Here is an excerpt from an article written by Gretchen Gavett for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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In this time of hope and decorative mortarboards, we reached out to some of our favorite writers, asking them: What do graduates really need to know about the world of work? Their answers are below.

Heidi Grant Halvorson
Associate director for the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University Business School and author of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.

There will be obstacles, setbacks, challenges. Many things will be more difficult than you thought they’d be. The key to success (scientifically speaking) is perseverance. You’ve just got to hang in there — there’s no other way to win. But how do you do it? A great way to be more resilient is to stop comparing yourself to other people, and compare yourself to your own past performance — last week, last month, last year. Are you improving? That’s the only question that matters.

Daniel Gulati
A tech entrepreneur based in New York, he is a coauthor of the book Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders.

The tough, thorny problems are the most valuable ones, but most people will shy away from the challenge. Solve these problems.

Dorie Clark
A strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. She is the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future.

In a world of layoffs, outsourcing, and industry disruption, the only “career insurance” you can get is through figuring out the answer to one particular question: how can you make yourself truly valuable professionally? Most recent grads assume they’ll do OK if they work hard. But doing the assigned job is table stakes, and not enough to matter very much when other, cheaper options become available for your employer. You need to hone a skill no one teaches you in college, and few people in the workforce understand: the ability to identify problems no one has explicitly articulated, and then solve them.

How can you make yourself a connector in your company, and share information with those that need it? How can you lend a unique perspective to corporate discussions? What minor task or grunt work can you take off someone’s plate, thereby earning their gratitude? What leadership position — perhaps that no one else wants — can you leverage to build connections and a solid professional reputation? Answering those questions isn’t easy. But if you can do it, you’re miles ahead of the legions who don’t even grasp they should be asking them.

Maxwell Wessel
A member of the Forum for Growth and Innovation, a Harvard Business School think tank developing and refining theory around disruptive innovation.

There are a thousand paths in front of you. The ones you know about are often safe and unobstructed: work for a big company in a narrow role, get a promotion, get a slightly bigger role, take on a mortgage, buy a house, wait for the next promotion to pay down your debt, etc. Those paths were developed by people who rely on process and rules to tame the chaos that is life. But those paths, the ones you learned about in your career offices aren’t the only ones afforded to you. You can dare to be different. You can break the rules. And while some will scold you for it, others will shower you with outsized reward.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Gretchen Gavett is an associate editor at the Harvard Business Review. Follow her on Twitter @gretchenmarg. To check out her HBR articles, please click here.