80,000 Hours

You have about 80,000 hours in your career: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. That makes it the most important decision you’ll ever make.

Choose well, and you can have a more rewarding, interesting life, and also help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. Choose poorly, and you could waste decades.

So what should you do? Most advice is based on no research, instead offering misleading platitudes like ‘follow your passion’. And it is surprisingly out-of-date, focusing on traditional paths rather than those most likely to thrive in an age of AI.

If you want to help others, meanwhile, you’re often simply told to become a nurse or doctor, when there are many other paths which can save more lives. In fact, some careers have hundreds of times more impact than others, but most of us have no idea which ones.