Separate your brain from your body

I'm not kidding.

If you can separate your brain from your body, I guarantee you will make 20 times more money than you currently are.

I don't mean your physical brain, but the cognitive processes that you reflexively engage in when you solve problems or design solutions.

Call it "artificial professional intelligence." (API)

More on this later.

What you know vs Who you know

The majority of people believe that "who you know" is more important than "what you know."

This is not accurate.

I believe that "who you know" is important especially at the beginning of one's career, but at one point, "what you know" becomes more important.

In other words, there comes a time when you have enough achievements under your belt to attract the attention of other people. That's the point where you can slow down your networking efforts, and just let people seek you out (assuming you've become really good at what you do).

The true opportunity that LinkedIn presents

LinkedIn is supposed to be a tool for individual empowerment, enabling people to network sincerely in order to help one another.

Unfortunately, so many people use it purely for marketing purposes, in the same way that a company would use a website to promote itself.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course. However, I believe the true opportunity lies in establishing our authentic identity and communicating who we truly are.

Ironically, when you communicate who you truly are and what you really do best, you stand out. You convince. You sell.

It's what I call the Unique Professional Value, or UPV. Your UPV is what you offer to employers and clients. It is the MAIN REASON why they should hire you.

A burden or newfound power?

The new Godfather, Michael Corleone, looks as though he felt the enormous burden that fate had just put on his shoulders. At the same time, he has the look of a man who feels confident and quite capable of handling whatever comes his way.

To manage oneself and one's career may seem like as if a huge burden were suddenly placed on one's shoulders. But self-management is not an option. It is the only way to survive in the new economy, as Peter Drucker has repeatedly said.

The era of cushy permanent jobs is gone forever. Employers today not only do not offer lifetime employment, they actually expect workers to demonstrate lifetime employability ("move up or move out!").

This may seem callous on employers' part, but in fact, they really have no choice given the intensification of competition from countries such as India and China.

Every person's career will have to become a business, and since business is war, the best way to prepare for the career battles ahead is to build, slowly but surely, one's "private army" of social and business connections.