Preparing to get good

After realizing that it was not possible to capture the entire book So Good They Can't Ignore You in a single post, I started thinking that perhaps I should do additional posts, with one going over each rule.

I still think that if people are interested they should read the book, and I can also confirm that there are copies of the book in Washington County libraries, but I suspect that spending more time writing about it will be valuable for me.

The overall cycle is that as you become very good at your job, having skills that are valuable, you can take more control, which allows you to not only improve your job conditions but also to control the direction your work takes, allowing it to become more of a mission, thus making this a job you are passionate about.

Building skill is the most basic step, but part of that is also deciding where to focus. There may be jobs where you should leave instead of try to become better. Newport gives three possible scenarios for that:

1. The job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable.
2. The job focuses on something you think is useless or perhaps even actively bad for the world.
3. The job forces you to work with people you really dislike.

Many of the people who would benefit from this book are those just starting out, but it can also be useful for those who are already working but dissatisfied with their situations. In that case, the first step may need to be to examine why it is not satisfying. If the reasons fit into the three situations above, it may be better to move on than to try and fix.

(I will say that I have noticed that a lot of stories -- not from the book; just that I have heard -- about people who changed jobs and been happy, or were miserable about their jobs on their deathbeds seem to involve the advertising industry.)

If you are ready to stay and build, then Newport talks about the "craftsman mindset" and gives examples of those who have followed it well, along with five habits.

1. Decide what Capital Market You're In
Newport divides these into "auction" and "winner take all", which basically means whether there are several types of skills and niches to fill, or basically one necessary type of skill. He uses one person working in venture capital and one working as a television writer for examples.

2. Identify Your Capital Type
The venture capitalist had some experience and knowledge about energy that made him valuable for firms focusing in clean energy, and making that connection helped him in focusing his search and making choices. The writer just needed to keep producing better scripts.

3. Define "Good"
This could mean having a script good enough to land an agent or being able to quickly assess whether a company with a new energy saving device will be successful. Having identified your capital type, knowing what makes it valuable should give you an idea of the level of skill that is needed.

4. Stretch and Destroy
This is where the deliberate practice comes in. We have all heard about the 10000 hour rule for becoming an expert at something, but it looks like how you practice is more important than for how long.
Neil Charness did a study of chess players, and of many tracked over 10000 hours, some became grand masters and some stayed intermediate. The grand masters had spent half of their time on serious study of the game - reading books, working with teachers, and identifying weaknesses. The players who were still intermediate had spent only about 1000 hours on this, spending more of their time on tournament play.
Deliberate practice is not always enjoyable, because you are constantly finding the weak spots, and the areas where you are not very good, and attacking them. At the same time, you end up eliminating those weak spots.

5. Be Patient
The point in the previous habit is that thousands of hours don't automatically give you valuable career capital, but it does not mean that you won't still need thousands of hours. For the two main examples, it took them two and five years of deliberate practice to get where they wanted after deciding what they could do and how to get there.

Of course, those years would have passed anyway, whether they had been working toward a goal or not.