Book Review: So Good They Can't Ignore You

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport was in the same list that Johnny Bunko came from and its review can be found here. This book was really good and had lots of good tips on how to make the reader an expert. Focusing on spending hours on your field learning as much as possible so you can push the boundaries of your work and find the next best thing or discovery. How one learned was also important and it was more than just reading but an intense focus on the subject and writing down what one learned. It had cutting out wasteful activities most notably spending hours on email instead of doing real work.

The material was presented through the eyes of several different people, one that succeeded at the goal and the other failed. It brought about why that person failed and showed the exact place in his mind where it collapsed. This made it easy to understand his ideas and to not fall into the same trap. Case studies are great teaching tools in business and career books.

The biggest thing he did though was to downplay passion in the workplace and as a determining factor in what one decides to do in their career. He uses several high name people like Steve Jobs and Bill gates to show that passion for computers did not go into making the business. It appeared later on after time in the business and was slowly built up. Also, that many people who are successful with passions as a focus in business have ten plus years in that field and know most things in that area which allows them to push at the edge making a new discovery.

Newport makes several other observations about gaining more control in a career and how that could damage the goal and the career if the person is not careful in making sure he is ready to move up and gain control. They have to build up career capital and skills in the job. Then they can move forward.

This book along with Johnny Bunko would be perfect gifts for the college student that might think they can move into a field and just have passion without skills to back it up. Go and get the book, read it, and distill it. I have started to spend an hour or so each week learning about other banks which would be considered competition in my job to see how they perform and what they offer. It has very practical skills and can show that careers can take a long time to develop but can be very rewarding. it just might take ten years to be really good at a job.