The goal of this guide is to help you create a meaningful career that you enjoy and that makes a big positive difference. If you think strategically about which problem to focus on, which role to choose and what your particular strengths fit are, you can make a significant contribution to the world.
In fact, some career paths are expected to have over a hundred times greater positive impact than others. So if you want to do a lot of good, it might be a good idea to spend some of your career’s 80,000 hours thinking about what to do with the rest of the time. Increasing your impact by one percent corresponds to a time investment of around 800 hours. This guide takes a few hours to go through and can be a good first step.
A significant part of the guide is devoted to the ideas behind the conclusions. The concrete advice on problems and roles are our best estimates given the knowledge we have at the moment, but they will likely need to be updated as the world changes and we receive new information. However, the principles and tools are likely to be useful even in new circumstances. They can also help you identify brand new options that we’ve missed.