The 5 Best Career Articles
I’ve written a lot about your career, but if you’re looking to get started, here are my best five essays on the topic:
- If You Want to Be an Author Don’t Start Writing (and Other Strangely Useful Career Advice) Understanding how your career actually works, not just doing what feels good, is the first step to mastering it.
- What Do You Want to Do With Your Life An older and popular article about trying to decide where to go in your career.
- The Interview Method: Why Our Assumptions About Success are Often Wrong and why you need to test those assumptions to figure out what actually works.
- Fantasizing About Retirement? Here’s How to Build a Career You Won’t Want to Quit Many of us dream of escaping, but work isn’t going away, so you ought to make it something great instead.
- You Need to Negotiate Your Lifestyle Bosses, clients and colleagues aren’t just going to give you the life you dream of, you need to negotiate what you want.
In addition to my free articles on career topics, I teach a course, along with author Cal Newport, on building rare and valuable skills to improve your career. This popular course offers limited sessions, but if you’d like to sign-up to find out about our next one
Building Career Skills
As much of my writing focuses on learning, I’ve applied that lens to look at a lot of career problems as well. It’s my belief that mastering rare and valuable skills is the best way to look at your career, and thus I’ve written a lot exploring that topic. Here’s some articles on becoming better at your career:
- How to Figure Out Which Skills You Need to Build to Improve Your Career
- Capital Trumps Courage
- Why Most People Get Stuck in Their Career
- Pick Three Things. Now Do Them Well.
- What are You Going to Be Exceptional at in 10 Years?
- The Productivity Pitfall
- Learning as Investing: 7 Skills That Pay Off in Any Job
How to Network, Find Mentors and Build Relationships
Your career isn’t a solitary activity. Every promotion you get, new job you apply to, or clients/customers you gain will be new people to win over. Here’s how to build the relationships that matter:
Designing Your Career and Lifestyle
Work/life balance, enjoying work and making it meaningful matter more than just a paycheck. Here’s how to do it:
- Don’t Follow Your Passion
- Is Getting Rich Worth It?
- Is Owning Your Own Business Worth It?
- The Obvious Way to Improve Your Career (That Might Not Be So Obvious)
- A Subtle Mistake People Make When Trying to Grow Their Careers
- Bored with Your Job? The Recipe for Enjoying Your Work.
- The Path to Happiness: Do What You Love, Not What You Like
- Career Planning and the Dao
- How I Became a Full-Time Blogger
- Two Ways to Think About Career Fulfillment
- Should You Pursue Your Dream, Even if You’ll Probably Fail?
- Don’t Follow Your Passion, Do Less to Achieve More and the Magic of the Failed Simulation Effect
- How to Find What You’re Passionate About (and Get Paid for It)
- Should You Wander the World or Build a Home?
- Should Your Twenties Be For Work or Play?
More Thoughts on Career
In addition to my free articles on career topics, I teach a course, along with author Cal Newport, on building rare and valuable skills to improve your career. This popular course offers limited sessions, but if you’d like to sign-up to find out about our next one
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.