I have email subscriptions to only a small number of blogs and newsletters, but one that I read faithfully is Cal Newport’s. As a graduate student Newport started a blog called Study Hacks in which he offered advice to students on how to succeed in school. The scope of the blog has since expanded beyond advising students. Today it offers insights to anyone interested in performing “productive, valuable and meaningful work in an increasingly distracted digital age.”
Newport got his Ph.D. in computer science in 2009, worked as a post-doctoral fellow at MIT, started teaching at Georgetown University in 2011, and was granted tenure there in 2017 when he was only 33. He has published six books.
One of Newport’s recent blog posts reminded me of the times that young people have asked me for advice about how to make the most of their careers. In his 2012 book So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in The Quest for Work You Love, Newport argues that the guidance so many young people hear — “follow your passion” — is bad advice if their goal is to end up loving what they do. First, few people in their 20s know yet what they will ultimately find fulfilling or rewarding. Second, whatever someone feels passionate about is not necessarily something they’ll be able to earn a living doing. It’s often not true that you can do what you love and the money will follow
Newport proposes a different strategy for building a career: Do the hard work of developing skills that are both rare and valuable. Learning to do something that society values, and being able to do it better than other people, will make you an asset to prospective employers. And as you deepen your rare and valuable skills, you’ll have the economic leverage— what Newport calls “career capital” — to expand in the directions you find most interesting and fulfilling.