Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

by William MacAskill

We very often fail to think as carefully about helping others as we could, mistakenly believing that applying data and rationality to a charitable endeavour robs the act of virtue.

Taken literally, however, the idea of following your passion is terrible advice. Finding a career that’s the right ‘fit’ for you is crucial to finding a career, but believing you must find some preordained ‘passion’ and then pursue jobs that match it is all wrong. Ask yourself, is following your passion a good way to achieve personal satisfaction in the job you love? Should you pick a career by identifying your greatest interest, finding jobs that ‘match’ that interest and pursuing them no matter what? On the basis of the evidence, the answer seems to be ‘no’.

In general, we recommend people think of three primary routes by which they can have impact on the job. The first is through the labour you provide. This can be the work you do if you are employed by an effective organisation, or the research you do if you are a researcher. The second is the money you can give. The third is the influence you can have on other people. In order to work out the total impact you can have, you should look at all three of these; whereas advice that is focused solely on the charity sector looks only at the first.

There is certainly a risk of losing one’s values by earning to give, which you should bear in mind when you’re thinking about your career options; but there are risks of becoming disillusioned whatever you choose to do, and the experience of seeing what effective donations can achieve can be immensely rewarding.