week 4 reading log

In chapter four, Cal Newport discusses both the craftsman mindset and the passion mindset of working people. Simply to say craftsman mindset focus on what you can offer the world, and passion mindset focus on what the world can offer you. Depending on the experiences the author mentioned of Jordan and Martin, we may in further know the craftsman mindset. Jordan believes it is valuable if people can create some meaningful thing and present it to this world. Because, the work doesn’t lie, what work you did will directly show your ability. This is the people who have a craftsman mindset, they are willing to practice, attribute, also they are enjoying in the process.

However, the most of people, including myself, we are usually asking what we could get from the job? Do I like it? Is it suitable for me? Actually, it is so hard to get a right answer. So I feel confused in some time. I think I have to change my mindset. It is true if we put too much attention on return, we might be haperaware of what the things we don’t like in our job. There is no any job can be 100% perfect, especially for the fresh people like us, we may do a lots of entry-level works after we graduated. We have to consider what we can do for those jobs even it is entry-level.

Craftsman mindset enables people ignored the self-centered concerns, and instead keep finding a way to make them be better. As Martin said don’t always want to know what is the concrete way to be successful, we just have to be so good others can not ignore. No one owes we a good career, we have to earn it.

Cal Newport, 2012, ‘The Clarity of the Craftsman’ in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work, NY Business Plus, ch.4.

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