So Good They Can't Ignore You summary

"The passion hypothesis" taught by life coaches and authors urges individuals to "do what they love." The gist is this: find your passion first, and then meaningful work will appear at your fingertips. 

But is passion necessarily the right path?

It would seem that finding a passion first and then creating a career around it isn’t the route to success. But if it isn’t, how else can you be happy with what you do?

The answer might lie in experience. A survey of college administrative assistants found that this was the determining factor in the workers’ satisfaction. Although the assistants' job seems boring, when they were asked about their work, their answers varied. A third considered it a job  – merely a way to pay the bills. Another third termed it a career or a path toward something better. The final third considered it a calling, or an integral part of their life and identity. The more experience the assistant had, the more likely they were to enjoy their work and consider it a vocation. So passion comes with time, since you are more likely to be satisfied with what you do when you've become good at it and have developed a sense of efficacy and strong relationships with your co-workers.

The passion mind-set revolves around the question: “What do I really want?” This means people who have it tend to wonder if their job is right for them. They focus on the value their jobs provide them, and are acutely aware of everything they dislike about their work. The result? Their job satisfaction and overall happiness decreases.

By contrast, the "craftsman mind-set" asks: What value can I bring to my job?

The craftsman mind-set is helpful in any career because, by encouraging deliberate practice, it helps you acquire specialized skills and mastery. That's a good thing, because people with rare skills are more likely to get great jobs. These are the rare jobs where workers can be creative and have control over what they do.

So how do you get one?

Research has shown that being in control is a key ingredient to a happy, meaningful life. This is also true of work, where there are a few control-related traps to avoid.

For a start, we often think that control acquired without career capital is sustainable. It isn't.

Every job is more motivating if you have a mission. People who have a useful, meaningful goal in their work are more satisfied with their work and are better at handling even stressful work.

Harvard biologist Pardis Sabeti, for instance, has a mission to use modern computing technology to fight old diseases. Although she works in a demanding field, this mission allows her to enjoy her work and even leaves her with energy for other creative activities too.

The first step towards arriving at the cutting edge of your field is acquiring career capital, and you'll find a mission when you get there. But when you do, how do you put your mission into practice?

You know the old adage “Rome wasn't built in a day”? Well, neither are careers.