This is the Best Career (Life) Advice I Ever Got

Any fool can learn by experience, the saying goes. It’s vastly preferable to learn from the experiences of others.

This is what mentors are for.

They’ve been where you’ve been.

They’ve done what you’ve done.

They’ve made mistakes that you don’t have to make.

This is what books do also. They allow you to benefit from the experiences of others–successful and not-so-successful, happy and deeply broken people alike.

My whole life I’ve sought out that kind of advice, explicit and deduced. I’ve benefited from being pointed in the right direction and warned when I was heading in the wrong direction. I’ve picked up lessons in the books that I’ve read–I’ve highlighted and printed out passages of advice that I’ve tried to live by.

I’ve tried to do this in all aspects of life, but in today’s article, I wanted to talk specifically about the best career advice I’ve gotten.

1. Credit is Worthless

One of my first real jobs was as an assistant for a powerful movie producer. He was one of those guys in LA who had a lot of influence but you could hardly find out anything about him–his IMDB page was scant, he was never in the press, and he didn’t have some fancy…