Explore the idea of building a high-impact career with Benjamin Hilton, focusing on choosing the right problems to solve, leveraging strengths, predicting the future, and finding meaning in career choices. Learn about the impact formula, maximizing impact through leverage and problem-solving strategies, and balancing belief updates to navigate economic growth with cooperation and goodwill.
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Quick takeaways
Choosing the right problem to tackle can lead to significant impacts, such as addressing existential risks or curing diseases.
Personal fit is crucial in determining career impact, involving assessing fit for chosen paths and building skills to maximize impact.
Acquiring career capital - skills, connections, credentials - influences career trajectory, with a shift towards specific skills to solve pressing problems.
Balancing passion and meaning with potential impact is essential, highlighting the importance of pursuing meaningful work aligning with solving significant problems.
Deep dives
Factors Influencing High-Impact Careers
When considering impactful careers, individuals should focus on solving important problems with significant impacts. Choosing the right problem to tackle can lead to orders of magnitude difference in outcomes, such as between addressing existential risks or curing diseases. Additionally, one must consider the spread of solutions within a problem area, as certain interventions can be significantly more effective than others.
Personal Fit and Career Impact
Personal fit plays a vital role in determining career impact. Apart from selecting the right problem and solution, individuals should assess their fit for the chosen path. Factors like the choice of problem, the approach taken to tackle it, and personal aptitude are crucial in maximizing career impact. Building skills and exploring various roles can help individuals identify their optimal fit for making a significant impact.
Understanding Career Capital and Skill Development
Career capital, comprising skills, connections, and credentials, influences an individual's career trajectory. While transferable skills are valuable, focusing on domain-specific skills relevant to one's chosen path is essential. The shift towards acquiring specific skills directly linked to solving pressing problems favors skill development over acquiring general transferable skills.
Balancing Passion, Meaning, and Impact
Passion and meaning are key considerations in career choices, but they should be balanced with the potential for impact. While passion can drive persistence, evaluating the scale, solvability, and neglectedness of problems is crucial for maximizing impact. The pursuit of meaningful work that also aligns with solving significant problems is essential for long-term career satisfaction and impact.
Examining Neglectedness as a Factor for Impact
Neglectedness, as a key factor in determining the impact of addressing a problem, suggests that focusing on issues that have fewer people working on them could lead to a larger percentage increase in resources per person. This factor considers the percentage increase in resources per additional person working on the problem or per dollar contributed, highlighting the importance of directing efforts towards underrepresented issues to maximize impact.
Weighing Scale as a Measure of Impact
Scale, as another factor in evaluating the impact of addressing a problem, emphasizes the significance of working on problems that would yield more good when fully solved. By considering the scale of impact, such as how many more people would benefit from a complete solution, individuals can prioritize addressing issues that have a substantial impact on a larger population.
Evaluating Solvability for Optimal Problem-Solving Approach
Solvability, the third factor in the impact assessment framework, delves into the practical interventions and approaches that can be employed to address a problem. It emphasizes the need to consider various solutions and methods to tackle a problem, exploring different strategies to effectively contribute to resolving the issue at hand.
Understanding Leverage for Enhanced Impact Potential
Leverage, as a critical aspect in maximizing impact potential, offers a multiplier effect on the outcomes of problem-solving efforts. By using leverage, individuals can amplify the impact of their chosen solutions, whether through financial investments, organizational initiatives, or idea dissemination, enabling them to achieve greater results and contribute significantly to positive change.
What's the best way to think about building an impactful career? Should everyone try to work in fields related to existential risks? Should people find work in a problem area even if they can't work on the very "best" solution within that area? What does it mean for a particular job or career path to be a "good fit" for someone? What is "career capital"? To what extent should people focus on developing transferable skills? What are some of the most useful cross-domain skills? To what extent should people allow their passions and interests to influence how they think about potential career paths? Are there formulas that can be used to estimate how impactful a career will be for someone? And if there are, then how might people misuse them? Should everyone aim to build a high-leverage career? When do people update too much on new evidence?
Benjamin Hilton is a research analyst at 80,000 Hours, where he's written on a range of topics from career strategy to nuclear war and the risks from artificial intelligence. He recently helped re-write the 80,000 Hours career guide alongside its author and 80,000 Hours co-founder, Ben Todd. Before joining 80,000 Hours, he was a civil servant, working as a policy adviser across the UK government in the Cabinet Office, Treasury, and Department for International Trade. He has master’s degrees in economics and theoretical physics, and has published in the fields of physics, history, and complexity science. Learn more about him on the 80,000 Hours website, or email him at benjamin.hilton@80000hours.org.
