So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

the 10,000-hour rule
(introduced
in 
Rule #2
): A rule, well-known
to performance scientists,
describing the amount of practice
time required to master a skill.
Malcolm Gladwell, who
popularized the concept in his
2008 book Outliers, described it
as follows: “The idea that
excellence at performing a
complex task requires a critical
minimum level of practice

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surfaces again and again in
studies of expertise. In fact,
researchers have settled on what
they believe is the magic number
for true expertise: ten thousand
hours.”
deliberate practice
(introduced in
Rule #2
): The style of difficult
practice required to continue to
improve at a task. Florida State
University professor Anders
Ericsson, who coined the term in
the early 1990s, describes it
formally as an “activity designed,
typically by a teacher, for the
sole purpose of effectively

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improving specific aspects of an
individual’s performance.”
Deliberate practice requires you
to stretch past where you are
comfortable and then receive
ruthless feedback on your
performance. In the context of
career construction, most
knowledge workers avoid this
style of skill development
because, quite frankly, it’s
uncomfortable. To build up large
stores of career capital, however,
which is necessary for creating
work you love, you must make
this style of practice a regular

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part of your work routine.
career capital markets
(introduced in 
Rule #2
): When
acquiring career capital in a field,
you can envision that you’re
acquiring this capital in a specific
type of career capital market.
There are two types of these
markets: