8 Surprising Things That'll Make You Wildly Successful

This is for the 1 out of every 5 of us who hasn't yet found her "career guru." The best person to learn from might not be the usual Yoda and Mr. Miyagi type, found a study on mathematician mentors led by data scientist Dean Malmgren. Overall, the best advisers—those whose protégés went on to train the largest numbers of their own mentees, a measure of success—were actually in the first third of their careers. One explanation is that as mentors gain stature, they have less time to teach and nurture others. While research is needed on professions outside academia, Malmgren says he has a hunch that young mentors would continue to outperform older ones in any job where incentives disappear due to tenure (job security), including schoolteachers and attending physicians in hospitals.