So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport

Author:Cal Newport [NEWPORT, CAL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics / Careers - Job Hunting
ISBN: 9781455509102
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2012-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Control Generates Resistance

Lulu’s story, as I mentioned earlier, is an example of control done right. Like Ryan and Sarah of Red Fire Farms, her career is compelling because she has infused it with control over what she does and how she does it. Also like Ryan and Sarah, she succeeds in this effort where others have failed—for example, Jane from the last chapter—by always making sure she has the career capital needed to obtain this autonomy.

Lurking in this story, however, is a hidden danger. Though Lulu’s career was satisfyingly self-directed, the path to acquiring this freedom generated conflict. Almost every time she invested her career capital to obtain the most control, she also encountered resistance. When she leveraged her value to obtain a thirty-hour schedule at her first job, for example, her employer couldn’t say no (she was saving them too much money), but they didn’t like it. It took nerve on Lulu’s part to push through that demand. Similarly, when she turned down a major promotion to take an ill-defined position at a seven-person start-up, people in her life didn’t understand.

“You had just bought a house,” I reminded her. “To turn down a big important job to go work with an unknown little company, that’s a big deal.”

“People thought I was nuts,” she agreed. Leaving this start-up after it was acquired was similarly difficult. Lulu was hesitant to get into details, but the subtext was that her value was so high at this company that its new owners tried every tactic they could to keep her on board. And finally, her transition to freelance work came with its own difficulties. Her first client really wanted to hire her full-time to work on the project, but she refused. “They really didn’t want a contractor,” she recalls, “but they didn’t have anyone else who could do this type of work, so they eventually had no choice but to agree.”

The more I met people who successfully deployed control in their career, the more I heard similar tales of resistance from their employers, friends, and families. Another example is someone I’ll call Lewis, who is a resident in a well-known combined plastic surgery program, which is arguably the most competitive medical residency. Three years into his residency, he was starting to chafe under hospital bureaucracy. When I met him for coffee, he gave me a vivid example of the frustrations of life as a modern doctor.

“I once received this patient in the ER who had his chest cut open because he had been stabbed in the heart,” he told me. “I’m on the gurney, massaging his heart with my hands as he’s brought into the operating room. We get to the room, and obviously this guy needs a blood transfusion because he has a hole in his heart.

“ ‘Where’s the blood?’ I ask.

“ ‘We can’t give it to you,’ the tech replied. ‘You skipped registration when you came in’—remember, I literally had this guy’s heart in my hand when we came through the door—and I was thinking, ‘You got to be freaking kidding me.

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