This is the transcription of an interview of Barack Obama. (The last 2:44 min of the interview)
Reporter: "What do you tell people when they come to you asking what they should do for their career? And working on the documentary Change, how do you think about career advice?"
Barack Obama: "Most important advice I give to young people, A, **just learn how to get stuff done.** What I mean by that is, I've seen at every level people who are very good at describing problems, people who are very sophisticated in explaining why something went wrong or why something can't get fixed. But what I'm always looking for is, no matter how small the problem or how big it is, somebody who says, 'let me take care of that.' If you project an attitude of whatever it is that's needed, I can handle it and I can do it. But whoever's running that organization will notice, I promise. And which is why, I think with young people, you don't always need to be so impatient asking for the plum assignment. A lot of times the best way to get attention is whatever is assigned to you, you are just nailing, you're killing it. Because people will notice, oh, that's somebody who can get something done.
Then the second piece of advice that I give is **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 congressman by 30. I want to make X amount of money by this age.' And the people I find that are most successful are the people who say, man, I'm really interested in computers and figuring this stuff out. And then they end up being a Bill Gates. Or I'm really interested in how to cure this disease. And maybe they don't end up winning the Nobel prize, but you know what? They have an extraordinary career because they're just interested in the thing itself. If you are absorbed by what you're doing, one of two things is going to happen. You're going to get really good at it. And whether you're rewarded, recognize you get the positions that you want or not, the journey will have been a good one."
Reporter: "Mr. President, this is terrific. Thank you very much. Enjoyed it. Thank you so much."