Early Career Advice

How to Be Lucky¶

You make your own luck. There's a great experiment that I can't cite, but it has stuck in my mind since I was a child. They identified people as lucky and unlucky, and asked them to count the number of photographs in a newspaper. The unlucky people took a long time to count the photographs, while the lucky people took a very short... See more

Obama's career advice for young people -- Just learn how to get stuff done. What I mean by that is I've seen at every level people who are very good at describing problems, people who are very sophisticated at explaining why something went wrong or why something can't get fixed. But, what I’m always looking for is,... See more

It’s important to have a strong learning signal — a fast feedback loop between effort expended and success. This way, you’ll know quickly what it takes to succeed, and whether you can be happy doing so. Look for environments where competitors see themselves as playing a game, rather than fighting for survival — this prevents rankings within the... See more

Concentrate on finding a big idea that will make an impact on the people you want to influence