With all the books out there that tell you to follow your passion, whichever that is, this book feels like a fresh breeze in a hot summer

Finding his/her passion is something that everyone dreams about. This is one of the main dilemmas when you are a freshman.

The labour market has changed in the last decade or so and there's more need for people with initiatives and who are creative, in any field of work. After an era of educating people to match the demand of rising industrialism, it's hard to addapt. There aren't many people who could sustain the mentality change yet, therefore a lot of books have appeared saying that you have to be 'unique' in order to be successful today.

Some of these self-help books pursue the find-and-follow-your-passion theory, which is very tempting! Consider lines like "find your passion and never have to work again!" and "quit your day job and find happiness!". Who wouldn't like to do that, right? It looks like the treasure at the bottom of the rainbow and these books are sold like crazy.

Well, this book is different! :) First of all, it doesn't promise to magically transform poneys into unicorns (maybe the title is a bit cheesy, we have Steve Martin to thank for that). No, actually if I would have to resume the whole book in a few words, I would say this: if you want to be successful you have to work your ass off and be smart about it and passion will follow. So, first work and then passion, not the other way around.

I enjoyed Cal's book and it gave me really good ideas to implement in my own life. He was quite methodical in identifying his own path and he interviewed many people. Of course, there's no universal advice and he doesn't even try to sell you one. This book is about the results he got from his research and what works for him, but it's structured in a way that it makes it easy to extrapolate to your own experience.

And while you're at it, you'd better follow his blog, where he publishes his next accomplishments in his quest of decoding patterns of success.

Find out more about the book here and check out the mindmap below, where I extracted the ideas I considered important.