Skills Trump Passion- Vocab List



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Vocabulary from So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love" by Cal Newport. See this post to find out what it's all about!

The Passion Hyposthesis: The key to occupational happiness is to figure out what you are passionate about and find a job that matches this passion.
"Be so good they can't ignore you" - what is needed to build a working life you love.
The craftsman mindset- an approach to your working life in which you focus on the value of what you are offering to the world.
The passion mindset - an apporach to your working life in which you focus on the value your job is offering you, ultimatly leads to chronic disatisfaction and daydreaming about better jobs
Career capital- a description of skills you have that are rare and valuable to the working world. This is the key currency for creating work you love.
The career capital theory of great work; get good at something rare and valuable and then cash in the career capital this generates to acquire the traits that define great jobs.

• the traits the define great work are rare and valueable
• supply and demand says that if you want these traits you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return.
• the craftsmans mindset with its relentless "so good you can't be ignored" is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital.

The 10,000 hour rule- the idea that gaining excellent at performing a complex task requires a minimum of 10,000 hours (Gladwell)
Deliberate practice- the style of difficult practice required to continue to improve at a task. "actively designed, typically by a teacher, for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individuals performance." Requires you to stretch past where you are comfortable and then receive ruthless feedback on your performance. It's uncomfortable.
Career capital markers- winner take all and auction. In a winner take all there is only one type of career captial available and lots of different people competing for it.
In an auction market, there are many different types of career capital, and each person might generate their own unique collection of this capital.
Control- Having a say in what you do and how you do it
The first control trap-  control aquired without career capial is not sustainable
The 2nd control trap -when you have enough capital to gain control, you've become valuable enough to your current employer that they will try to prevent you from making the change.
Courage culture- the promotion of the idea that the only thing standing between you and a dream (job) is building the courage to step off the expected path.
The law of financial viability- will people pay for your career capital?
Mission - provides an answer to the question, " What should I do with my life?" a unifying career goal.
The adjacent possible -the next big ideas in any field are typically found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas. Good career missions are always found in the adjacent possible. If you want to find a mission in your career, you first need to get to the cutting edge of your field.
Little bets-Innovative corporations and people "rather than believing they had to start with a big idea or plan...they make a methodical series of "little bets" about what might be a good direction, learning critical information from lots of little failures and from small but significant wins"
The law of remarkabilty- For a "mission- driven" project to suceed, it should be remarkable in 2 different ways:

• it must be compel people  who encounter it to remark about it to others
• it must be luanched in a venue that support such remarking.