80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good

by Benjamin Todd

Before we move on, here’s a quick recap of the six ingredients. This is what to look for in a dream job: Work you’re good at, Work that helps others, Engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow (freedom, variety, clear tasks, feedback), Supportive colleagues, No major negatives like long hours or unfair pay, and Work that fits your personal life.

How much good does a doctor do? When people think of careers that make a difference, they tend to imagine jobs like teaching, social work and medicine. So, when we started 80,000 Hours, one of the first questions we asked was: how much good do these careers actually do? We started by making estimates of the impact you’d have by becoming a doctor who practices clinical medicine. The main purpose of doctors is to improve health, so we tried to estimate how much extra “health” a doctor adds. Working with a Cambridge public health researcher, Dr. Greg Lewis, we found that on average in the course of their career, a doctor in the UK will enable people to live an extra 120 years of healthy life, either by extending their lifespan or by improving their quality of health. There’s a huge amount of uncertainty in this figure, but it’s unlikely to be more than ten times higher. This research is due to be published and can be found in the footnotes.[17] Using a standard conversion rate (used by the World Bank among others) of 30 extra years of healthy life to one “life saved”, 120 years of healthy life is equivalent to four lives saved. There’s no doubting that this is a significant impact, however it’s less impact than many people expect doctors to have. There are three main reasons for this. It’s widely accepted by researchers that medicine has only increased average life expectancy by a few years. Most of the increase in life expectancy that’s occurred in the last 100 years is inst...

Public intellectual. If you can get an academic position, then you could focus your time on advocacy rather than research. Due to the status given to academics at top universities, it’s relatively easy to build a following and get media attention.

How can you find a good direct work position? Decide which problems you think are most pressing (using the previous chapter). Identify the best organizations within these areas, especially those that are especially limited by talent rather than funding. You can find a list of organizations within each of our problem profiles online, or in this list: wiki.80000hours.org/index.php/Places_we_sometimes_recommend_people_apply_to_work. Find the positions where you’d have the best fit.

Recap of the guide so far In Chapter 1, we saw that a fulfilling, dream job: Helps others. Is something you’re good at. Has the right supportive conditions (e.g. engaging work, fit with the rest of your life). We also saw that to find a job which really helps others: Work out which problems are most pressing – those that are big in scale, neglected and solvable – as we covered in Chapter 3. Choose the most effective approaches. Think broadly by considering research, advocacy and earning to give as well as direct work, and choose the best approach for the problem. Do something you enjoy where you have the chance to excel.

Most people reach the peak of their impact in their middle age. Income usually peaks in the 40s, suggesting that it takes around 20 years for most people to reach their peak productivity. Similarly, experts only reach their peak abilities between age 30 and 60, and if anything, this age is increasing over time.[39]

Field Age of peak output Theoretical physics, lyric poetry, pure mathematics Around 30 Psychology, chemistry Around 40 Novel writing, history, philosophy, medicine Around 50 Business - average age of S&P500 CEOs 55 Politics - average age of first-term (US) presidents 55

To find the right career for you, go investigate To really work out what you’ll be good at, you need to speak to people, learn about the options and try things out. The closer you can get to actually doing the work, the better.

We like to imagine we can work out what we’re good at through reflection, in a flash of insight. But that’s not how it works. Rather, it’s more like a scientist testing a hypothesis. You have ideas about what you can become good at (hypotheses), which you can test out (experiments). Think you could be good at writing? Then start blogging. Think you’d hate consulting? At least speak to a consultant.

The bottom line: how to find the right career for you Research shows that it’s really hard to work out what you’re going to be good at ahead of time, especially through self-reflection or going with your gut. Instead, go investigate. After an initial cut-down of your options, go learn more and then try them out. Minimize the costs of trying out your options by doing cheap tests first (usually start by speaking to people), then trying your options in the best order (e.g. business jobs before non-profit jobs). Keep adapting your plan over time. Think like a scientist investigating a hypothesis.

The entire guide, in brief To have a good career, focus on the following, roughly in this order: Explore to find the best options, rather than “going with your gut” or narrowing down too early. Make this your key focus until you become more confident about the best options. Take the best opportunities to invest in your career capital to become as badass as you can be. Especially look for career capital that’s flexible when you’re uncertain. Help others by focusing on the most pressing social problems rather than those you stumble into – those that are big in scale, neglected and solvable. To make the largest contribution to those problems, consider earning to give, research and advocacy, as well as direct work. Keep adapting your plan to find the best personal fit. Rather than expect to discover your “passion” right away, think like a scientist testing a hypothesis. And work with a community.