Write It Down: My Best Career Advice

Tal Ben-Shahar

Tal Ben-Shahar is an author and lecturer at Harvard University. He currently teaches the largest course at Harvard on "Positive Psychology" and the third largest on "The Psychology of Leadership"--with a total of over 1,400 students.

Tal consults and lectures around the world to executives in multi-national corporation, the general public, and at-risk populations. Topics include happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, mindfulness, and leadership.

An avid sportsman, Tal won the U.S. Intercollegiate and Israeli National squash championships. He obtained his PhD in Organizational Behavior and BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Harvard.

02 October, 2009

Question: What is the best career advice you've ever received?

Tal Ben Shahar: The best advice that I got was from my philosophy teacher, Ohad Kamin. After graduating from college and feeling very lost, I went to him, and his advice was, Tal, think about the things that you want to do and write them down. Then look at these things and identify the things that you really want to do, and write these down. And from those things, identify the things that you really, really want to do, and then go ahead and do it. You know, life is short. We don't have that much time. And it's too short to do what we feel that we have to do; it's barely long enough to do what we want to do.

Recorded on:  September 23, 2009

Tal Ban Shahar’s best career advice involved getting some important words on paper.

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