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

To have a dream job, don’t worry too much about money and stress, and don’t endlessly self-reflect to find your one true passion.

Rather, get good at something that helps others. It’s best for you, and it’s best for the world.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

A man’s true wealth is the good he does in this world.

– Muhammad

Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

– Jesus Christ

Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again and you will be filled with joy.

– Buddha

If you make it your mission to help others, then people will want to help you succeed.

Rather than having a single passion, in reality our interests change often, and more than we expect.[15] Think back to what you were most interested in five years ago, and you’ll probably find that it’s pretty different from what you’re interested in today. And as we saw above, we’re bad at knowing what really makes us happy.

This all means you have more options for a fulfilling career than you might first think.

If your work helps others, you practice to get good at it, you have engaging tasks, and you work with people you like, then you’ll become passionate about it. The six ingredients are all about the context of the work, not the content. Ten years ago, we would never have imagined being passionate about giving career advice, but here we are.

Many successful people are passionate, but often their passion developed alongside their success, rather than coming first. Steve Jobs started out passionate about Zen Buddhism. He went into technology as a way to make some quick cash. But as he became successful, his passion grew, until he became the most famous advocate of “doing what you love”.

Rather, we need a more systematic way of working out which job is best for us.

The fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.

It turns out we’re even bad at remembering how satisfying different experiences were. One well-established mistake is that we tend to judge an experience mainly by its ending.

Suppose you’ve spent years working and studying to get a dream job, only to realize you could be doing something completely different that would have much more impact. The thought of abandoning all those years’ effort is hard, right? It’s tempting to continue with what you’ve already invested in, hoping things will improve. But you can’t get the years you’ve spent already back: and by continuing you’re probably just wasting more. Abandoning sunk costs in your career can be incredibly difficult, but it’s important if you want to make as much difference as possible. You need to be able to identify when your preference for a certain career is for good reason, and when it’s just because of past commitments.