LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman: Why The Classic Career Question ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’ Is Totally Wrong

Why The Classic Career Question ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’ Is Totally Wrong

Alyson Shontell | May 16, 2013, 10:39 AM | 1,175 | 2

Whether you’re a new college graduate or you’ve spent years in the work force, one question seems to linger:

“What should I DO with my life?”

LinkedIn‘s founder, Reid Hoffman, says that’s the wrong question to ask. Instead, professionals should be asking, “How can I help?” and trying to understand what other people’s needs are. “[That] question focuses the attention on you, instead of the most important factor, everyone else.” Hoffman recently wrote in a PowerPoint presentation for college graduates. “The best career has you pursuing worthy aspirations, using your assets, while navigating the market realities.” To do that, Hoffman encourages people to find their competitive advantage, which matches the things they do well with what the market will currently pay for those skills. “Fulfill needs. Solve problems. And you can change the world.”

Amazing Career Advice For College Grads From LinkedIn’s Billionaire Founder

Nicholas Carlson | May 12, 2013, 9:07 AM | 4,978,097 | 68

Reid Hoffman says it took him 15 years after graduating from Stanford in 1990 to figure out what he was really doing with his life. Figure it out, he did! Hoffman is now the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, a $19 billion public company. During those 15 years, Hoffman first thought he wanted to become an academic. Then he abandoned that idea to start some companies. Mostly, they flopped. How’d he figure his path out? What lessons can today’s graduates learn from Hoffman’s journey? To answer those questions Hoffman and Ben Casnocha first co-authored a book called “The Start-up of You.” Then, expanding on ideas from that book, they created a slideshow presentation for college grads called “The 3 Secrets Of Highly Successful Graduates” and allowed us to republish it here.

23 Of The Best Pieces Of Advice Ever Given To Graduates

23 Of The Best Pieces Of Advice Ever Given To Graduates

Max Nisen and Lynne Guey | May 15, 2013, 1:26 PM | 145,428 | 13

A great commencement or class-day speech sticks with you forever. You remember it when you accept for your first job, and when you quit it. Too many, unfortunately, offer the same warmed-over clichés, like “dream big,” “work hard,” or “follow your passion.”  But there are some lessons that are truly worth remembering, or so well-said that they stick in the memory longer than just about anything else. We’ve collected some of the greatest speeches and pieces of advice, worth reading and listening to for any grad, or anyone looking for guidance. Links to the full speeches and transcripts are provided, when available.

SALMAN KHAN: Live your life like it’s your second chance.

From his 2012 commencement address at MIT: 

“… Imagine yourself in 50 years. You’re in your early 70s, near the end of your career. You’re sitting on your couch, having just watched the State of the Union holographic address by President Kardashian. “You begin to ponder your life. The career successes, how you’ve been able to provide for your family. You’ll think of all the great moments with your family and friends. But then you start to think about all of the things you wished you had done just a little differently, your regrets. I can guess at what they might be. “Sitting in 2062, you wish that you had spent more time with your children. That you had told your spouse how much you loved them more frequently. That you could have even one more chance to hug your parents and tell them how much you appreciate them before they passed. That you could have smiled more, laughed more, danced more and created more. That you better used the gifts you were given to empower others and make the world better. “Just as you’re thinking this, a genie appears from nowhere and says, “I have been eavesdropping on your regrets. They are valid ones. I can tell you are a good person so I am willing to give you a second chance if you really want one.” You say “Sure” and the genie snaps his fingers. “All of a sudden you find yourself right where you are sitting today. It is June 8, 2012, at Killian Court. You are in your shockingly fit and pain-free 20-something body and begin to realize that it has really happened. You really do have the chance to do it over again. To have the same career successes and deep relationships. But, now you can optimize. You can laugh more, dance more and love more. Your parents are here again so it is your chance to love them like you wished you had done the first time. You can be the source of positivity that you wished you had been the first time around. “So now I stand here, once again deeply honored to be here. Excited by what you, the MIT class of 2012 — both undergrads and graduate students — the young wizards of our time — a time like no other in human history — will do with your second chance.” Read more of this post

How To Get Others To See Your Potential

How To Get Others To See Your Potential

by Dorie Clark  |  11:00 AM May 16, 2013

Overcoming people’s past perceptions of you isn’t easy. When I launched my consulting business seven years ago, I was astonished to find — years later — that acquaintances and even friends hadn’t kept up with my career transition. They’d ask about my past work in politics or nonprofit advocacy, oblivious to the changes that had been consuming my life. It wasn’t their fault, however. These days, we all have thousands of Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections; it’s just not realistic to keep up with everyone’s latest developments. But the fact that they weren’t aware of my new business meant I was losing out on referrals and potential clients. I realized I had to ensure they took notice.

Of course, you can’t just prop someone’s eyelids open, A Clockwork Orange-style, and force them to read your white papers or watch your webinars. So how do you get other people to realize, and remember, what you’re doing now — and grasp what you’re truly capable of?

Create content. As a knowledge worker, it can be hard to demonstrate your expertise to anyone besides your boss. But the Internet — and the ability for anyone to start publishing content — has given us a profound opportunity. Just as a graphic designer has a portfolio she can display of her best logos and brochures, you should be creating intellectual property (blog posts, podcasts, videocasts — even a savvy and professional Twitter feed can count) that demonstrates your expertise. If you’ve changed careers, or are trying to move up the ladder at your company, others may still think of the “old you.” Creating solid content reminds people of your new skills and knowledge (it’s hard to ignore it if they see links to your blog posts every day in their social media feed) and enables people to judge you based on the quality of the material you produce, not your past history or credentials. Read more of this post

How listening to sad songs heals the blues

How listening to sad songs heals the blues

LONDON – Listening to sad songs is best way to get over a break up as it has same soothing effect as a sympathetic friend, researchers find

3 HOURS 16 MIN AGO

LONDON – Listening to sad songs is best way to get over a break up as it has same soothing effect as a sympathetic friend, researchers find. Sir Elton John once sang that listening to sad songs was the perfect way to recover from a relationship breakdown, the Daily Telegraph reported. But now psychologists appear to have uncovered evidence to support the pop star’s conclusions that they really do “say so much”. A new international study has found listening to sad music was the best way to recover from a relationship break-up as it had the same soothing effect as a sympathetic friend. Researchers concluded that when consumers experienced serious emotional distress they turned to a surrogate to replace a lost personal bond and lift their mood. Their findings appear to contradict popular opinion that upbeat music or humorous movies were a better way to beat distress. “Emotional experiences of aesthetic products are important to our happiness and well-being,” said co-author Dr Stephen Palmer, from the University of California at Berkeley. “Like a sympathetic friend, music, movies, paintings, or novels that are compatible with our current mood and feelings are more appreciated when we experience broken or failing relationships.” In the study, consumers were presented with various frustrating situations and asked to rate angry music, compared to joyful or relaxing music. Other volunteers were separately asked to recall experiences involving loss. The authors, also from the KAIST Business School in South Korea and the FGV School of Administration in Brazil, found some people were more likely to relate to their own state of mind. They found people experiencing relationship problems were more likely to prefer “sad music” or “tear-jerking dramas” that reflected their negative mood. Participants said they liked angry music more when they were frustrated by interpersonal violations such as being interrupted or when someone was late than by “impersonal” problems such as lack of internet connection or a natural disaster. Preference for sad music was significantly higher when they had experienced the break-up of a personal relationship, compared to an impersonal loss such as losing a competition. AGENCIES

How Bing Crosby and the Nazis Helped to Create Silicon Valley

May 13, 2013

How Bing Crosby and the Nazis Helped to Create Silicon Valley

Posted by Paul Ford

The nineteen-forties Bing Crosby hit “White Christmas” is a key part of the national emotional regression that occurs every Christmas. Between Christmases, Crosby is most often remembered as a sometimes-brutal father, thanks to a memoir by his son Gary. Less remarked upon is Crosby’s role as a popularizer of jazz, first with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, and later as a collaborator with, disciple to, and champion of Louis Armstrong. Hardly remarked upon at all is that Crosby, by accident, is a grandfather to the computer hard drive and an angel investor in one of the firms that created Silicon Valley.

If today’s youth make up the first digital generation, Crosby’s was the first recorded-music generation. Born in 1903, Crosby grew up in Spokane, Washington, where he spent his latter adolescence haunting record stores and learning the drums, and his twenties on the road as a drummer and singer. He landed in Paul Whiteman’s legendary dance band, touring the country. Vaudeville was fading, as was the belting projection of singers like Al Jolson; jazz, talkies, and the radio were ascendant, with Crosby in the wave. Read more of this post

The Water On the Moon Probably Came From Earth

May 9, 2013

The Water On the Moon Probably Came From Earth

In September 2009, after decades of speculation, evidence of water on the surface of the Moon was discovered for the first time. Chandrayaan-1, a lunar probe launched by India’s space agency, had created a detailed map of the minerals that make up the Moon’s surface and analysts determined that, in several places, the characteristics of lunar rocks indicated that they bore as much 600 million metric tonnes of water.

In the years since, we’ve seen further evidence of water both on the surface and within the interior of the Moon, locked within the pore space of rocks and perhaps even frozen in ice sheets. All this has gotten space exploration enthusiasts pretty excited, as the presence of frozen water could someday make permanent human habitation of the Moon much more feasible.

For planetary scientists, though, it’s raised a knotty question: How did water arrive on the Moon in the first place? Read more of this post

Have we all been duped by the Myers-Briggs test? Despite its popularity, the personality test has been subject to sustained criticism by professional psychologists for over three decades

Have we all been duped by the Myers-Briggs test?

May 15, 2013: 11:13 AM ET

Despite its popularity, the personality test has been subject to sustained criticism by professional psychologists for over three decades.

By Roman Krznaric

FORTUNE — When Frank Parsons opened the world’s first career guidance center in Boston in 1908, he began by asking prospective clients 116 penetrating questions about their ambitions, strengths, and weaknesses (and how often they bathed). But then he did something more unusual: He measured their skulls.

Parsons was a committed believer in phrenology. If you had a large forehead, he might recommend you become a lawyer or engineer. But if your skull was more developed behind the ears, you were of the “animal type” and best suited to manual work. Read more of this post

The Leader’s Code: Mission, Character, Service and Getting the Job Done

May 15, 2013 4:25 pm

Management lessons from the frontline

Review by Morgen Witzel

The Leader’s Code: Mission, Character, Service and Getting the Job Done
By Donovan Campbell (Random House, $27)

That the experience of military leadership offers some useful lessons for leaders in other fields has long been understood. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is still read by business leaders and sports coaches, and more recently Norman Dixon’s On the Psychology of Military Incompetence offers lessons from military failure.

The latest crossover book that draws from military experience is Donovan Campbell’s The Leader’s Code. As such efforts go, it is a pretty good one. Campbell, a former captain in the US Marine Corps who served in Iraq, writes fluently and persuasively, blendingabstract ideas and personal experience in a highly readable narrative. He begins by arguing that people no longer trust their leaders, whom they see as greedy and selfish. “The widespread destruction of trust has left a leadership vacuum that is slowly becoming filled with despair,” he says, pointing out that this is true of business and government alike. “We trust no single leader, or class of leaders, to fix what is broken.” Read more of this post

For Entrepreneurs, Failure Isn’t Always a Good Teacher

For Entrepreneurs, Failure Isn’t Always a Good Teacher

by Art Papas  |   8:00 AM May 15, 2013

Much has been said about the virtues of failure — it’s a learning opportunity, it happens to everyone, it’s character-building. Failure is becoming some romanticized rite of passage, invoking images of young entrepreneurs burning the midnight oil and yelling “Eureka!” I can say from experience that any entrepreneur who fails repeatedly before finding the golden ticket had better be ready to coat themselves in protective armor, because your stakeholders may not be as understanding of your failures.

I’ve often said that failure is a great teacher, but its lessons are too harsh. Entrepreneurs will fail all the time, yes, and there’s no alternative to failure. You can’t avoid it altogether. What you mustavoid, however, is letting it consume you and destroy your self-confidence. If you let yourself become afraid to innovate — to go for it — you haven’t just failed. You’ve become a failure.

Failure makes many of us less confident and less aggressive. We become gun shy. That’s not surprising. Unfortunately, the cold reality is that once you’ve failed as an entrepreneur, you need to have blind confidence and a healthy sense of aggression to prove to people that you actually cansucceed. You need to try again, and brace yourself to be criticized, lectured, doubted, and flat-out ignored by investors and sometimes even your own team. If at first you don’t succeed, you’re in for the fight of your life. Read more of this post

How to bridge a cultural ocean; Lessons on how to be brasher in business

Last updated: May 15, 2013 8:01 pm

How to bridge a cultural ocean

By Ian Sanders

On the 24th floor of a building on New York’s Avenue Of The Americas, a group of British entrepreneurs is attending a masterclass in how to do business in the US, listening to fellow Britons who have already set up in the city. The event has been organised by London-based media events company Chinwag as part of a trade mission in association with UK Trade and Investment, the government body that helps British businesses expand overseas. Amid the talk of tax arrangements and employment contracts, the entrepreneurs are learning about the cultural nuances in hiring, pitching and workplace culture. Read more of this post