[Article] “Why some of your career options probably have 100x the impact of others” by Benjamin Todd

This article is the conclusion of our old ‘key ideas’ series, which we stopped updating in 2023. We’d suggest reading the article in our advanced series instead.

We believe that some of the career paths open to you likely have over 100 times more positive impact than other paths you might take.

Why? In our key ideas series, we’ve shown that you can have more impact by:

1. Finding a bigger and/or more neglected problem

2. Finding a path that gives you a bigger opportunity to contribute

3. Finding work that fits you better

We’ve also shown that there are big differences for each factor:

Some problems seem hundreds of times more neglected relative to their scale than others. Some career paths let you make 100 times as big a contribution to solving those problems as others, via giving you more leverage or letting you support more effective solutions. You can have many times more impact in a path that’s a good fit.

Narrated by the author.

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First published:
September 21st, 2021

Source:
https://80000hours.org/articles/careers-differ-in-impact