How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work

by Jodi Kantor

Jodi Kantor’s groundbreaking reporting has toppled media magnates and sparked justice in the workplace worldwide. But before all of this, Kantor was kicked off her college newspaper. Society expects perfection, but Kantor knows those first professional steps are often rocky. She also knows that today’s graduates are facing a new and frightening playing field.   In a post-pandemic world rife with political upheaval, the unknowns of AI, and the general uncertainty of coming-of-age, Kantor casts aside platitudes and false hope to offer something tangible. There is a difference between realism and cynicism, she says. Work is how we spend much of our time. It’s our engine of how vaccines are made, political campaigns won, television crafted for our pleasure. Instead of letting cynicism win, Kantor rolls up her sleeves and identifies three principles to help young people discover their life’s craft, need, and money. Powerful and provocative, How to Start is a statement of faith for young people to keep in their back pocket as they make their way through uncertain times. To face the challenges ahead, Kantor offers inspired wisdom, strategy, and a set of aspirations to launch their careers and last their whole lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Audiobook, Personal Growth, Education, Essays, Leadership

112 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 2026

About the author

Jodi Kantor has covered the world of Barack and Michelle Obama since the beginning of 2007, also writing about Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Richard Holbrooke, Eric Holder and many others along the way.

Ms. Kantor graduated from Columbia and attended Harvard Law School. But soon after she arrived, she caught the journalism bug, took time off to work at Slate.com, and never looked back. She joined The New York Times in 2003 as Arts & Leisure editor, revamping the section and helping lead a makeover of the culture report.

The recipient of a Columbia Young Alumni Achievement Award, Ms. Kantor has also been named by Crain's New York Business magazine as one of "40 Under 40." She appears regularly on television, including The Today Show and Charlie Rose.

Though she is a Washington correspondent, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Reviews

[Cameron Lipp]

Word for word what your friend’s mom who went to Yale says to you after one glass of wine at dinner

[Tab]

I am the exact target audience for this book (about to graduate, struggling to find my purpose, and generally feeling hopeless at the state of the world and the job market) and unfortunately I found it to be pretty unhelpful

I really respect Jodi and the journalistic work she’s done but I kept looking for specificity or tangible advice in this book and didn’t get much

The book has this central idea of following craft and need but does little in the way of guiding people who don’t know their ‘higher purpose’

I know there’s no magic answer to the huge problems in the job market but I wish there was something a little less nebulous to learn

[CatReader]

Jodi Kantor is an American investigative journalist perhaps best known for breaking the Harvey Weinstein scandal in the New York Times alongside her colleague Meghan Twohey (see their book She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement). Kantor's 2026 short book How to Start isn't investigative journalism but rather Kantor's career advice to young people entering the workforce today, inspired by several commencement speeches she was asked to give at her undergraduate alma mater Columbia University and various other venues (and probably Kantor's own fears as her own college-aged kids are preparing to enter the workforce). I think Kantor writes with good intention here, though she's mostly advising young people to follow her career pattern or those similar to hers where passion was sparked and cultivated early, chosen despite difficulty and potential social stigma (for Kantor, this involved dropping out of Harvard Law to pursue reporting instead), and persevered upon until it became profitable.

I get a bit frustrated with this book genre because it often assumes that young people today have it harder than young people a decade ago or a century ago, and therefore they must be prevailed upon by folks older and wiser (who are not in young people's exact shoes) to correct their paths. This is both true and false. I personally love hearing career stories of people both inside and outside my field, but not because I'm looking for an exact copy-paste template for my own path. Instead, I find these valuable for the life lessons that resulted - the jobs that looked amazing on paper but didn't work out, the quiet intuition listened to (or not) that resulted in satisfaction (or grief). Kantor's story is full of those moments, which was my favorite thing about the book. But from the standpoint of a new college grad, I can see how this book would come across as preachy and therefore not helpful.

Further reading: other career memoirs/advice books I've found helpful:
Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms by Shellye Archambeau
Strategize to Win: The New Way to Start Out, Step Up, or Start Over in Your Career by Carla Harris
Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career by Kristi Coulter

My statistics:
Book 113 for 2026
Book 2419 cumulatively

[Janani]

i feel like if you’re reading this book you’re looking for something tangible and she did not offer that. could have been an email

[Rachel]

In "How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work," accomplished journalist Jodi Kantor offers advice to new college graduates. Kantor endeavors to be simultaneously hopeful and realistic, and she mostly pulls it off. I work in public higher education and I'm a parent of two college students. This crop of graduates is facing a number of big challenges all at once, and I think Kantor delivers a few worthwhile messages, especially about focusing on your craft and thinking about what brings you satisfaction, not just where you can earn the biggest paycheck. This is a slim book that's easy to read, and I think it will hold up for the next year or two as a nice college graduation gift.

[Bookbubble]

How to Start delivers what it promises: a statement of faith. It is mostly philosophy, not a practical guide on how to find work as a college grad. The title is mostly metaphorical. You start by thinking about your career. I would not recommend this for college grads trying to figure out where to go from here. It's better if your college grad doesn't know where to start with a career in terms of "what do I want to do." It's not very helpful to find a job, but it may give you ideas on non-traditional jobs you might, possibly be able to get one day if a boomer dies and leaves the position open.

The single most important thing she thinks workers should do is learn communication and listening skills and network to find work. That it's more impactful than submitting 500 online job ads. In addition, get out of the house. Don't work remotely so you can collect skills and contacts from other coworkers. That's very 1970s advice coming from someone who's trying to help people see how they work the best and in some cases that's at home away from other people. I'm neurospicy and I absolutely hate working around other people. Did I take jobs because they sounded interesting and paid poorly? Yes. Did I learn what I didn't want to do? Yes. But I didn't have a choice because at the time working from home was not an option for anyone.

The short of it is that she's basically saying you find your life's work in something you can do (skill) and where someone else has a need and can pay for a solution. That's literally how any business starts.

Her advice is almost entirely focused on working for someone else. She doesn't apply her philosophy to people who want to start their own business or work in the trades.

She's coming from the journalism industry that she got into before its entire collapse under the internet. She still made a career in it because she's tenacious and a go getter. When you're already feeling lousy about your options, it's hard to stay optimistic. That's why she wrote the book. But there's not much practical advice in it.

Young adults just starting their careers in this dystopian environment are justifiably pessimistic because the numbers and reality back it up. This book can help you focus your work interests, and if you haven't decided yet, ideas to broaden them, such as taking random jobs that allow you to try different things.

I think this book is helpful if you need a "pick me up" to keep looking for work, rather than a "how to find a job in this nightmare market." She loads up the book with examples from people she's interviewed, but its best service is to illustrate how someone with a passion for dance and may never make a living at it could be the executive director of a performing arts program. The problem that she glazes over is that many of these high paying jobs she points out are few and far between so shooting your shot has to be aggressive and networking heavy.

[Jamie Gabel]

My aunt got this for me and I made it my rainy day activity. Not so much tangible career advice. I guess I should find a needed career😄I guess I should choose a career not for the money😄

[Matthew]

As an accomplished investigative journalist, the author brings a strong voice and perspective to her work. However, the career guidance here feels less grounded in a broad range of lived experiences and more aspirational than practical for many readers.
The core advice—“find your craft,” specialize early, and build around it—sounds compelling, but it feels more aspirational than grounded in the reality of how many careers actually unfold.
What if there isn’t one perfect plan? What if the real goal is simply finding something sustainable?
Many careers nowadays are shaped by industry shifts, layoffs, and evolving roles, not a clean, linear path toward specialization. The framework doesn’t offer much practical guidance. It seems largely based on a narrow set of trajectories rather than a broad, representative range of outcomes.

[Sara]

This book incredibly relevant. The reasons she discusses why people are discouraged by their career prospects are the VERY same and SPECIFIC things that I have seen recently in the workplace. Despite the sense of hopelessness about career prospects she does bring in the light. She does this by telling her and a few other peoples career stories that are not straight lines to success. I really enjoyed the way she wrote these, it wasn’t throw away examples, it was peoples stories that I really connected with. She then outlines how you should approach discovering your craft and what need it can solve.

It is marketed to new graduates but I would argue it’s for anyone who is job searching, thinking about switching a career, or a stay at home mom who will be re-entering the workforce. I appreciated that it is shorter. What she does write packs a punch and is not drawn out. I highlighted so many quotes to go back to.

Thank you Little, Brown and Company for the ARC.

[Josh]

capitalist slop imo

[Billy Marino]

This was a gift from my grandma as I go into my final year of a lengthy PhD. I'm not quite the target demographic, which I think is more graduating undergrads, but I still understand the sentiment. I'm grateful I have a supportive grandmother who has enabled me to continue down this path of education for so long, honing my craft, so to speak. The book itself is of a genre of inspirational, self-help adjacent type of writing that isn't something I really get into typically, but I was curious to give it a read since I've seen it marketed and it was a loving gift.

I think there's maybe one piece of practical advice in here, and otherwise it's mostly vaguely inspirational anecdotes about overcoming anxieties and fears to pursue the work you love. While I appreciate the attempt to inspire folks who are freshly graduating into a rough economy, society, politics, and culture, I think it more often felt like it misses the mark a bit.

First, the good, though. The practical advice comes a little after halfway through, on page 60. She highlights a method of getting to know oneself better via a daily journaling technique focused on thinking about things that you enjoyed and didn't throughout the day. This is meant to help get a sense of what you like and don't like, and how that might translate to your work. I think this could be a very useful approach, and not just for work, but for generally getting to know your own preferences. She mentions a similar journaling technique later as well. I also appreciated her point about not being so worried about accolades and perfection in college, but focusing more on building relationships. I think the reason I like this is because it is true regardless of the society you live in. We're all people trying to make it through life, and so connecting with each other is always the best path.

Outside of that, the text seems to be largely anecdotal examples of herself, her friends, and a handful of interviews with recent grads that mostly attempt to say, "I know things are more challenging now, but still, we should strive to do the work we love." This is great in theory, and it's a message that I think flitted around when I was a kid. In between the advice to pursue a law degree, of course, which I think most millennials heard frequently. In some cases following your dreams can work, but it falls very flat for me given the times we're living in.

I understand her drive to try to inject some optimism into what feels like a culture of cynicism these days. However, and this is more of a personal view, I think maybe this is a tired method. It felt a bit like the attitude of Democrats for the last 3 decades, just sort of suffering the pain of a broken system while smiling and saying things will get better, instead of trusting that the struggle is indicative of it maybe being time to break that system instead of contributing to it. Sure, that's not practical advice for a college grad either, but it feels like a more truthful, and therefore fruitful path to think towards.

In addition to following your dreams feeling like something that is typically only likely for those with privilege (hello, from the family with a financially and emotionally supportive grandma and parents who always encouraged my continued education), I think the examples of success she pulls for the book seem limited. Yes, you can find exceptions to any rule, but most people can't afford to work the low paying job to gain experience right out of college. I agree with the sentiment she presents that it's a bummer how much higher education has changed, but we can't ignore that the rest of our society is not set up to support a place where anyone can go to learn about themselves and their dreams while working for free or for pennies to gain experience. Even worse, many of these paths no longer lead to promotions and raises the way they used to. Companies, ever focused on money, look at short term goals that don't prioritize people. The older ideas about workplaces being a second home with a family of coworkers now ring hollow for most people, and I think for good reason.

At one point, she highlights an example of shocking her daughter's friend with the financial possibilities of historical work. However, she does so with the acknowledgement that she's citing the very top tier of jobs, of which there are few. Also, being a director of an institution isn't necessarily the same dream as being a historical researcher, curator, or educator, which are needed jobs that don't pay enough as it is. I think this is just one example, using a field I'm familiar with, that rings too hollow to me.

Overall, I think this short book is well-intentioned, if a little misguided. It both acknowledges the growing challenges younger generations are facing, while trying to maintain advice based on a sort of status quo approach to fulfilling work. I don't know that the notion of work being a calling can really function very well as general advice today, if it ever did. And I say this at the end of a PhD in History, a path I picked with the full understanding that it would likely lead to very little financial success, I just enjoyed it and was pretty good at it. I don't know that I would pick it again, knowing what I know now. I think I'll find work, more likely something adjacent to what I want to be doing, and that's perfectly fine. Not particularly inspirational, but acceptable. Along the way, I've come to believe that work really doesn't have to be fulfilling either, there are many ways to find fulfillment in life, and frankly, I think work is one of the last places we should concentrate that effort until we vastly overhaul what work is for.

In the end, I think maybe the book I would've enjoyed more from Kantor is focused on an idea she puts forward on page 82:

"My last piece of advice is not for you. It's for alumni, older adults, and especially anyone who has achieved a measure of success, authority, or power. Together, we need to reestablish the idea that older people are advocates and protectors for those who are just starting out. Mentorship is in peril. With digital interviewing, AI sapping entry-level jobs, and people relating to one another through screens, it's getting harder for young people to find champions and teachers. There is so much beauty in intergenerational workplace relationships. These are opportunities to be children or parents again, but on professional grounds."

That last part is indicative of what I fear are the worst parts of this book's ideology, relying on outdated notions of workplaces as families. We've seen the damage that attitude has done, and I think the next generations are sick of it already, I get it.

More importantly, the first part of the quote, focused on the adults in power needing to take responsibility, that's what feels like the topic she has the strength to speak on. Too often I felt like her approach to younger generations was out of touch. It read like someone who has lived through the challenging stages of crafting a career, and come out the other side with something akin to wisdom gained through experience. However, I think the state of things is different enough that the advice based on those experiences really doesn't hold as well as she would hope. Yes, trying to break through the digital slop to form personal relationships to help pursue a career you might enjoy is admirable and possible. For many, though, I think, very impractical as well, until bigger structures and sentiments change.

And that's why her point on page 82 struck me as the topic she could've presented a stronger argument for. She's in the perfect place to speak to those in power to do better, fix the broken structures that are harming college graduates trying to get started in their careers. I know she can't fix all of these things, and I know her investigative journalism work is often, or at least famously, an example of speaking out against the worst parts of our societal structures. I think the inspirational story she has to tell is better suited for those on her echelon and above, those who really need to hear that they can do better to make a better world. That it's not too late to care about the society they build rather than their own profits. I suppose in the end I don't know that I support the desperate desire for optimism because I think the youth being upset about the state of things can hopefully lead to a better state of things.

I'll leave this on a positive note. While I think the messaging we need is focused on changing the larger structures of our society, I admire the push she provides to focus on honing a craft. As I've seen other reviewers mention, I think this highlights an important need for us to all slow down, focus on doing good, quality things in the world. At the very least, that can be a cultural change towards a better world than the fast-paced and shallow thing we've leaned into the last few decades.

[Karo]

The book inspires young people by giving examples of how to take both small and bigger steps towards entering the workforce and how to wrap one’s head around the whole career topic. I consider those smaller ideas and also the emphasis on listening to your inner instincts very useful. It’s nice to read a perspective that goes beyond the usual "just become a doctor, lawyer or work in IT."

But to be completely honest, I found the book more inspiring and comforting than eye-opening. I don’t think I took away anything particularly new from it. I liked that the author didn’t unnaturally prolong the topic or keep repeating herself, as many books of this kind do. It’s short and to the point.

What I appreciated the most is that the author encourages young readers to simply try and trusts that, eventually, they will figure out what to do. She also reminds us that Rome wasn’t built in a day.
3.5/5

[Ryan Elsea]

Read this in a couple days after graduation, how timely! To me the message was more uplifting than practical but also expanded further on advice we’ve all heard before. I appreciated the author’s anecdotes though times have also changed 🫪 regardless, I plan to come back to this in the future! Thanks Mom for the book.

[Mollie Zoldan]

Tbh my mom was right and I needed this

[BettyLovesBooks]

Unfortunately what I had anticipated is not what I got; instead of practical guidance, it was more of an unnecessarily extended speech with little useful advice. Disappointed.

[Juliana Lepore]

A really good, short book that validates a lot of the early 20s career anxieties

[gwen]

I attended Jodi's speaking event at the library last week, and her warmth shines through her writing as it did on stage. Unfortunately, this book felt braggy and most of the examples of success felt like exceptions rather than the norm. But, I am a cynic by nature. Her main thesis is that at the intersection of craft and need we can develop our life's work. She suggests that we can learn our craft by noticing what roles we fill in our social lives. I thought this was interesting, so if anyone has any ideas of what role I fill in your life as a friend drop it in the comments. My search for self help from a book continues.

[Carolynn Jimenez]

Add this one to your list of gifts for college grads in your life that you don’t know very well! Found this from an NPR podcast.

[Sasha Hurowitz]

Jodi Kantor really is that girl

[Jules]

A longer version of the commencement speech she gave at a university, the book leans into platitudes around 'if you turn every experience into a learning opportunity, everything will come together and things will work out. So don't worry if it's bleak right now.'

[Madeline]

This is super random but it did bring tears to my eyes

[Liv Fox]

More philosophical than practical, this book contains stories of how Jodi’s friends found their purpose, work wise, but gives only a few points of advice for readers. Interesting nonetheless.

[Sydney Schneider]

Not much tangible advice in here but nonetheless a nice inspiring read as im trying not to lose my mind

[alisha]

Major Chase your dreams and fulfillment propaganda.

Did like this quote tho: “‘People didn’t really care if you dropped a fork or still a drop of wine’, he said. ‘they remembered how you made them feel’”

[Jake Dann]

I've been feeling anxious about my career, on some level, since 2024. I think this little book helped me feel like that's ok - it's important to do what you think is important, or at least try. I still feel very lost sometimes, and I don't think any number of books like this will solve that, but I liked how sympathetic this one was, and its ideas for finding one's own way.

[Julia Morgan]

Short and sweet and reassuring. Not full of steps, which I honestly appreciated, but ideas and belief in this generation. And empathy. Thanks Jodi!

[Zayda Slabbekoorn]

Helpful! Recommend for anyone flailing around in their early career.

[Vanni Lam]

I don’t think I actually learned how to start…

[Linda]

This is a nice guide for college students or young adults trying to get into the job market, as volatile and ever-changing as it is.

[Jon Barr]

Aimed at young people looking to get started in the job market. Fine advice, especially for anyone who is looking to get into journalism.