We have now established that a PhD provides plenty of opportunity to develop mastery and (in many cases) autonomy. Yet, these properties alone do not always ensure a remarkable and satisfying research career. In this second part of the book extract from Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You, we look at an additional piece in the puzzle—having a “mission”—and summarize the book’s system of practices to develop both mastery and mission, which can be applied directly during the PhD. I conclude with some critiques of the book and a case study to test whether these ideas map to my own research career thus far.

Developing a cool research mission

An overall sense of purpose (what Newport calls a “mission”) is another key ingredient of a satisfying career. A mission, usually in the form of a moderately abstract statement, gives direction and coherence to our work—and can be a powerful source of motivation and enjoyment in any career, but especially in research (as we’ve discussed previously).

Interestingly (and perhaps influenced by his academic training), Newport suggests that a cool mission likely won’t appear to us at random. Instead, it emerges once we reach “the edge” of our field—when we’ve developed enough mastery to see the “adjacent possible,” a term for ideas just beyond what’s currently being done in our profession (in this case, our research field).

In research, this process of “getting to the edge” maps quite literally onto the PhD, and the development of the skills and disciplinary knowledge needed to defend one. So, don’t expect to know your mission at the outset of the PhD. Your thesis topic is unlikely to be your mission—it’s probably too narrow—but the act of doing the PhD helps you internalize how mastery leads to novelty. Even at the end of the PhD, after many iterations of our concept of the PhD, the dissertation won’t probably be our mission—but it may help clarify it. Missions tend to be broader—something that can structure an entire career, not just a three- or four-year project.

That said, academic careers offer ample opportunities to define and refine a mission. Many early-career processes—job talks, tenure statements—demand some version of a research mission. And while Newport isn’t particularly explicit on this, it seems obvious that our mission (like the research question of a thesis) will be iteratively redefined over time, as our skills, interests, and understanding evolve.

But how, concretely, do we find—or rather, develop—a mission? And how do we choose among the different “adjacent possibles” we may glimpse once we reach this edge?

This is where Newport’s book is most interesting for PhD students. In the conclusion, he describes how he applied his own principles in building a research career. A large portion is devoted to what he calls a “closed-loop research system”—a method for deliberate practice (to build mastery) and for developing a mission. He also outlines this system in an older blog post. The system is structured like a pyramid, with three layers:

1. Background practice: This is the foundational layer. It involves deliberate, sustained effort to understand our field and build core research skills. Newport suggests dissecting one excellent, difficult paper at a time. This means more than just reading—it involves paraphrasing in our own words, reproducing key results, and linking the paper’s ideas to our own. The key here is having a tangible output: a summary, replicating results, applying the idea to a different context. Choose papers with clear markers of quality—best paper awards, top-tier journals, or highly cited foundational work. If we’re in a lab-heavy discipline, this kind of practice might also involve mastering a new lab technique, e.g., by helping a more experienced colleague. It might mean going to a talk and summarizing it afterwards—or even better, asking a smart question or speaking with the presenter. The important thing is to set aside consistent time, week after week, for this kind of focused, effortful practice.
2. Little bets: As we accumulate expertise, new direction ideas will begin to appear. But which ones should we pursue? Newport recommends what he calls “little bets”—small, time-limited projects that test a concrete direction. These bets should result in a tangible outcome—a report, a prototype, a dataset, a draft paper—that invites feedback. That feedback can come from supervisors, peers, conference reviewers—any external source that pushes our thinking further. In a PhD context, a little bet might be applying a new method to an existing dataset, or exploring a provocative hypothesis in a short paper. The key is that these bets are aligned with our tentative mission, and are fast enough to allow quick feedback. Newport advises having no more than two or three little bets active at any one time, so we can get useful feedback fast, without losing focus by trying too many things at the same time.
3. Formulating a mission: The top of the pyramid is the articulation of a research mission. This is a short statement—even one sentence, perhaps with a bit of elaboration—of the kind of research we want to do, and the impact we think it might have. This mission is provisional and will evolve—but it guides our background practice (what we read, what talks we attend), as well as the little bets we choose to place. And crucially, write it down. Putting the mission into words forces clarity and reveals weak spots in our reasoning. It gives us something to revise as our work—and our understanding of the field—develops.

Though Newport doesn’t mention it, this system fits well with other reflection exercises we’ve shared on the blog to help us appropriate our PhD project. These tools could be thought of as a fourth layer in the pyramid—something between the little bets and the overall mission. For example, using the CQOCE diagram, we can define the scope and conceptual backbone of our thesis—i.e., the portion of our broader mission that fits within a doctoral project. With the thesis map, we can sketch a plan for how to get there, using little bets as stepping stones (and sources of feedback) along the way. Those little bets aren’t just exploratory—they can also be “fuel” for our progress.

Other useful practices

In addition to the “closed-loop research system” above, Newport offers a few other practices that can be especially valuable during a PhD:

• Track a “research deliberate practice hour tally”: As noted, regularly spending focused time improving our research skills or deepening our knowledge of the field/thesis topic is essential to becoming so good we can’t be ignored. One simple, effective way to motivate ourselves and have a better sense of progress is to log how many hours we spend each day or week on such deliberate practice. This can be on paper or digital—what matters is doing it, reviewing it weekly or monthly, and strategizing how to increase it sustainably, without harming our health, missing key milestones, or neglecting other priorities.
• Make time for brainstorming sessions or walks: We often assume our best ideas will arrive unprompted while we work. In reality, transforming insights from deliberate practice into “little bets,” or refining our PhD concept or mission, often requires dedicated time for reflection. Set aside regular slots (say, 30–60 minutes once a week, or more) for focused thinking on specific PhD challenges, to process our latest deliberate practice outputs in search for “little bet” ideas, or to synthesize their feedback to refine our mission or PhD thesis concept. Walks can be especially generative—as light movement boosts creativity—but quiet, uninterrupted time in any setting works. Bring a notebook or other means of capture with you, and aim to produce a concrete output: a list of ideas, a decision, a tentative plan. The key here is to have a clear problem or task to work on, and a tangible outcome for the slot.
• Keep a “research bible”: Newport recommends maintaining a growing set of interlinked documents—a personal wiki of sorts—that records the results of our deliberate practice, brainstorms, and idea development. Over time, this becomes a growing index of topics, readings, synthesis notes, and “little bet” outcomes related to our PhD and broader mission. It can also link to “idea documents” (akin to qualitative research memos), where we note our current thinking on topics that are important to us. These don’t need to be clean or polished—just a representation of our (provisional) ideas. Writing out our thoughts makes them clearer and reveals gaps. During my own PhD, I wasn’t systematic, but I did start with a wiki, which changed incarnations over the years. Now, my personal system (using ResophNotes or Obsidian) contains over 1,000 messy but searchable notes, including syntheses, half-baked concepts, and reminders of my values or yearly reviews.
• Talk to others before making big decisions: Though not emphasized explicitly in the book, I found Newport’s modus operandi of talking with different kinds of professionals about their career choices very useful. We can adopt a similar approach—speaking to people who’ve taken the paths we’re considering, as a journalist might. The goal is to understand how they made their decisions, and what their daily lives (not just their jobs) look like now. This is something I have encountered in other advice books¹, yet it’s easy to avoid because it can feel awkward. But as we’ve said before, avoidance rarely leads to good decisions. Indeed, such conversations are central to our proposed frameworks for choosing whether to do a PhD or facing other big decisions in our research.

A (haphazard) case study in some of these ideas playing out

One way to test whether these ideas generalize beyond Newport’s career is to reflect whether it maps onto our own careers. So here’s my case, run through the lens of his framework.

After years in the telecom industry, I was bored. My job was comfortable and well-paid, but lacked meaning. As I moved up to low-level management, I felt increasingly constrained, all my time spent on email and meetings—glimpsing one of the “control traps” Newport warns about. A turning point came while working on a joint EU research project. There, I got a taste of a different environment: international collaboration, smart colleagues, more autonomy. So I quit. I had just started a part-time PhD and decided to go all in, living off savings and immersing myself full-time in academia.

Looking back, this was a risky, even reckless decision. I didn’t have a clear reason for doing a PhD—just a growing dissatisfaction with my job. It was [avoidance at play. And yet, unbeknownst to me, my years in industry had quietly built up “career capital” I could transfer: fluent English, decent writing and programming skills, experience in international teamwork, a first good-journal publication… and a habit of broad reading and writing, all of which were rare among starting PhD students in Spanish academia.

So yes, from the outside, it might’ve looked like I was “following my passion”—a classic setup for failure. Luckily, I met a supervisor who gently pointed out that my passion topic wasn’t feasible², and steered me toward a more solid, researchable one. Combined with the career capital I’d brought in, this made for a relatively smooth—though far from stress-free—PhD.

Still, the postdoc years weren’t easy. At a top Swiss university, I was surrounded by brilliant people, many of whom had grown up in hyper-competitive academic systems. I felt like an impostor. But so did many of them, as it turned out. I also saw firsthand how common emotional health struggles were in academia—something that would later become consequential.

Eventually, I landed a researcher role at a young university in Estonia, just as they were launching a center in my field (learning analytics). I had other options—better-paid postdocs and assistant professorships—but this job offered more control, and I took the bet.

Yet control wasn’t enough. I was publishing, applying for funding, playing the “academic hunger games”… but without a mission, it all felt hollow. Eventually, I hit a phase of mild burnout and depression—especially around whether I was making a positive impact in the world. In 2019, after reading about the mental health crisis³ in doctoral education (something I’d seen and felt throughout my research career), I started this blog as a kind of “little bet.” The feedback was very positive.

That bet evolved. During the pandemic, after a few tries, I secured a (temporary but stable) senior researcher position at my alma mater, and moved closer to family—a decision that prioritized well-being and autonomy over pay or prestige. Over time, a tentative mission has emerged: supporting PhD students in overcoming the productivity and mental health challenges typical of that stage. This now guides much of what I do: workshops, training sessions, and a funded research project on how digital tools like AI might support students’ socio-emotional skills. The blog continues, and so does our growing community in the newsletter.

At the moment, I’m in a job that has quite a bit of autonomy, a mission I believe in, and the chance to keep developing mastery (I’m far from an expert on many of these topics). I work with thoughtful, smart people I like and respect. So yes, I could say the ideas in the book—career capital, control, mission, mastery—seem to resonate with what I have experienced in my career so far.

Critiques and parting words

The book, however, is not devoid of gaps or criticizable bits. The prose exudes a certain sense of calm confidence—both about the importance of the book’s concepts and about each person’s clarity of goals—which is quite different from the uncertainty and self-doubt that I experienced throughout my career, or I see in many, many PhD students (colleagues or attendees in our doctoral workshops). Few know for sure whether they want to remain in academia (and in what capacity), go to industry, or become yoga teachers. I understand this confidence is part of the self-help genre, but it’s worth pointing out that it is OK (actually, it is common!) to feel such doubts.

The point of the book is not to “find the path with the optimal level of control/mission/mastery” (this would be another version of the “passion hypothesis” the book seeks to dismantle). The golden lesson is that there is no one path to an optimal career, and we don’t need a perfect plan from the outset (or to execute the practices above perfectly). Rather, we can craft a satisfying career (one out of many possible) by following those practices and processes—whatever our situation, whatever research/mission we end up working toward. Focus on the process (do little bets, gather feedback, reflect, rinse and repeat), not the particular contents of the outcome (or your PhD). And don’t be discouraged by setbacks, or by failing to apply these practices and ideas perfectly (yes, a week can sometimes go by without deliberate practice). As a new parent, I still struggle to make this all fit into my life. Context does matter.

This leads to another major qualm: the book underplays the role of randomness (see Taleb’s books⁴) and systemic inequalities. One gets the impression that applying these principles will invariably lead to good outcomes, but this overlooks survivorship bias—common in books based on analyses of successful people (though there are a few failure examples, which I appreciated). Our bids for control are always uncertain, and can end up badly. I’d agree that the book’s principles put the odds in our favor, but it’s unclear by how much—and that probably depends on our starting point, which itself depends on luck and many systemic factors. It also assumes a degree of autonomy and favorable conditions—yet some may lack the time or resources to apply these practices, or face more constrained career options. Still, focusing on the few factors highlighted in the book can be helpful, because we do have some kind of control over them (unlike luck or inequality). And having a sense of agency is good for our well-being⁵

Also, a note on values: the factors emphasized in the book (autonomy, mastery, purpose) seem most aligned with what Schwartz calls “self-direction” and “achievement” values⁶—which are dominant in (some sectors of) US and other Western cultures. Yet, I’ve met PhD students with different guiding values (e.g., “benevolence”). Fortunately, researchers have also emphasized other factors with different value alignments, as critical to happiness at work, including engagement, resilience, or kindness. It’s always useful to know what values matter most to us, and to focus on the factors that better align with them.

This connects to a final critique—and a related piece of advice: do not obsess over career. The book can leave us with the impression that if we don’t apply its principles, we’re doomed to an unfulfilling life. But many people have careers with little control, mission, or mastery… and do not seem especially depressed or unhappy. Our career is not our life. The key is to live a life that is overall aligned with our values. Newport himself seems to have stumbled upon this in his more recent work, and probably would agree.

Over to you

After all this reading and writing, I am still undecided on what to do at the next fork in my career. But I do have a some practices I can (re)start: trying out a “background practice” related to the different alternatives ahead; devising and running a few “little bets” and getting feedback; having some conversations with people further down those paths…

I hope this two-part post was useful—that it gave you ideas to try, whether you’re at a fork in the road or at any point in your PhD. This kind of “emergent strategy” feels valuable. In an increasingly unstable world, frequent feedback may ground us more effectively to reality, rather than a ten-year plan for a job that might not even exist by then. I certainly couldn’t have predicted in 2008 (when I left industry) that I’d end up back in my hometown, researching AI and doctoral student well-being.

Yet here I am.

Header image by ChatGPT4o⁷.

• Career
• Satisfaction
• Mission
• Deliberate
• Practice
• Purpose
• Practice
• Research