The summary of the So good they can't ignore you book.

Following your passion is bad, instead go for Mastery Autonomy and Purpose — the trio of things that have been proven to motivate knowledge workers’

1. The Passion Hypothesis Sucks

Self Determination Theory is the idea that your happiness is related to:

Autonomy : the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important
Competence : the feeling that you are good at what you do
Relatedness : the feeling of connection to other people

It takes time to build the competence and earn the autonomy necessary to generate enjoyment.

In other words, passion stems from mastery.

2. Adopt the Craftsman Mindset

2.1. Mindset

Firstly, desireable jobs are creative, allow you to create large impact, and give you control over your work and life.
Consequently, supply and demand indicates that you need to offer rare and valuable skills in return.
Becoming so good they can’t ignore you, is by definition the pursuit of gaining rare and valuable skills.

Focusing on gaining rare and valuable skills until you ‘become so good they can’t ignore you’.

2.2. Problem

Not every job allows you to apply this mindset
If your job has one or more of the following qualities, you should leave your job

Quit your job if:

Your job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable.

Your job focuses on something you think is useless or perhaps even actively bad for the world

Forces you to work with people you really dislike

3. Adapt to the Skill Market of Your Field

Two different kinds of skill market:

Winner-take-all markets: are markets where only one skill matters.
- Artists and musicians
Auction market: better off optimising the skill that matters instead of doing incidental activities (like networking, etc)
- Seek capital-building opportunities that are already open to you

3.3. But we should all… Do Deliberate Practice

Practice of doing things that hurt.

Deliberate practice to your chosen skill market is your best shot at becoming ‘so good they can’t ignore you’.

Decide what capital market you’re in (winner-takes-all or auction)
Identify your capital type : pick from your currently available ‘open gates’.
Define good: You’ll have to decide what is ‘good’ for your particular career skill type.
Stretch and destroy : you need to push yourself into areas of discomfort
Finally, be patient: ignoring all the distractions that may come up in your pursuit of excellence

4. Autonomy Means Avoiding Control Traps

It turns out that autonomy is the dominating factor for job satisfaction. Newport opens this section with an anecdote: the more control you have in your job, the more likely you are to stay and enjoy doing it.

Gaining enough career capital before seeking autonomy.

Control benefits only you : when you have the rare and valuable career skills needed to demand more control, people will want to tap those skills for their own benefit

When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it. If you find this evidence, continue. If not, move on.

5. Finding Meaning

Great missions are transformed into great successes as the result of using small and achievable projects (‘little bets’) to explore the concrete possibilities surrounding a compelling idea.
Missions should be so remarkable so as to compel people to share it with others