Part of what makes the craftsman mindset thrilling is its agnosticism toward the type of work you do. The

As one prominent career counselor told me, “do what you love, and the money will follow” has become the de facto motto of the career-advice field. There is, however, a problem lurking here: When you look past the feel-good slogans and go deeper into the details of how passionate people like Steve Jobs really got started, or ask scientists about wha

The more we focused on loving what we do, the less we ended up loving it.

This is the irony of control. When no one cares what you do with your working life, you probably don’t have enough career capital to do anything interesting. But once you do have this capital, as Lulu and Lewis discovered, you’ve become valuable enough that your employer will resist your efforts.

The “business” he referenced, as is the case with many lifestyle designers, was his blog about being a lifestyle designer. In other words, his only product was his enthusiasm about not having a “normal” life.

This hour-tracking strategy helped turn my attention back above all else to the quality of what I produce.

Rule #2 was the first to tackle the natural follow-up question: If “follow your passion” is bad advice, what should you do instead? It contended that the traits that define great work are rare and valuable. If you want these traits in your own life, you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. I called these rare and valuable skills career

even after you have the capital required to acquire real control, things remain difficult, as it’s exactly at this point that people begin to recognize your value and start pushing back to keep you entrenched in a less autonomous path.

the craftsman mindset is crucial for building a career you love.