The guide is designed for you to reflect on your career, and find a career path that is both fulfilling and impactful, following the following sections.
Making a difference
This section will cover what it means to make a difference in the world, highlighting the difference between “good” interventions and the best ones, and how most people in Sweden, in contrast to what most people believe, can achieve a significant positive impact in the world through their career.
Selecting problem
Which societal problem you choose to work with will have a big impact on the difference you can make. But how do you prioritize when many questions feel so important? You are expected to make the biggest difference by working on problems that are big, solvable and overlooked by others.
Priority areas
In this chapter, we provide an overview of the cause areas that, based on the previous section, we believe are in most need of more people working on them.
Impactful professions
There are many ways to use your career to make a difference. In this chapter, four career categories that we believe are particularly promising for those who want to do a lot of good are presented: 1) Research; 2) Communicating ideas; 3) Building organizations; 4) Government and policy, and; 5) High-paying jobs that enable large donations.
Personal fit
If you want to make a big difference, you need to work with something you are good at, and do something that you enjoy doing. This part will help you figure out what that is.
Taking action
Time to boil down what you learned into concrete options for your career! In this chapter there are tools to help.
At the end of the guide, we hope you have a better understanding of what the world needs, what you are good at, and what you enjoy doing, allowing you to use your career to make a significant contribution to the world.
80,000 Hours
The guide is based on about 15 years of work by a British organization called 80,000 Hours. They do analysis and compile research to guide people who want to make a big difference in their careers. Unless otherwise noted, the factual information comes from their articles, which we link to at the end of each section for those who want to read more and see sources.