So Good They Can't Ignore You book review

You don't have time to find a passion. You need to find money to pay those bills, right? What is passion when your electricity is turned off? Keep reading to find out what book we're talking about today. 

Hello, I'm Kyla Denanyoh, and today we're discussing how to follow your passion, find a good job, and build a career. Kinda. We're talking about the book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. The author of the book is Cal Newport. The book's genre is non-fiction. The book's theme is motivation, business, and self-development.

I have heard a lot about this book, and I thought, 'You know what?' I need to pick it up. I need to read it. And it's good. It's very, very good. So let me tell you this. The tagline of the book is "Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love." So, I really expected this book to be about how, if you become exceptionally good, you have to get promoted, move up, and so on. It'll happen. That's just gonna happen. You're so good they cannot ignore you. That is not what this book is about. I must say that, off the bat, because if you see this book on the shelf and think, 'Yes, how can I be so good that they can't ignore me?' you will be surprised. This is not a motivational, inspirational, rah-rah, confidence-boosting book. 

Cal Newport wanted to debunk all of the theories of people saying, just find your passion, just go after what you love, " and " just do the things you love. He was like, there's more to it. The more it turns out to be something that you have done repeatedly and become very proficient with, and become an expert in, ends up being something that you're passionate about because you've spent so much time in it, and you've done it so much. Now you're just, it's second nature to you. 

Let's get into my favorite quote from the book. It is on page 154, and it says this: "Hardness scares off the daydreamers and the timid, leaving the opportunity for those like us who are willing to take the time to carefully work out the best path forward and then confidently take action." Timid, out of the way. Daydreamer, bye-bye. Get out of the way so that the people who are going to confidently lay out the best path and take action can go and do it. 

What does it mean to confidently move forward? And what does it mean to set the best path? Confidently moving forward means you don't know everything, but you're still going to take the first step. The first step is often the hardest. I never imagined myself doing YouTube videos. I never imagined myself being a business owner. I never imagined myself as a podcaster. But when you can see something, decide that it's interesting and take that step forward confidently, that is huge, and it builds so much confidence with yourself to say you can do this, you can do it, your skills can improve, you can learn more, your skills will carry you on, and then you keep going. But we don't just blindly step out. You have to set the best path, and that's why I really love this quote.

Lastly, I've had conversations with my parents where I'm just like, 'How did you guys get to where you are now?' In terms of finding a job that you really enjoyed and sticking with it, or did you do something else? And so, of course, they say things like, well, the world wasn't as expensive as it is now, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But mostly, no, we found a job and stayed at that job while it paid our bills. And Cal Newport discusses this topic extensively as well. He talks about how you need to have money and career capital to make certain moves, to go out and find the thing that you really want to do. 

Without money, if you have people heckling you and bill collectors calling, and your house gets repossessed, and all this stuff, you don't have time to find a passion. You need to find money to pay those bills. What is passion when your electricity is turned off? What is it? Okay, so he talks about how you have to have some things in place, which include having money to take care of things and having your life put together in a way that allows you to dream. You can then spend time imagining what you want to do. You can find the things that really will sustain you intellectually and emotionally for the rest of your life. And then you can find a career. A job is something that pays your bills. A career is something that can sustain you. And so Cal talks a lot about how those two things are very, very different. 

And so, as a business owner, career capital can be acquired in various ways. Career capital is the thing that will let you flex at work. Skills trump passion. And the beautiful thing about that is that you can be skilled in anything. What if you were skilled in just watching YouTube videos and writing reviews about them? What if you were skilled in reading books and filming them for YouTube? What are you skilled in? 

And so this book is one that I would not read again, but I really did enjoy it. And if you enjoy learning more about what is up with us working, why it is such a big deal, I just want to take, I just want to, I just want to lay on the couch and eat cookies, but I have to have money to have the sofa and the house over me and the cookies. And work will get me there, but also work won't love you back.

Until the next book review, Kyla