Work Ethic – My response to Cal Newport’s Article

Work ethic. It’s all about ethic. Well, if success is what you’re after. This is something that I and a great deal of others hold to be self-evident.

It is also an idea championed by Cal Newport in his celebrated blog series.

Newport, an assistant professor of computer science, takes aim at the concept of the “Dream job” and also seeks to disprove the notion that passion is important for achieving a fulfilling career.

Newport approaches the problem, in a sense back to front. In other words, through his attack on the “Passion hypothesis” he wishes to improve the happiness of those already in jobs which they consider “uninteresting”. “It’s not about how you get started… maybe what matters is what you do once you get going”. This is for good reason, as his primary audience is those stuck in unhappy and already well progressed career situations.

He labels the pursuit of a dream job; one inspired by passion as “dangerous”, arguing that the attitude one has towards your job is what really counts. However I think, the MIT graduate disregards the importance of passion as an undeniably useful compass in the (at least attempted) search for a career in which you do not suffer. Such decisions are those that I, as a university student at the very beginning of my academic (and in some sense professional) career am most concerned about. So it is with a tinge of suspicion that I regard his opinions on the matter.

Newport rightly highlights factors such as “authenticity, autonomy and mission” as the real catchwords of a fulfilled career and life. On the quest to achieving the outcomes of these shiny new bywords for success, Newport proposes the importance of “Deliberate Practice”. He defines this as not simply passive repetitious practice of a skill for improvement, but the conscious and active process of   “hard, mentally demanding” “goal (oriented)” activity. This I totally agree with. I believe developing a skill is the surest way to stay relevant, fulfilled and happy with one’s self.

However, here a paradox here arises. The overall goal of Newport’s blog series is to “build a deeply satisfying work life”. But as humans, motivation plays a huge role in why we do things. And since Newport’s Deliberate Practice requires a great deal of effort (“it’s hard” he says), it stands to reason that some drive, some incentive must be possessed in order for significant action to take place.

Nothing ever gets done without motivation. You spend hours on that paper? Why? Because your work ethic and motivation is inspired thus. Call it drive, call it passion, it makes little difference. The individuals who will read Newport’s posts and follow his advice are those who are zealous about improvement. It may not be ‘happy’ passion, it may very well be hunger born from negative or disciplined conviction. Either way, this urge is at the core of any meaningful doing. Newport uses the example of Bill McKibben a celebrated and successful writer in this informative talk.

Cal Newport: “Follow Your Passion” Is Bad Advice from 99U on Vimeo.

Newport argues that McKibben only became happy and truly fulfilled after his superb work ethic earnt him prestige, clarifying to his audience that passion had nothing to do with the writer’s success. Yet again the paradox presents itself. McKibben wrote an “absurd amount of articles” in collage, Newport explains, and thus he practiced his craft to perfection. Ok. Can someone please tell me why someone would write an “absurd” amount if there was not indeed some drive, some fire within the guy? Newport attempts to “head off” this argument, and indeed does a passable job.

 

Newport seems to posit that no such passion existed until years later when McKibben became a proficient, successful writer. He argues that it was small, incremental and serendipitous events in the lives of the successful that lead them to their current fulfillment. As convincing as this is to me, there is still some nagging feeling in the back of my head that tells me that there is an obvious difference between an “absurd(ly)” prolific writer and the average joe posting the daily status updates from the comfort of a steaming bath. What is this difference? I still find it hard to believe that it is not some form of passion. In my own experience I have found some elements of Newport’s idea to be true. I attribute my just-about-ok editing skills to the serendipitous occurrence of finding editing software on my Dad’s computer at age 10. Yet, I cannot reconcile these experiences with the ideas of Newport when I recall that I was consumed by some great motivation from very early on to edit together (rather bad) media products.

In his blog posts, to disassociate passion from success, Newport also uses the example of chess; a game not noted for passion, but widely admired by aspirational ‘thinkers’ as the panicle of intellectual activity. Thus it is easy for Newport, within the framework of chess, to present an argument that disregards passion and glorifies Deliberate Practice. Such an argument would be much more problematic if Newport addressed a far less sterile occupation than chess, for example, any type of physical sport. It is undeniable that Deliberate Practice is important, nay essential. Yet to remove this from passion is at best a gloss-over designed to cater to Newport’s target costumer; the disenfranchised professional.

I think the main confusion here is in how Newport defines passion. I don’t think passion has to be this flowery feel good thing. And when one bears this in mind, Newport’s vilification of passion as a means to success loses traction.

I would rather propose that it is passionate work ethic that would pave the way to success. This I think is something Newport would agree with me about.

Aside from this confusion, the sum total of the three blog articles of this week’s reading seems to be:

1. Don’t yearn for something better than what you have. Unhappiness stems from this.
2. Satisfaction trumps dreaming.
3. Work hard in an active, smart way if you want to overtake your peers.

Two seem defeatist and one is simply common sense.

 

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