So Good They Can't Ignore You
Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
By: Cal Newport
Narrated by: Dave Mallow
Categories: Business & Careers, Career Success
Deep Work
Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Narrated by: Jeff Bottoms
Master one of our economy's most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this "exciting" audiobook (Daniel H. Pink) from an "exceptional" author (New York Times Book Review). Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship.
Not too deep...
By A curious visitor on 09-14-18
Digital Minimalism
Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
Narrated by: Will Damron, Cal Newport
Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the best-selling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.
By Loïs Talagrand on 02-12-19
How Non-Conformists Move the World
By: Adam Grant, Sheryl Sandberg - foreword
Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Susan Denaker
With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation's most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
Read before listening
By Michael on 07-18-16
By: Adam Grant, and others
No Excuses!
The Power of Self-Discipline for Success in Your Life
By: Brian Tracy
Narrated by: Brian Tracy
Most people think success comes from good luck or enormous talent, but many successful people achieve their accomplishments in a simpler way: through self-discipline. Brian Tracy knows this firsthand. He didn't graduate from high school, and after working for a few years as a laborer, he realized he had limited skills and a limited future. But through the power of self-discipline, he changed his life.
Don't buy this book if you have his GOALS! book
By L. Venable on 12-27-13
13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do
Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success
By: Amy Morin
Narrated by: Amy Morin
Everyone knows that regular exercise and weight training lead to physical strength. But how do we strengthen ourselves mentally for the truly tough times? And what should we do when we face these challenges? Or as psychotherapist Amy Morin asks, what should we avoid when we encounter adversity? Through her years counseling others and her own experiences navigating personal loss, Morin realized it is often the habits we cannot break that are holding us back from true success and happiness.
Starts Off Slow
By A. Yoshida on 05-22-17
The Four
The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
By: Scott Galloway
Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong. For all that's been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway. Instead of buying the myths these companies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions.
Terrible book
By "achuith" on 06-23-19
Mastering Fear
A Navy SEAL's Guide
By: Brandon Webb, John David Mann
Narrated by: Johnathan McClain, Brandon Webb
Brandon Webb has run life-threatening missions in the world's worst trouble spots, whether that meant jumping out of airplanes, taking down hostile ships on the open sea, or rolling prisoners in the dead of night in the mountains of Afghanistan. As a Navy SEAL, he learned how to manage the natural impulse to panic in the face of terrifying situations. As media CEO and national television commentator, he has learned how to apply those same skills in civilian life.
slow start
By adam govoni on 09-03-18
By: Brandon Webb, and others
Designing Your Life
How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
By: Bill Burnett, Dave Evans
Narrated by: Bill Burnett, Dave Evans
In this book Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create lives that are both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of whom or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.
Useful Approach, Worth the Listen
By Paul Frew on 12-23-16
By: Bill Burnett, and others
Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
By: T. Harv Eker
Narrated by: Charles Constant
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to get rich easily while others are destined for lives of financial struggle? Is the difference found in their education, intelligence, skills, timing, work habits, contacts, luck, or choice of jobs, businesses, or investments? The shocking answer is: none of the above! In his groundbreaking Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker states, "Give me five minutes, and I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life!"
Good book, too much adversiting
By Guilherme on 08-17-19
The Closer's Survival Guide - Third Edition
By: Grant Cardone
Narrated by: Grant Cardone
The most powerful arsenal of closes ever! This audiobook over 120 Closes includes: 31 Money Closes, 17 Time Related Closes, 3 Pressure Closes, 3 Agreement Closes, 8 Decision Closes, and another 64 of the most creative closes you will ever find in one book! Financial "Closing" is the final step in the pursuit of ANY goal. This thing called closing is not just something that sales people do but something that applies to every person.
half is useful, half is complete fluff
By thomas on 11-06-18
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
By: Ben Horowitz
Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
Ben Horowitz offers essential advice on building and running a startup - practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn't cover, based on his popular ben's blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.
Book for Entrepreneuers
Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness [Expanded Edition]
By: Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.
Libertarian Socialism
By Doug on 10-30-17
By: Richard H. Thaler, and others
The More of Less
By: Joshua Becker
Narrated by: Joshua Becker
Most of us know we own too much stuff. We feel the weight and burden of our clutter, and we tire of cleaning and managing and organizing. While excess consumption leads to bigger houses, faster cars, fancier technology, and cluttered homes, it never brings happiness. Rather, it results in a desire for more. It redirects our greatest passions to things that can never fulfill, and it distracts us from the very lives we wish we were living. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Freedom - with less clutter.
By LA1967 on 07-09-17
Fooled by Randomness
The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This audiobook is about luck, or more precisely, how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. It is already a landmark work, and its title has entered our vocabulary. In its second edition, Fooled by Randomness is now a cornerstone for anyone interested in random outcomes.
useless rant
By Igor on 03-28-19
Fail Until You Don't
Fight. Grind. Repeat.
By: Bobby Bones
Narrated by: Bobby Bones
Bobby Bones is the youngest inductee ever into the National Radio Hall of Fame, alongside legends Dick Clark, Larry King, and Howard Stern. As "the most powerful man in country music" (Forbes), he has reached the peak of his profession and achieved his childhood dreams. Each weekday morning, more than five million fans tune in to his radio show. But as Bobby reveals, a lot of what made him able to achieve his goals were mistakes, awkward moments, and embarrassing situations.
By SandiK on 08-06-18
The Art of Communicating
By: Thich Nhat Hanh
Narrated by: Dan Woren
Zen master Thick Nhat Hanh, best-selling author of Peace is Every Step and one of the most respected and celebrated religious leaders in the world, delivers a powerful path to happiness through mastering life's most important skill: How do we say what we mean in a way that the other person can really hear? How can we listen with compassion and understanding? Communication fuels the ties that bind, whether in relationships, business, or everyday interactions.
Decent short-ish listen for connecting with others
By DaemonZeiro on 07-02-15
The Disordered Mind
What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves
By: Eric R. Kandel
Narrated by: David Stifel
Eric R. Kandel, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is one of the pioneers of modern brain science. His work continues to shape our understanding of how learning and memory work and to break down age-old barriers between the sciences and the arts. In his seminal new audiobook, The Disordered Mind, Kandel draws on a lifetime of pathbreaking research and the work of many other leading neuroscientists to take us on an unusual tour of the brain. He confronts one of the most difficult questions we face: How does our mind, our individual sense of self, emerge from the physical matter of the brain?
The Brain and how it forms our reality.
By Mads Miller on 02-20-19
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
By: Steven Levy
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
Remember Why You Got Into Computing
By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
In an unorthodox approach, Georgetown University professor Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice, and sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving their careers. Not only are pre-existing passions rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work, but a focus on passion over skill can be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.
Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers. Cal reveals that matching your job to a pre-existing passion does not matter.
Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it. With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love, and will change the way you think about careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.
©2012 Cal Newport (P)2012 Hachette Audio
Career Success Motivation & Self-Improvement Personal Success
What listeners say about So Good They Can't Ignore You
Good Counter to all the "Passion" Career Lit
I often listen to books in the business/ career genre, and have long been troubled by the fact that I really had no idea how to change the downtime activities I enjoyed into my career. I really don't know how to transition from video games and reading sci-fi/fantasy fiction into a sustainable career, and I wasn't sure if I even wanted to try. This book made me realize that maybe I don't have to.
I felt as though the book was a little slow getting into it, but in the end I am glad that I listened to the full book. I really enjoyed that each point he made was tied to a real person interviewed by the author, it made it easier to implement the information in the book. The book's conclusion, in which the author describes the application of his findings in his own life, gave me a lot of ideas about how to improve my own work.
If you have been told by someone that you won't be happy at work unless you "find your passion" and have been discouraged by such mantras, you will enjoy this book. And you won't continue to feel like an un-passionate weirdo in this passion-oriented culture.
A. Yoshida
Become a craftsman
The book makes one main point - become a craftsman, providing a product or service that offers value to the world. This is the secret to finding meaningful work, not following your passion. The research and stories support this one point. The author gives many examples of famous people who didn't have a clear vision of what they wanted to do for a living. They built up their skills and continued exploring different options. Sometimes by luck or sheer determination or both, they ended up successful after many years of hard work.
The rules in the book are:
#1: Don't follow your passion.
#2: Be so good they can't ignore you (build skills).
#3: Importance of control (get more control over what you do)
#4: Importance of mission
Although there are four rules, it still boils down to becoming a craftsman - having a set of rare and valuable skills (what the author refers to as career capital). With that, you can move up the career ladder and ask for more control over what you do and how you do it. And with more control, you can invest your career capital into a mission (doing something you find meaningful).
Buy this book if you are over 50
Would you listen to So Good They Can't Ignore You again? Why?
Yes. Good advice. Thought-provoking ideas.
What other book might you compare So Good They Can't Ignore You to and why?
Some of Peter Drucker's works on knowledge workers and second act careers.
Cal Newport's work is an important contribution to career-planning books. Unlike the reviewer who recommends not to buy the book if you are over 30, I would heartily recommend it for those new to the world of work as well as those who have many years under their belt. Cal's advice on mission plan and good use of career capital can be put to good use by someone who has been in the knowledge working world for a while. If there is a shortcoming, it might be that Cal's perspective is at times narrowed by his academic career. Some of his advice could use refining or evolution for those of us in business. But it is a very good start and, hopefully, not his last contribution to this important area.
I Was Stuck For 10 Years, And This Book Saved Me!
This is exactly the book I needed to listen to. I've felt stuck for more than 10 years because I've been searching for my "calling" or my "life's work", and I've not invested myself into what I WAS doing with my life because I was waiting to discover the passion that lived inside of me before I chose a path in life.
This book explained that I was doing it all wrong and what to do instead. I now realize that diving fully into what I'm doing and becoming really good at it is what will lead to feeling passionate about my career... not waiting for some innate secret wellspring of inspiration to be discovered and then I'll finally "take off". This book really saved me from another 10 years of wasting my life. Highly recommended!
The audiobook was performed really well. I listen to mine at double speed using the Audible app, but I kept having to pause it because the lessons in this book were so incredible that I had to write them down for later. I enjoyed listening to it, and I intend to make this one of the books I listen to every year.
This audio delivers on its Title
This audio delivers on its title. He argues against following your passion to find the ideal job and instead believes that passion comes after you already become excellent at something.
Very easy to follow and I like how he ties ideas from many other contemporary authors into his work.
I was surprised by how young the author is. Highly recommended for anyone who is planning their career.
A few good summaries of the audio.
Absolutely glad I ignored some reviewers.
I do take note of fellow reviewers' input to make buy decisions. But something made me override their advice this time.
I've now listened twice, beginning to end. And certain parts three or four times in quick succession. It will be more in the future. I've decided on this re-listening strategy to get the muck out of my mind, planted by passion preachers. I, however, take full responsibility for following that message.
Cal reminded me of my success method of the past. A method I did not name, or put the required weight on, or thought about, it was just done - deliberately. But it sadly was forgotten, droned out by passion evangelists.
Thank you for writing this book. It helped me GREATLY!
Narration never bothers me. I always have a little chuckle when reading reviews on narrators. I'm just glad someone exerted the effort, saving me the time. The background to that statement: I used to buy computer voices to read text for me. Obviously that was before I discovered Audible.
Jason Comely
A bit like Chinese Takeout
Is there anything you would change about this book?
The book title is a little misleading. It should have been called "Triangulate" or "You're not there yet".
What was most disappointing about Cal Newport's story?
The book isn't really about becoming really good at something. It's about finding work in life that is satisfying and remarkable, and that is done by working at things that interest you until you land that dream job. Cal claims he debunks the idea to 'follow your passion', but in my mind he fails to because all of the people mentioned in the book followed their interests and passions and tried various things to get to their life's work or calling in life.
What about Dave Mallow's performance did you like?
The perfect voice for this book and his reading was flawless.
Was So Good They Can't Ignore You worth the listening time?
Not for me. After listening to it I felt I didn't learn a single thing. But then again, I'm 42 and likely not his target audience.
The advice to 'follow your passion' has not been debunked by Cal's book, rather, he just injected more realism and substance to it.
Good Listen
I took a chance buying this since it is a new book with few reviews. It is a refreshing break from the "passion" based literature that is popular now. It teaches what has become uncommon sense these days - you get out of life what you put into it. Its backed by some research and good anecdotes, and gives needed perspective if you start thinking that you have to "find your calling". Few people find it without investing time, effort, an open mind, and patience, first. Saying that, I still find lots of motivating and helpful ideas in the passion based approach, so its not all black and white to me, but still this book adds a refreshing perspective.
Taliho
I bought this book despite having read the review cautioning about it if you're over age 30 (Im 40). The book's premise was so compelling that I had to judge it for myself. This book suggests a solution, based on a shift in perspective, to the challenge of finding what path is right for you. Its a discussion between chasing your dreams and what I'll call "working" your dreams. Its a wonderful contrast that attempts to answer the question whether chasing passion or whether dedication to improvement is responsible for career success and fulfillment. This discussion is applicable whether you're just starting out searching for answers or find yourself later in life wanting more out of your choices. Its apparent that a tremendous amount of research, along with examples, had been done by the author and used to articulate his theory, which I appreciated. The premise of this book can be debated endlessly, but for me it was outstanding. The knowledge gained from this book will serve me well. Thanks Cal.
Follow your talent, then your passion
Incredible message that I won't forget. Glad I read it.
Parts of the book dragged on. Some topics were overly discussed.
The concept of Career Control is enlightening.
Suhair
the best career advice i got!
hands down the best career advice book I've read the last 8years. if your like me, educated but totally confused abt your next step;afraid of missing out on life and are tired of finding your career passion, this is the book. i swear it has made me work harder and less depressed abt my job. mr.newport; thank you for shearing this with us.
Best "life advice" book I've come across so far
Unlike most "self-help" type books, this one doesn't keep hammering home the same point that could have been summarized in one chapter. The points are valid and the examples feel real!
A real must-read
This is hands-down the best book I've ever read about how to develop your talents and find/create work you love. I only wish I'd come across this earlier in my life!
There's so much in here that it's difficult to summarise. The best thing you could do right now is to stop reading reviews and just buy it. Seriously.
Melviba
Such a simple but brilliant lesson.
Ideal for those seeking passion, direction or just a boost. Really enjoyable read with some fascinating theories.
a masterpiece!
Having listened to Deep Work by the same author I was very happy learning about the stories and ideas set out in this audio book.
Call Newport is awesome!
A phenomenal piece of art.
This book has change my view and perception about a passion and it's role in our lives. Thanks this excellent book I learnt to think and act differently. A huge thank you to the author. A life changing material.
Kim Hollis
Interesting concepts, clearly presented
A really interesting way to look at career growth and expertise. I'm so glad I got this as the 'follow your passion' hasn't always resonated and I'm still experimenting in my thirties.
Delivery is very clear and matter of fact.