LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers strangely silent about …

When was the last time any of LinkedIn’s Top Voices or influencers mentioned any of these topics?

? Common threats to intelligence everyone is exposed to. Minimizing them gives you and your children a competitive edge in life, not just your career.

? Common threats to health everyone is exposed to. Minimizing them slashes healthcare costs, reduces your downtime, and extends lifespan while reducing aging internally and externally.

? One bacterial species has a side effect many folks would kill for: it makes you look younger, longer. What is it, LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers? You can easily inoculate yourself with this yet not get sick. How is that done, LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers?

? How people commonly and unwittingly sabotage their mood, and how almost everyone isn’t aware of some easy to implement tips that can fill you with bliss. Prescription drugs are not the answer (they’re often part of the problem). The solutions are natural and healthy but seemingly unknown to LinkedIn’s Happiness Guru.

? After reading a book about a relative, President Chester Arthur, it was clear that he dug his grave with his teeth by overeating—something many of us do, lopping off years or even decades of life. However, even folks who remain slim usually consume foods that harm health. Why do we do it? Because we love yummy food. That’s obvious—everyone knows it. What’s the practical solution that works in everyone, not just dietary angels brimming with willpower?

? How can you modify your clothes dryer so you pay nothing for the necessary heat?

? Racism needlessly divides Americans. There is an easy solution to it always ignored by LinkedIn’s elite writers who perennially focus on the problem, as if it cannot be solved. Wrong.

? How is self-censoring bad for your career and the economy?

? How can innovation help prevent rapes?

? Why EVERY day should be Thanksgiving Day. No matter your circumstances, it is better for your physical and mental health to be filled with gratitude instead of “woe is me” regret. What’s a quick and enduring way to foster gratitude cultivating a profound appreciation of your life?

? What’s the perfect antidote to trolls (online or offline), stopping them dead in their tracks?

? How are dentists—unbeknownst to them and just about everyone else—helping careers but also hurting them? (Hint: substantively, not cosmetically.)

? How is Silicon Valley screwing us?

? How are hospitals screwing you?

? How is your job killing you even if you exercise regularly? What could employers easily do to mitigate that risk?

?What do realtors never tell you that even most brainiacs are blissfully unaware of? Hint regarding one of the overlooked factors: Multiple credible sources (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) suggest that Silicon Valley is a toxic cesspool, with cancer being just one predictable risk. Quoting from rockefeller.edu: “Unfortunately, the Silicon Valley success story has been blemished by serious environmental degradation. It contains the greatest concentration of "Superfund" National Priorities List sites in the country. Industrial effluent from high-tech firms has contaminated the San Francisco Bay. Air pollution, principally from motor vehicles, masks the view of the mountain ranges that frame the Santa Clara Valley …” Might this be relevant to Silicon Valley’s most famous cancer victim, Steve Jobs?

? How does the cultural and physical environment of Silicon Valley encourage generally trivial innovation while thwarting groundbreaking ideas that would significantly improve everyday life? Silicon Valley is synonymous with wondrous innovation, but how is it helping you?

“In a mission statement published on Andreessen Horowitz’s website, Marc Andreessen claimed he was ‘looking for the companies who are going to be the big winners because they are going to cause a fundamental change in the world.’ The firm’s portfolio includes Ringly (maker of rings that light up when your phone does something), Teespring (custom T-shirts), DogVacay (pet-sitters on demand), and Hem (the zombified corpse of the furniture store Fab.com).”— Sam Biddle in Silicon Valley Is a Big Fat Lie

Biddle added that “it’s wasteful and genuinely harmful to have so many people working on such trivial projects … no prior cohort of rich pricks have fooled themselves, and the rest of us, so thoroughly.”

“… technologists have diverted us and enriched themselves with trivial toys, with things like iPhones and apps and social media, or algorithms that speed automated trading. There's nothing wrong with most of these things. They've expanded and enriched our lives. But they don't solve humanity's big problems.”— TED talk Can technology solve our big problems? by Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review

“My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There's a lot of that in Silicon Valley.” — Mark Zuckerberg

Try this experiment: turn off your computer or smartphone and tell me how your life is better than it was decades ago. Now turn them on and explain how it is better. After pondering this for years, I can’t point to a single major way that Silicon Valley and its offshoots helped me. The big change is that after pouring years of my life and a pile of money into its addictive offerings, I haven’t made a penny of net profit nor reaped any great benefit. Instead, I’ve frittered away time that would have been better spent in the real world.

LinkedIn’s top writers tend to cheerlead what Silicon Valley is doing while turning a blind eye to what it ISN’T doing. Name a trivial problem that likely never bothered you and Silicon Valley probably has dozens of solutions to it. Name one of the many big problems plaguing the world and Silicon Valley likely has zero solutions. They’re drawn like a magnet to easy problems and live in a dream world thinking code can solve everything. If they looked at the real world, they’d see how little they’ve done to solve big problems—our list of them is longer than before Silicon Valley myopically began focusing on websites, apps, and digital gizmos.

? I don’t recall a single time any of LinkedIn’s elite writers suggested some of the countless ways this site could improve to do more for us.

? Why did I turn down a million-dollar check? Why might you want to do the same?

? How I got a $75,000 raise in 10 seconds. Take-home lesson: one way to be paid what you’re worth.

? How I earned as much per hour mowing lawns as I later did as an ER doctor, earning more than average physicians, and how you could skip college and the hassles of white-collar work yet earn more than average college grads.

? How you can read like Bill Gates to boost your IQ.

? Henry Ford gave the missing link to success. What is it?

? How can we successfully compete with China and other nations with low-cost labor and comparatively lax regulation?

? How can we receive better government services at zero cost?

? How could taxpayers pay less while those who receive from government get more while helping bring us together instead of the perennial divisiveness and class warfare?

? Writers prattle on and on about drones, seeing their obvious benefits but not their risks that will someday make people rue the day they heard of them. What’s the really big risk getting very little attention?

? Most people flush an astounding percentage of their lives down the drain performing mundane tasks in the home and yard. Silicon Valley is doing virtually nothing to help except by helping us waste even more of our time. What could you do to save you lots of money, time, and energy while making your life better every day in many ways?

? Which common multivitamin-mineral supplement ingredient can endanger your brainpower and hence your career? Which might give lifelong problems to your children? Which can disrupt your sleep? Which can give you dry eyes? LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers surely know all of this, right?

? Stress is bad … blah, blah, blah. Common knowledge. How can it be good for you? What can you do to turn an enemy into a friend? LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers are eager to explain this, aren’t they? Aren’t they?

? Apart from their value in terms of R&R and physical activity, your choice of a hobby can markedly influence your life and career. Elite writers should be filled with elite tips to help you; how often do you hear them?

? I once was so fat I couldn’t see my feet when I stood up, but now have a 30-inch waist. Difference? I discovered a way to rapidly quell appetite that is entirely legal, practical (requires no willpower & VERY low cost) and healthy (no drugs, herbs, or surgery). What is it, LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers? A question for LinkedIn’s elite writers who are physicians or CEOs of hospitals and healthcare insurance companies: when I mentioned this numerous times, offering to divulge the secret if you’d share it, none of you ever asked for it. Why?

? My sixth-grade teacher called me “slow” and I struggled so much I dreamed of dropping out of high school, yet I literally went from dunce to doctor, graduating in the top 1% of my class in medical school. LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers, how can others replicate that cognitive metamorphosis? One needn’t be born on third base to get there, so LinkedIn’s elite writers should explain how dunces can turn into academic stars.

? Truth be told, deep down I’m lazy, yet people who know me would describe me as the Energizer Bunny. LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers, how can people who feel stuck in neutral roar into overdrive effortlessly and stay that way? What are the secrets to motivation and the antidotes to procrastination? And when can intentional procrastination be good for you—and why?

? I love learning but hate studying and the regimentation of school, which was so noxious I’d rather beat myself with a hammer. How can students who similarly despise school nevertheless excel in it?

This is a big problem in the United States; we’re slipping relative to other nations in educational attainment even though we spend more than any other country. Clearly we’d benefit if people learned more. One of the biggest impediments isn’t stupidity but aversion to school—something I know very well, but something I know how to circumvent. Why don’t more teachers and professors? And why hasn’t a single one ever asked me how I did it? A “slow” student who hates school acing college and medical school—how often does that happen? Almost never, thus when intractable cases like me become textbook cases transitioning from dumb, lazy student to doctor, educators should listen with rapt attention so we’d individually and collectively reap more return on our investments of time and money in education. After all, lessons learned can be taught. With education being one of the cornerstones to careers, LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers are teaching them, right?

? I had female friends who dearly wanted to become doctors but thought they didn’t have The Right Stuff, so they worked in dead-end jobs they assumed were their lot in life until I helped them fulfill their potential. One is now a medical school professor and chair of her department at a hospital in the Detroit Medical Center. The other became a neuroradiologist, medical school professor, and president of a prestigious medical organization. How can more women achieve their dreams?

? Women are just as intelligent as men and now generally somewhat better educated, so why are they not now outpacing men in terms of invention? The social explanations may have merit but evade the chief obstacle that can be overcome. LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers surely know what this is, right? Because women are half the population, we’re not fully tapping the potential of half the people on the planet. Shouldn’t LinkedIn’s Big Voices have Big Solutions to Big Problems?

? Research shows that social rejection generally fuels motivation much more effectively than praise—but the key is who does it, when, why, and how. Discussions of this topic usually simplistically assume praise is universally good. Big mistake. Since we’re on an occupational/career site FOR ADULTS, readers want the nitty-gritty, not Sesame Street simplicity. Ever give it, LinkedIn’s elite writers?

? I dreamed of becoming an inventor since I was young but wasted decades trying to conceive good ideas. My lack of creativity doomed me to continue working as an ER doctor—a job I hated. Flash-forward several years and I’d sold some of my inventions to a company led by a friend of Bill Gates—a company that internally brags it hires only the smartest Ivy League graduates was now paying me (as an independent contractor) month after month for years for my ideas (less than 1% of them; they’re not large enough to digest the others). I serendipitously stumbled upon the secret to unlocking creativity. What is it, LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers?

LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers talk, write, and go on and on for years without mentioning any of these topics or many others I could present. I admire and am impressed by HOW some of them write, but after years of reading them, I cannot recall a single one who made my life significantly or even moderately better in any way. It’s as if their brilliantly crafted words are bereft of brilliant NOVEL ideas; virtually everything they say is just rehashed, not groundbreaking, and hence not game-changing in my life or yours. As Susan Cain (author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking) said, “There is zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.” That reminds me of politicians, who sound so good—but how often do they help you?

LinkedIn excels in spotlighting the best talkers. Wouldn’t it be better if they shared the limelight with those having the best ideas to help you instead of just temporarily entertaining you? How can we make America great again? How can we make you greater than even your Mom imagined possible? How did one of my relatives go from a farmhouse to owning a telephone company? How did my Mom go from rags to riches? I mentioned that in The questions no one is asking about LinkedIn’s Top Voices.

The Internet abounds with captivating content. LinkedIn could be even more alluring by helping more readers, more often. I could discuss 1001 more topics that are interesting AND beneficial. LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers know how to be interesting, but how often do their words of honey improve lives? They’ve mastered the art of making you feel good for five minutes; their blips rarely change lives or careers and may actually harm them: think of all the time you’ve spent on LinkedIn, and what else you might have accomplished had you invested your time elsewhere. The principle of economics called opportunity cost applies to all resources (including time), not only money.

The Internet is the most addictive time-waster ever invented. It doesn’t have to be that way. Reading an article could convey remarkably helpful information, so why do LinkedIn’s Top Voices and influencers not do it more often?

I posted a related article, The questions no one is asking about LinkedIn’s Top Voices.