So Good They Can't Ignore You by Aarik

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Aarik - February 2015 Scholarship Essay

What if following your passion is bad advice? Reading this idea was compelling enough for me to pick up Cal Newport's work, So Good They Can't Ignore You, several months ago. While I wish I had read the book even sooner, I am thankful for the wisdom imparted and how it influences my approach to learning and growth each day.

Newport quickly grabs the reader's attention through several examples of individuals pursuing their passions and not finding happiness. Pursuits of spiritual enlightenment, entrepreneurship and financial success were not a means to fulfillment as various individuals believed. Perhaps most surprising was the story of Steve Jobs speaking at a graduation ceremony, hypocritically encouraging students to follow their passions, when the story behind even Jobs' rise to success through Apple revealed that he was not initially passionate about computers.

While there are a number of insights that may appeal to different individuals differently, the most convicting takeaway for me was that in order to have the type of job that offers the autonomy, authority and opportunity to make an impact in our communities, we must develop and utilize the expertise society demands in return. The book extends the simple economic concept of supply and demand to our knowledge economy, exhorting that the rarer our skill sets (lower the supply of our expertise), the greater society is willing to reward us for that expertise.

So if success is a matter of developing expertise, how do we do it? The answer, which is the proven key to success in the performance and athletic arenas, is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is the intentional commitment to work on skills we do not currently possess. It is the relentless pursuit of adding new skills to our tool kit. It is refusing to only leverage those skills we already have, and recognize that we have a responsibility to develop further mastery if we are looking to be rewarded in return.

Behavioral psychology shows that the higher our proficiency level in a given area, the more we enjoy working in that area. With that in mind, it seems somewhat ironic and counter-intuitive with the messaging we receive today that rather than pursue passions, we should pursue knowledge and expertise, which will in turn deliver both the enjoyment and the autonomy we seek.

Abraham Lincoln once said, "I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday." I believe all students should read this book because it equips us all to approach each day with the mindset that we are commissioned to try new things, and to explore puzzles and challenges we do not yet know how to solve. The best future is possible only when we accept the responsibility to invest in acquiring and applying new knowledge every day. While this runs counter to our basic human nature to preserve our safety, it is the path to the most advanced human desire of self-actualization, and one we should all pursue with the assurance that our personal expertise is the key to the success we will enjoy and the legacy we will leave behind.