Theme: No one will pay for your dreams - 'Following your passion' is a very dangerous advice

1. Don't follow your passion

Opinion:

It is a sad mistake to always try to judge in the abstract before doing anything else

It takes time to get good at something

People are always eager to start life, which is sad

The passion Hypothesis: The key to career happiness is to first figure out where your passion lies, and then find a career that matches it. match.

?— Steve Jobs’ example to refute:

Although Stanford’s speech said this, throughout his career, he actually did things “from small to large” and grasped I took a carefully observed opportunity (an opportunity to update the computer world) and used the resources (people) around me to make products that could sell money.

Conclusion: Passion is a by-product of mastery

How to master: forcing yourself to complete the work, forcing skill formation is the hardest

self determination theory (SDT) :

Autonomy: Feeling that you have control over your life and that what you do is important

Competence: Feeling that you are good at what you do

Belonging: Feeling that you can connect with others

2. Craftsman thinking trumps passion thinking (why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love)

Opinion:

No one owes you a good job, you have to work hard to get it, and the process will not be easy

If you have been thinking about "How can I become great?" Others will come to your door

Don’t turn around and escape from the shackles of your current job, but start to acquire the necessary workplace capital to liberate yourself from the shackles

Conclusion 1:

Craftsman thinking focuses on what you can bring to the world, while passion thinking focuses on what the world can bring to you

Craftsman thinking requires you to keep yourself as the center and not worry about whether your work is It's not about "just right", it's about leaning down and working hard to make yourself truly outstanding. It advocates that no one owes you a good job, you have to work hard to get it, and the process will not be easy.

Example:

— Mike Jackson went through graduate and doctoral professional training and worked hard during this period before becoming an energy expert in venture capital.

Even if he did not immediately find the path to venture capital, when the opportunity came, he was prepared.?

[The better you do now, the better your choices will be in the future]

Characteristics that lead to great things:

Creativity: No one can match the accumulation in the industry

Influence: Interactions with various people in the industry

Autonomy: Self-determination The use of time

Conclusion 2:

Work hard for yourself: If you want to obtain a resource that is both scarce and valuable, you need to provide something equally scarce and valuable in exchange

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Career Capital describes the skills that individuals possess that are rare and valuable in the workplace

Example:

—?Lisa Feuer was fed up with the office culture, so Signed up for a 200-hour yoga class, quit his job and became a yoga teacher

Lost his job when the financial crisis came

—? Joe Duffy hates the constraints of corporate life, specializing in international trademarks and brands Signs, as abilities grow, so do the choices. Eventually I opened my own office.

Three characteristics that do not apply to the craftsman mindset:

1. Changing your job does not allow you to differentiate yourself from others by developing scarce and valuable relevant skills

2. You think the content of the job is useless and may even be harmful to the world

3. The job forces you to work with people you really dislike

Conclusion 3:

Deliberate practice and strive to be a good "craftsman"

Deliberate practice

Example:

—?Musician Continuous Spending hours on the phone every day for several weeks trying to figure out a new picking technique? - Deliberate practice, from completely incompetent to proficient at it

Why do two people who have played guitar together since childhood become different after a few years? Big difference?

Tice’s training system: intense feedback - focus on continuously expanding the scope of abilities (a way to step out of one’s comfort zone, make oneself extremely uncomfortable, and constantly practice what one does not know until muscle memory is formed )

If you just do simple work, you will soon reach a "performance plateau" and you will not be able to make any progress

5 of deliberate practice Big steps:

1. Determine which kind of workplace capital market you are in

? Winner-takes-all or auction-type

Winner-takes-all: only A kind of workplace capital can be obtained, and many people are competing for this capital e.g. TV series editor/blogger

Auction type: many different types of workplace capital, and everyone can generate their own unique capital

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2. Identify your own career capital

Winner takes all: There is only one type

Auction type: Find windows: Which ones have been opened for you to accumulate capital Opportunity

3. Define “excellence”

A clear goal

4. “Stretch” and “destruction”

Deliberate The feeling of practice "stretches" - Whenever we learn a new mathematical method, the discomfort in my mind reminds me of the tension in my body nearby, as if my nerve cells themselves are reorganizing themselves into new structures .

This kind of stretching is the prerequisite for progress

5. Be patient

3. The "panacea" for an ideal job

Opinion:

Without results, there is no work

If no one cares about what you do, it means you don’t have enough career capital to do interesting work

Do something that someone is willing to pay for

Conclusion 1:

Autonomy (control) is the "panacea"

If you want to go to get off work without clocking in, you have to pay attention to the results, because at this time Others can no longer see the process

Conclusion 2:

Autonomy requires workplace capital

[The First control trap] If autonomy is not based on workplace capital, If obtained, it is not sustainable

e.g. Lisa Feuer & Joe Duffy

[The Second control trap] When you have enough career capital to obtain reasonable control over your career , then for your employer, your value is already great enough at this time, so that the other party will find ways to prevent you from making changes

e.g. LULU is engaged in QA work, and later wrote a program to run tests by itself Scripts, saving companies time and money. After upgrading to senior, bargain with the manager and you can work 30 hours a week while studying for a master's degree. Later, she accepted an invitation from an entrepreneurial team. After the company grew, it was acquired. She didn't like the new culture, so she applied for and got a three-month leave. Because she has enough career qualifications to negotiate with the company.?

[But they really couldn’t find anyone else to do this kind of work, so they finally had to agree]

Conclusion 3:

The law of financial viability

When trying to add control to your career: Add autonomy to your career by deciding whether to pursue an attractive activity When it comes to making money, you should ask others if they are willing to pay for it. If you are willing, then continue pursuing it; if not, then maintain the status quo.

e.g. Sievers did not quit his job before becoming a professional musician, but until he made money from music

Obtaining career capital?—gt; Autonomy Strength?—gt; More workplace capital

4. A sense of mission brings meaning

Viewpoint:

Difficulties will scare away dreamers and cowards, but they will Leave more opportunities for people like us

If you join a career that you cannot control, then it will make you suffer a lot

Think small and do big

Conclusion 1: You must reach the cutting edge of a certain field

The adjacent possible

In any field, the next great idea usually appears at the current cutting edge of development adjacent range outside of the range that contains possible new combinations of existing ideas. The point is, you have to get to the forefront of a field, and then the adjacent possibilities and the innovations they contain become apparent.

e.g. Many scientific discoveries and inventions in history were within a similar time frame?—The separation of oxygen

Example:

—?This Sabeti The biology professor has not become the cantankerous work masochist many people think she is. Her mission is to "eliminate the world's oldest and most famous disease."

She often travels between Harvard and Africa, Use computers to study genetic problems to solve problems

Sabeti likes biology and mathematics. When she had to make a choice, she chose the biology department, which requires strong mathematical skills.

Then continue to study in the fields that you like and are good at until the opportunity comes

Conclusion 2: Produce "Purple Cows"

If you want to build a career that can sustain development, you must produce " "Purple Cow", a project that is eye-catching and can compel people to spread the word

The law of Remarkability

It must compel people who come into contact with it to review it to others

It must be launched in a context conducive to such comments

For example: if the book is billed as "helping Congolese graduates transition into the workplace" (sounds like a tool), then someone may I think it's useful but I won't spread it. But saying "Following your passion is bad advice" (which sounds like an opinion) forces you to spread the word

Conclusion:

Focus on how to succeed to complete these tasks instead of feeling exhausted by constantly comparing your current work to some future, undiscovered work.

Mastering scarce resources and valuable skills and accumulating workplace capital can help you gain autonomy in work content and work methods when used wisely.