Left for dead on the day she was born because she was a girl, Fawzia Koofi is now the deputy speaker of the house in Afghanistan and running for president in a society where many still do not believe that women should even be educated. She has perservered despite being on the run for much of her life, first from the mujahideen, who killed her father, and then the Taliban, who took away her freedoms and killed her husband and many other family members. Her soul fell as she watched all the progress towards modernization and women's rights crumble under civil war and Taliban rule. She has faced death many times throughout her life, and she still withstands regular assassination attempts.
Clearly, Fawzia Koofi is a remarkable person. But millions of Afghans have gone through virtually identical experiences. How did she become remarkable?
When you listen to Fawzia Koofi now, like during her appearance on the Daily Show, you might think that what makes her remarkable is her mission. The significance of her mission is obvious: poverty, women's rights, political reform, ensure her duaghters do not suffer as she did.
Technically, it is true that Fawzia's mission makes her remarkable. Unfortunately, it would be all too easy to take the wrong lesson from her, just as many people took the wrong lesson from Steve Job's Stanford speech.
Too many people, including me, thought that the lesson is "Find your passion."
"Find your passion" is a terrible, terrible advice.
Or rather, it is highly misleading. Fawzia Koofi and Steve Jobs did not START by finding a compelling mission or purpose. Fawzia started by insisting that she receive an education, even while on the run, and much to the resistance of her family members. She had no time to think of a mission- she was only a child when she had to start fleeing from death on a regular basis. And it was this education that made her unique. At a time when it was nearly impossible for a woman to get an education, she got one. In other words, she had rare and valuable skills.
Notably, she did not originally intend to go into politics. The idea developed relatively late in life. But her skills got her noticed, and she was given the opportunity to run for Parliament, mostly made possible by chance events. Her mission only started developing in earnest many years after she began developing her skills. Even when she was well on her way to fame, she said she felt "mentally lost" and "purposeless."
During this time, she still had to build her skills constantly, in particular in giving speeches. This ability is what ultimately gave her the power to start building women's education centers in conservative villages, to start standing up vocally for women's rights, to get on the international stage. Only now does her mission seem clear. Her passion was a side effect of getting really good at what she does.
In summary:
Wrong: Look inward and decide passion => go follow the passion
Right: look outward and see what skills might allow you to offer value to others => develop skills => explore many missions while developing more skills => find passion. Or rather let passion find you.
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I Know My Passion... Not
I'm 7 books into my effort to read 52 books in 52 weeks. This blog entry was my attempt to explain Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You using the example of another book, Fawzia Koofi's Favored Daughter. He uses many case examples to rigorously debunk "Follow your passion."
You may remember my blog entry "I'm lost. What's my purpose in life?" Cal Newport's book pretty much solves everything. I don't need to feel bad that I haven't found a purpose, because a purpose is only possible after I've spent decades developing valuable skills. My most meaningful career accomplishment will likely be something I never imagined.
I also noted that Cal Newport, being an academic, provided really really good advice for graduate students (and in general, anyone who is trying to create knowledge). I've already begun implementing his paradigm into my work (see below).
Below, I've copied my notes on Cal Newport's book. But seriously, go buy So Good They Can't Ignore You right now.
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So Good They Can't Ignore You
Popular paradigm: look inward and decide your "passion," develop the courage to leave your job and go follow your passion. Then develop passion-oriented skills and do what you love.
New paradigm: Pre-existing passions don't exist. Even if they did, you would first need rare and valuable skills to back them up, called career capital, or you will fail. To find a compelling mission for your life, you need those skills first so you can explore many possible missions. You can develop career capital in nearly any job, because you can usually apply skills to other fields. Start NOW, in your current job. Careful: the more skill you acquire, the more others will try to convince you to help them or follow a traditional path, but stay focused on what you believe will make the most impact. Use your value to demand more autonomy and surround yourself with people you like and work well with. Then, use your autonomous time to develop your own missions. These are tentative missions - anything that seems interesting and important at the time. Your mission will constantly change, so be comfortable with it. Some missions will reveal themselves serendipitously- if you have the skills then you can take advantage of opportunities. Others will be brought to you because of your skills- people want to work with you. Learn as much as you can, brainstorm ideas, and put them into action in small projects. This will allow you to continuously expand, refine, or replace your missions until you believe that you are both working right and doing the right work.
Important: these are not a series of steps. They define a lifestyle. Different aspects are more important to focus on a different times. Career capital is most important for a 20-something, for example.
What Can You Actually Do Right Now?
Bold: Goals
Italics: specific activities that bring you closer to the goals. Do these on a regular basis.
General principles
- Develop career capital - rare and valuable skills that make you so good/interesting that others cannot ignore you
- Explore possible life/work missions - these will allow you to constantly refine your skill set, explore opportunities and develop a mission
- Time tracking - track time spent towards high-yield activities, i.e. those that develop career capital and explore possible missions. These include deliberate practice and feedback, background research, little bets, serious study of others and others' work
- Autonomy - YOU must make time for high-yield activities
- Prioritize these over simple productivity
- Turn down prestigious positions that saddle you with responsibilities
- Surround yourself with likeable and talented people who respect your autonomy
Career capital
- Identify rare and valuable skills that make the most difference in your current field or are generally applicable to any field
- Study people who have rare and valuable skills
- Develop rare and valuable skills:
- Deliberate practice - strain yourself and embrace discomfort and ambiguity
- Seek immediate, clear feedback, esp from mentor/coach
Mission and impact
- Mission: Determine a tentative mission
- Study people who have compelling missions and interesting careers
- Cutting Edge: Do research and constantly scan for your field's next big idea - the "adjacent possible"
- Background research: Learn new ideas in your field through reading, meetings, talks
- Research Bible: Summarize idea-of-the-week in your own words
- Idea notebook: brainstorm own ideas
- Daily walk: free-form brainstorm related to the tentative mission
- Little bets: small exploratory projects (<1 month) to test your ideas
- criteria: must do at least one of the following:
- force yourself to master a new skill
- produce novel results
- grasp the attention of others (i.e. be remarkable)
- Seek concrete feedback, especially from others
- obsess over self-imposed deadlines
- publicize your little bets in a setting where word can quickly spread if the idea is good enough
- Reflection: Evaluate concrete feedback from little bet, alter or replace tentative mission, guide further research, plan next little bet
- Take 1 full day off per month for reflection
