Obama says his advice for success in any career is 'just learn how to get stuff done'

• Barack Obama talked in a recent interview about finding meaning in and outside of work.
• The former US president said his main advice for workers is to "just learn how to get stuff done."

No matter what disruptions may shake up the workforce — from pandemics to the rise of AI — former President Barack Obama said that the key to building a career is to "just learn how to get stuff done."

In an interview with LinkedIn's editor-in-chief Daniel Roth, Obama talked about career advice, finding purpose in work, and the role AI will play in reshaping the workforce.

Since his presidency, Obama said he has recently turned his attention to work, and the idea of finding meaning in and outside of work — an idea he explored most recently as the host of the new docuseries on Netflix "Working: What We Do All Day." In the interview, he said the series was inspired by a book from Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Louis "Studs" Terkel, "Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do."

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In his conversation with Roth, Obama said that if you project an "I can handle it and I can do it" attitude, you will get noticed at your organization. When evaluating your career, he added that people should also "worry more about what you want to do rather than what you want to be."

"I think so often, people have in their mind 'I want to be a congressman by 30. I wanna make X amount of money by this age,'" he said.

But if you pursue a career path that aligns with your interests and passions, you will pave "an extraordinary career."

When asked about the rise of AI, Obama said society will have to start to have conversations that re-examine how we approach work. One example of this, he said, are conversations about cutting down 40-hour work weeks to 35 hours to disperse work among employees. While he said we haven't seen these conversations in the US, "at some point you may need to start having these conversations."

"We're probably going to have to rethink how work is organized and how the economy is organized in some pretty profound ways," he said.