Introduction to the career capital concept

Any additional comments?

I actually avoided this book for a while because I got the impression it attacked liking and enjoying what you do. It's far from it. Cal Newport does not attack following your passion as long as you have the right skills to back that passion up. I'd actually change the title to "Become good at your passion before you follow you passion".

Cal gets into the concept of career capital. If you want to open up a restaurant just because you enjoy occasionally cooking on the weekends for your friends and you're good at it, but have no real concept of organizing, running a business or dealing with issues....simply don't follow you passion. Building a business based on a passion will require much more than just being good at that specific thing you call your passion. You have to have a lot of career capital behind it to back it up.

This is why Cal recommends to get good at things before you decide to take it solo. Passion alone will not get you through. On the other side if you get really good at what you do (be it accounting, analyzing or any other activity that may sound boring) you'll find that it gets much more fun along the way. Getting good results out of an activity you're performing really well will make you like and enjoy it. And I find this concept really interesting and true.

So even if you are a hard advocate of "follow your passion" and "love what you do" believe me this book will give you a lot of value. It's not meant to crush following your passion but dissect it into logical steps and decisions.

On the down side I think that the examples give in the book are a bit too shallow (someone giving up on their studies in order to start a blogging site) but then again this is probably the case for many young passionate entrepreneurs and Cal wanted to target them.

All in all I would put it in the "must read" list. And then get your hands on "Deep Work" as it is a nice continuation of the ideas in this book.

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Great ideas for my job search

This book is about making a sober career decisions, based on reason and not emotions. Definitely going to try this approach out

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I wish I had this book ten years ago!

I've spent the first ten years of my working life constantly looking for my dream job, finding my passion. If only I had spent the last ten years building valuable skills instead, I would be in a very different position. This book has been a total game changer for me, it's turned my whole work life philosophy upside down. I really can't recommend this book enough!!

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Eye-opener !!

In a world where every big name says ‘follow your passion’ ..it’s kinda hard to believe that following your passion can actually be a really bad advice. I was totally against this book until I red it.

All my confusion around the subject ‘passion’ is now much more clear and thanks to this book, I’ll be laser focused on being so good that people can’t ignore me instead of just following my passion. Thank you so much to Mr Cal Newport for writing this book and a big thank you to the narrator of this book Dave Mallow.

Totally recommended 😃👍🏼

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Fascinating but not complete

I didn't like the book but I liked the ideas. So I think it was worth the listen.

The book has a few very interesting insights but there's very little support for his claims outside a few stories.

That being said, I wouldn't bet against his assertions being true.

I can't put my finger on it, but the writing lacked something. Maybe it was that the stories wasn't engaging or that the definitions weren't clear.

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Repetition

Author mentions very useful ideas in the book, but these ideas often repeat and it seems to me that it could have been written shorten and in more dense way.

A great book for planning your career

What I enjoyed most about this book, besides of the stories and the eloquent way of explaining in detail, is that it has a simple, yet effective step by step guide that I can apply in my life.

This book dramatically influence the next job I take and what tasks I'm asking to do right now at my job, as when having a long term goal (at least annidea of it), then I can start planning to gather some abilities and experience a.k.a. career capital, so that I can trade them later for freedom.

I would definitely recommend this book to any person that is planning to reach their maximum potential in their careers.

One of the best books on career advice I know

This book has very clear Career advice and shares the philosophy of developing income producing activities.

I highly reccomed

somewhat dry, somewhat predictable

good grounding in perspective. this is an easy read, with a couple of absolute gems

Useful, Practical, Insightful, Rich, Dense, Deep

Useful, Practical, Insightful, Rich, Dense, Deep are the words coming into my mind to describe this book. It confirmed but also reinforced lot of self observations.

Much thanks, Cal. I'll also get better at giving advices at younger ones.