To begin with, I feel conflicted. Not because of what the author has written & communicated, but because of how he has done it. I really wish the author hadn't spent too much time throughout the book trying to dismantle "The Passion Mindset" and rather just given more stories or practical way forward for readers to adapt "The Craftsman Mindset".
Irrespective, I feel the book holds some very strong messages that did teach me plenty.
The traits that define great work are rare and valuable. Supply and demand says that if you want these traits you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital. The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming “so good they can’t ignore you,” is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital. This is why it trumps the passion mindset if your goal is to create work you love.
This paragraph above captures a great deal of the essence of the whole book. It also reminds me a fun activity that I had asked my team to do once in my previous leadership experience. I want to ask you the same question I asked them to figure out answers to:
<aside> 💭 If you were to be given millions of dollars to be the best version of yourself, what would you do in return to earn this money? Tweet your answers at me here
</aside>
Don't get me wrong! Not everything is about money. But use it as a neutral indicator and truly think, if you had to fulfill your potential what skills or services would the best version of yourself offer?
If you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better.
This is something I have learnt through work as well as in my exercise routines.
Let me give a very simple example: You learnt how to recite the alphabet at some point of time in your life. You show up at your learning place, you work hard to learn your ABCs and that's it. You can't go beyond Z after one point.
What you can do though, is stretch your abilities in a different direction to get more out of it. Maybe you learn how to say the alphabet backwards, or recite only the alternate alphabets starting from A and then backwards again.
It is important to constantly keep stretching your abilities.
<aside> 💭 Is there anything in your life where you feel like you have hit a plateau? How can you stretch your ability there? *Tweet your answers at me here!*
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Which brings me to the next quote from the book
Think of skill acquisition like a freight train: Getting it started requires a huge application of effort, but changing its track once it's moving is easy.