When it comes to creating work you love, following your passion is not particularly useful advice.

Things happen in stages.

Glass emphasizes that it takes time to get good at anything, recounting the many years it took him to master radio to the point where he had interesting options. “The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest phase,” he says.

I feel like your problem is that you’re trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them. That’s your tragic mistake.

You’ll never be sure. You don’t want to be sure.”

A job, in Wrzesniewski’s formulation, is a way to pay the bills, a career is a path toward increasingly better work, and a calling is work that’s an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.

Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do

Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people

the craftsman mindset, a focus on what value you’re producing in your job, and the passion mindset, a focus on what value your job offers you.

The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions

It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy

Most jobs don’t offer their employees great creativity, impact, or control over what they do and how they do it

if you want something that’s both rare and valuable, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return—this is Supply and Demand 101. It follows that if you want a great job, you need something of great value to offer in return

The more you read about Glass, the more you encounter a young man who was driven to develop his skills until they were too valuable to be ignored.

THE CAREER CAPITAL THEORY OF GREAT WORK T

he traits that define great work are rare and valuable. Supply and demand says that if you want these traits you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. Think of these rare and valuable skills you can offer as your career capital. The craftsman mindset, with its relentless focus on becoming “so good they can’t ignore you,” is a strategy well suited for acquiring career capital. This is why it trumps the passion mindset if your goal is to create work you love

Alex and Mike both focused on getting good—not finding their passion—and then used the career capital this generated to acquire the traits that made their careers compelling

Mike literally tracks every hour of his day, down to quarter-hour increments, on a spreadsheet. He wants to ensure that his attention is focused on the activities that matter. “It’s so easy to just come in and spend your whole day on e-mail,” he warned. On the sample spreadsheet he sent me, he allots himself only ninety minutes per day for email. The day before we last spoke he had only spent forty-five. This is a man who is serious about doing what he does really well

Mike’s focus on capabilities over callings obviously paid off