Three books to transform your career — and your life

In his three most recent books, Cal Newport shares insight on how to have a more fulfilling and successful career, as well as life. Each of these books highlights how living with intention in what one is doing can lead to a more satisfying existence.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

In the first of these, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, Newport dissects what makes for a fulfilling career from information he compiled on his own while contemplating this question himself.

Newport first challenges the idea of following your passion, as this has rarely led to a fulfilling career unless it came after some of the steps he identified, which also can contribute to finding true passion. Through his research, Newport found some attributes of work that someone is more likely to find themselves passionate about, but this first requires accumulating a wide range of skills. These can be attained by making many small bets and working on various seemingly unrelated projects which will lead to someone accumulating career capital, later allowing you to attain autonomy and control; two things Newport identifies as being vital to a satisfying career. Ultimately Newport finds that accumulating rare and valuable skills can make you, as Steve Martin said, “so good they can’t ignore you,” as only following mastery of our work does passion follow.

Deep Work

In the follow up Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Newport argues that being able to attain focus is an increasingly rare and valuable skill and that in somewhat short periods of intense focus one can learn and accomplish more than someone surrounding themselves with distractions.

To engage in periods of “deep work” you must be able to organize your life in such a way that promotes periods of intense focus. This requires planning and discipline to allow yourself the time and eliminate distractions that may arise. This means getting rid of things that tend to waste your time, like social media. Even those most experienced in doing “deep work” can only do so for a few hours a day, but how you set yourself up for focus can make or break your success. When attempting to enter these periods, creating some sort of a loss like the cost of your drink at a coffee shop or the time you spent traveling to a location can be incentives to get work done, as when sitting at home there is little cost to being distracted. Focus is similar to any muscle, it must be developed over time. By increasing the frequency and length of “deep work”, the more you will be able to achieve with it.

Digital Minimalism

Just as Deep Work descended further in on one of the topics in So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World is derived from a chapter first presented in Deep Work: quit social media.

Newport challenges the reader with his digital declutter; removing all nonessential technology from your devices for thirty days, and once complete systematically reintroducing the item you still find necessary. In trials, people who successfully spent thirty days without and used this new free time to develop new interests and habits found themselves uninterested in returning to many of the applications they removed just a few weeks prior. Through rethinking our relationship with technology, Newport finds we are better able or prioritize our lives, getting more done while having greater time doing the things we enjoy. This isn’t about not using technology, rather being about finding its space in your life as a tool rather than the default.

The Intentional Life

By being intentional on what we have on our phones and computers, as well as how we use them, we can limit the time we spend distracting ourselves from the ability to complete deep work and attain skills to make ourselves so good we can’t be ignored.

This year I devoured each of these books in just a few sittings, and while individually they tackle differing ideas, the core of them rely on living with intention from the things we think about most, like our careers, to the things we do without thinking, such as picking up our phone.

In Deep Work, Newport leaves us with a line from Winfred Gallagher’s Rapt; “I’ll choose my targets with care… then I’ll give them my rapt attention. In short, I’ll live a focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.”

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.