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

by Benjamin Todd

One puzzle is that studies of high-ranking government and military leaders found they had lower levels of stress hormones and less anxiety, despite sleeping fewer hours, managing more people and having greater demands placed on them.

Instead of seeking to avoid stress, seek out a supportive context and meaningful work, and then challenge yourself.

Engaging work is work that draws you in, holds your attention, and gives you a sense of flow.

Rather than having a single passion, in reality our interests change often, and more than we expect.

Rather than “follow your passion”, our slogan for a fulfilling career is: get good at something that helps others. Or simply: do what contributes.

The number of people whose lives you improve, and how much you improve them.

found it engaging because it was sciency and he was geeky.

the most effective actions achieve far more than average.

As we’ve seen, doing what contributes is a good strategy both for helping others and being personally satisfied. Now, it turns out it can also be a good strategy for building career capital. If you try to do what’s most important for the world, you’ll learn skills that are useful for helping others, gain impressive achievements, and make the right connections.

Your plan should change as you learn more, but it’s easy to get stuck on the path you’re already on. Not changing course when a better option exists is one of the most common decision-making mistakes identified by psychologists, and is called the “sunk cost fallacy” or “status quo bias”.

When you meet an employer, ask lots of questions to understand their challenges.

Prepare your three key selling points ahead of meetings.

Networking sounds icky, but at its core, it’s simple: meet people you like, and help them out.