoga teacher running into the problem of thinking passion, by itself, is enough. It’s not. More in a moment.)

And, I absolutely love the distinction between focusing on GETTING value vs. CREATING value.

One of the biggest pitfalls of the passion mindset is the obsessive focus on what’s in it for *you*—how your job is going to make your life awesome.

That’s not going to get us very far. Focusing on our passion might inspire us to quit our jobs but if we want to pay the bills and flourish over the long run, we need to shift our focus to getting *really* good at creating value that (important addition!) people will pay for.

As Cal says, “Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives.”

We need to OBSESS about how we’re going to make *other* people’s lives awesome.

Getting value vs. CREATING value.

Where’s your focus?

To the craftsman mindset!

P.S. Steve Chandler captures this in his great book Wealth Warrior (see Notes). He tells us: “SORRY: TEMPORARILY OUT OF SERVICE I won’t produce wealth when I’m out of service. Get it? Out of service. Will not work. Because when I am out of service I am out of service. This I mean to whisper to my mind. Every day.”

Plus: “Reminder to myself: money is a reflection of bold and creative service.”

P.P.S. Here’s a great question to reflect on: How can you serve more profoundly?

I got that phrase to “serve profoundly” from Steve. That’s the focus of his entire coaching practice: Creating wealth through profound service.

He also introduced me to the word astonish—which literally means “to strike with lightning.” That’s the game we want to play—finding ways to ASTONISH the people we serve profoundly.

We create that type of value in the world and we’ll get plenty in return.

But we need to get the order right.

Let’s take a moment to capture ways we can serve more profoundly and create more value for people in our lives.

I can serve more profoundly in these ways:

1. ____________________________________
2. ____________________________________
3. ____________________________________
4. ____________________________________
5. ____________________________________

(Awesome.)

P.P.P.S. Another way to think about the passion vs. craftsman mindset is to look at Steven Pressfield’s amateur vs. Pro distinction. An amateur “loves” what he does. A Pro commits his life to mastering his craft.

Here’s how Pressfield puts it in Turning Pro (see Notes):

“The thesis of this book is that what ails you and me has nothing to do with being sick or being wrong. What ails us is that we are living our lives as amateurs.

The solution, this book suggests, is that we turn pro.

Turning pro is free, but it’s not easy. You don’t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind.

Turning pro is free, but not without cost. When we turn pro, we give up a life with which we may have become extremely comfortable. We give up a self that we have come to identify with and to call our own…

Turning pro is not for everyone. We have to be a little crazy to do it, or even to want to. In many ways the passage chooses us; we don’t choose it. We simply have no alternative.

What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.

Do you remember where you were on 9/11? You’ll remember where you were when you turn pro.”

Let’s Turn Pro and create value like a craftsman.

Ericsson and Charness are the researchers who first discovered the 10,000 hour rule of world-class performance.

Cal shares the way Malcolm Gladwell describes their research in Outliers (see Notes): “The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

Whether it’s violinists, radiologists, chess masters or performers in any field, it’s all about logging a huge amount of effort.

But it’s not enough to just work hard.

We need to DELIBERATELY practice trying to get better.

We need to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones again and again and again—incrementally improving our skills.

George Mumford tells us we need to “romance our discomfort zone.”

Here’s how he puts it in The Mindful Athlete (see Notes + Micro Class): “Our bodies like to be in homeostasis. We like to be balanced. Life is hard enough—we want to be comfortable! But, again, to get better and improve our game on and off the court, we need to move out of our comfort zones. That doesn’t mean you should so far out of your comfort zone that you can’t function well. Our bodies work best when we push them in small increments. If we push ourselves too far, eustress can become distress. We have to really pay attention, because they can manifest the same symptoms. Eustress is achieved through moderation, sticking to the middle way, and not going to extremes. …

Moving out of your comfort zone through experiencing eustress is a continuous incremental process of romancing your discomfort zone. It’s not like you get to a certain level and then stay there. Things are always either going forward or backward; they’re not staying static. If you are comfortable where you are and you just want to stay comfortable, that’s fine, but that isn’t the way to pursue excellence and wisdom.”

Now, all that’s pretty straight-forward for professional athletes and chess players and others with a clear practice strategy.

For the rest of us knowledge workers there’s good news and bad news.

Bad news: There’s no clearly defined way for us to deliberately practice.

Good news: If we figure out how to deliberately practice, we’ll be one of the very few in our fields who actually train ourselves to get better which means we’ll POWERFULLY differentiate ourselves from those who do not.

Cal shares a number of key habits and lessons in the book. Check it out for more.

For now, what can YOU do to cultivate a deliberate practice in your chosen field?!

One of the keys to successfully creating sustainable work we love is to build what Cal calls “career capital.”

He makes the *really* important point that, as we put in the deliberate practice in pursuit of becoming so good they can’t ignore us, we accumulate rare and valuable skills. It’s this career capital—accumulated over years of diligent deliberate practice—that we cash in to create our ideal work.

Failing to see the importance of this process is one of the reasons why, for example, a (passionate!) new yoga teacher who just completed a 200-hour certification process is not yet in a solid position to build a sustainable career.

Enough career capital hasn’t been accumulated. There are a LOT of yoga teachers (or life coaches or …) who have the very basic level of training. Those skills are not rare or valuable. Yet.

We need to be very honest with ourselves about just how much work is required to create our ideal work.

PASSION IS NOT ENOUGH.

We must become craftsman—so good they can’t ignore us.

Finding the right work vs. working right.

Passion vs. Craftsman.