How To Find The Perfect Career - The 3 Part Decision Framework
Summary
TLDRThis video script from the Career Club series explores the three facets of a fulfilling career: making money, having fun, and helping people. It discusses the diminishing returns of income on happiness, the importance of job characteristics for enjoyment, and the myth of following passion for career choice. The script emphasizes the significance of problem area, effectiveness, and personal fit when aiming to help others through one's career. It also highlights the value of experimentation and skill development for career impact, and introduces 80,000 Hours, a non-profit organization that provides resources to help individuals make high-impact career decisions.
Takeaways
- 💰 Money is important for career decisions but can lead to bias when it becomes the primary consideration. Beyond a certain income level, additional money has diminishing returns on happiness.
- 📈 The 'marginal utility of extra money' graph illustrates that happiness derived from income plateaus after a certain point, suggesting money is a 'satisficing' good rather than a 'maximizing' one.
- 🎯 Once financial needs are met, career satisfaction shifts towards enjoyment and fulfillment, which are also 'satisficing' goods, meaning we seek enough enjoyment rather than constantly maximizing it.
- 🔍 Choosing a career for enjoyment involves understanding what makes a job enjoyable and incorporating those elements, rather than chasing an unattainable 'perfect' job.
- 🚀 Cal Newport's concept emphasizes that rather than solely following passions, one should build career capital by excelling in a chosen field, which can then be leveraged for greater autonomy and enjoyment.
- 🧪 Experimentation is crucial in career choice; it's recommended to try out different roles or industries before committing to a long-term career path.
- 🤔 The importance of helping others through one's career is highlighted, with a focus on identifying problems, assessing effectiveness, and ensuring personal fit.
- 🌐 The script introduces the concept of 'problem area', urging individuals to consider the scale and neglectedness of the issues they aim to address through their careers.
- 🛠️ Effectiveness in a career is not just about the size of the problem but also the feasibility of making a difference and the individual's capacity to contribute meaningfully.
- 👤 Personal fit is essential for a fulfilling career; it's important to choose a field where one can excel and enjoy the work, aligning with one's strengths and interests.
- 🔗 Developing useful and transferable skills can increase effectiveness in any career, thereby enhancing personal fulfillment and the ability to help others.
- 📚 The video recommends 80,000 Hours, a non-profit organization offering free resources to help individuals make high-impact career decisions.
Q & A
What are the three main facets of finding the perfect career according to the transcript?
-The three main facets of finding the perfect career are making money, having fun, and helping people.
What is the problem with using money as the primary consideration in career decisions?
-The problem with using money as the primary consideration is that it can lead to an overemphasis on increasing income beyond the point where it contributes to happiness, which is known as diminishing marginal utility.
What is the concept of 'satisficing' in the context of career choices?
-Satisficing refers to the idea of choosing something that is good enough rather than constantly seeking more, which is applicable to both money and enjoyment in a career.
How does the transcript suggest we should approach the idea of having fun in our careers?
-The transcript suggests that having fun in a career is also a satisficing good, and we should aim for a career that provides enough enjoyment without overpursuing it.
What is the role of experimentation in choosing a career that provides enjoyment?
-Experimentation is important for understanding whether a particular career will be enjoyable. It involves trying out different roles or gaining experience to see if the career aligns with one's expectations and enjoyment.
Why is it a mistake to follow your passions as suggested by Cal Newport in the transcript?
-Following your passions can be a mistake because activities that we enjoy, like playing video games or watching Netflix, are often not sustainable as careers. Instead, we should find a career that fits our lifestyle and then excel within it.
What is the significance of the problem area when considering a career that helps people?
-The significance of the problem area is to identify the scale and importance of the issue being addressed. It's important to work on problems that are both significant and neglected to maximize impact.
How does the transcript define effectiveness in the context of helping people through a career?
-Effectiveness is defined by how much good one can do in a particular career, considering the size of the problem, the neglectedness of the issue, and the individual's ability to contribute meaningfully to solving it.
What is the importance of personal fit when choosing a career that helps people?
-Personal fit is crucial because if you don't enjoy or aren't good at the work in the area you're trying to help with, you won't be effective, which diminishes the overall impact of your career.
How can one develop useful skills to increase their effectiveness in a career?
-One can develop useful skills such as communication, public speaking, and persuasion, which are compounding skills applicable across various careers and can increase effectiveness.
What resource is offered by 80,000 Hours to help individuals find a fulfilling and impactful career?
-80,000 Hours offers a free careers guide and newsletter that provide step-by-step guidance and updates on high-impact jobs and research on careers that are fulfilling and enjoyable.
Outlines
💼 Balancing Money, Fun, and Impact in Your Career
This paragraph introduces the key facets of finding a fulfilling career: making money, having fun, and helping others. The series 'Career Club' aims to explore strategies to achieve these goals. The speaker mentions a partnership with 80,000 Hours, a non-profit that helps people find impactful and enjoyable careers, aligning with the video's theme.
💸 The Role of Money in Career Choices
The focus here is on the importance of money in career decisions, acknowledging that while money is essential, it should not be the sole focus. The speaker discusses the diminishing returns of money on happiness after a certain income level and introduces the concept of 'satisficing' versus 'maximizing' when making financial decisions in one's career.
😄 Finding Enjoyment in Your Career
This section discusses the importance of enjoying your career. It emphasizes that fun should be seen as a satisficing good, where having 'enough' fun is more sustainable than constantly seeking higher levels of enjoyment. The speaker highlights factors that contribute to job satisfaction, such as autonomy, good colleagues, and personal growth.
🎯 The Myth of 'Follow Your Passion'
The speaker critiques the idea of 'following your passion,' arguing that it is unrealistic for most people. Instead, it's better to choose a career that aligns with a desired lifestyle and to excel in it. Skill development and career capital are highlighted as keys to increasing enjoyment and autonomy in any job.
🔬 Experimenting with Career Choices
This paragraph emphasizes the importance of experimentation in choosing a career. The speaker advises against making long-term commitments, like going to medical school, without first testing the waters through short-term experiences. The idea is to make informed decisions based on practical exposure rather than assumptions.
🌍 The Value of Helping Others in Your Career
This section explores the desire to help others through one's career. It discusses how choosing to work on significant, neglected problems can lead to greater impact. The speaker uses examples like climate change and AI safety to illustrate how working in underrepresented areas can maximize one's contribution to society.
🧩 Effectiveness and Personal Fit in Career Choices
The final section delves into the importance of being effective and having a personal fit in your chosen career. It highlights that even if a problem is significant, if one lacks the skills or interest to contribute effectively, the impact will be limited. The speaker stresses the value of developing general, transferable skills to enhance both personal satisfaction and impact.
📚 Resources for Career Impact: 80,000 Hours
The speaker promotes 80,000 Hours, a non-profit offering free resources to help people make impactful career decisions. They emphasize the importance of considering long-term impact and offer a guide and newsletter for further exploration. The video closes with an invitation to check out related content on long-termism and impactful career choices.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Career
💡Money
💡Enjoyment
💡Helping People
💡Social Status
💡Satisficing
💡Maximizing
💡Career Capital
💡Autonomy
💡Experimentation
💡Effective Altruism
💡Problem Area
💡Effectiveness
💡Personal Fit
Highlights
The importance of finding a career that aligns with making money, having fun, and helping people.
Money as a satisficing good with diminishing marginal utility beyond a certain income threshold.
The concept of satisficing versus maximizing goods in career decision-making.
The bias towards striving for more money and social status in career choices.
The three-part framework for career enjoyment: career choice, job characteristics, and personal fit.
The argument against following passions for career choices, as suggested by Cal Newport.
The value of low-risk experimentation in career exploration before committing to a long-term path.
The significance of autonomy and career capital in making a job enjoyable.
The importance of personal fit and effectiveness in choosing a career that helps you help others.
The concept of expected value in evaluating the scale and neglectedness of problems to work on.
The disparity between funding and attention given to different global issues like climate change and AI safety.
The idea that personal fit and skill development are crucial for career effectiveness.
The role of neglectedness in choosing a high-impact career area.
The impact of career choices on personal fulfillment and meaningfulness.
The importance of developing compounding skills for career effectiveness.
80,000 Hours as a resource for actionable career guidance and their focus on high-impact careers.
The connection between career choices and long-term global problems, as discussed in 'What We Owe the Future'.
Transcripts
right so if you ask most people what
they want from their careers they'll say
some combination of I want to make money
I want to have fun and I want to help
people and those are the three facets of
finding your perfect career that we're
going to explore in this episode of
career Club the new and ongoing Series
where we discuss strategies and tools to
find and succeed in our perfect career
that lets us have enjoyment and
fulfillment and also have a meaningful
impact on the world and this video is
made in partnership with 80 000 hours of
fantastic non-profit organization whose
aim is to help people have more impact
while having a fulfilling and enjoyable
career which very much Vibes with my
whole thing in the series but I'll tell
you more about 80 000 hours towards the
end of the video part one I want to make
money in my career right so obviously
money is an important part about making
decisions about a career but the problem
is that money is also a very easily
measurable scorecard that we can use to
define our social status now this is a
problem it's a problem because in the
capitalistic and like materially driven
and the social status seeking society
that we live in and that who we are deep
down we're all status seeking monkeys at
the end of the day because of all this
stuff there is an intrinsic bias that we
we have two words trying to strive for
more and more because we're always
trying to get more social status and
therefore we're always inevitably going
to be trying to make more money in our
careers now there is nothing wrong with
this per se but it becomes a problem
when we start thinking of making more
and more and more money as being the
primary consideration when it comes to
making decisions about a career now you
might have come across this graph before
this is the marginal utility of extra
money graph that shows that at the start
of your career when you're not making
any money making more and more money
does translate to more and more
happiness because it removes money
problems from your life but beyond a
certain point and usually studies say
that point is around about seventy
thousand dollars if you're in the US or
like sixty thousand pounds if you're in
the UK Beyond a certain point you start
getting diminishing marginal utility so
extra money does not actually contribute
to extra happiness and the way that I
personally like to think of this is that
money is a satisficing good so there's
two different types of like good
quantities that we can have when it
comes to making decisions there's
satisficing and then there is maximizing
now satisficing is when we say hey this
thing is good enough so I'm not going to
bother trying to get more and more and
more when we're choosing a flavor of jam
in the supermarket we just want
something that's good enough we're not
like trying to optimize the hell to
figure out like oh my God what's the
absolute best strawberry jam imaginable
it's a satisficing good it's like yeah
it's a good enough Jam I enjoy the jam I
don't really have to think about it much
more than that but then we have
maximizing Goods where it's like hey I
want to actually do whatever I can to
make the absolute best decision here and
that's what we end up sort of
overthinking the hell out of everything
so practically speaking obviously making
money is a consideration in your career
but just like the main point to keep in
mind it's a satisfied good beyond the
point you can kind of ignore the money
side of things and you can move on to
the other things that make a perfect
career I.E having fun and helping people
part two I want to have fun in my career
so once we've got the make money side of
the equation taken care of or at least
considered the next thing we want to do
is have fun we want to enjoy our careers
we want to feel happy and fulfilled and
want to feel like the things that we're
doing are meaningful and within this
concept of having fun there are three
ways that I like to think about it in
terms of a framework for making
decisions about my career the first one
is about choosing the kind of career
that I'm in to maximize my enjoyment but
when I say maximize my enjoyment again
this is one of those things like having
fun is actually a satisficing good as
well like really you want a career where
you're having enough fun you're having
enough enjoyment and actually continuing
to chase double or triple or quadruple
amounts of fun and enjoyment is like
the experience of fun and fun and
enjoyment at work and and in life
doesn't really work like that and if you
find yourself continuing to try and seek
those pleasure hits of dopamine you end
up becoming a drug addict because it's
like there's actually not sustainable
ways to just keep on increasing the
amount of fun you're having in your life
and so similar to money it's like we
want to recognize that as long as we're
finding a career where we are enjoying
it it's like it's very easy to think oh
the grass is always greener on the other
side I could find a different career
where I'll enjoy it twice as much but
realistically that's basically never
gonna happen and there is like a limit
to the amount of fun that you can have
in a career and obviously we want that
amount to be high but like you know
let's keep in mind that it's also a
satisficing good and so firstly the
amount of fun we can have in our career
the amount of enjoyment we can get from
it is partly based on the
characteristics of the career or the job
in question now this is things like you
know if we find that we have autonomy if
we find that we like our work colleagues
if we find that we are learning stuff
and growing as people if we find that we
are playing to our strengths and if we
find that the job has no major negatives
like commuting more than 20 minutes is
apparently according to the research of
major negative and so making decisions
like that is important when it comes to
individual jobs but it's kind of hard to
predict what these things are going to
be if you think about a career more
broadly because most people's careers
are quite long they're quite like you
know circuitous they don't follow
necessarily a completely straight path
and so this idea of choosing a career
that lets you have fun is more about
like actually understanding what are the
elements that make a job or a specific
job more enjoyable and trying to
incorporate those into your work
whatever career you find yourself in
like inherently there are some careers
that are probably just inherently more
enjoyable than others or that you feel
are more of a personal fit for you more
on that later but broadly the way I
think of it is that in almost any career
if you've chosen it for the right
reasons you can find ways to have fun in
the specific job that you're in at
different times and even careers that
seem really fun a lot of people like oh
my God being a YouTuber seems really fun
and it is but I know a bunch of
YouTubers who actually are not enjoying
their life particularly because there's
all these other negative sides of for
example a career that seems like the
dream the second point to make here is
something that Cal Newport talks about
in his book is so good they can't ignore
you where he basically argues that this
whole Follow Your Passion or find a
thing that's fine or find a thing you
enjoy is a bit of a myth because to be
honest for most of us the things that we
enjoy like playing video games and
watching Netflix and reading fantasy
fiction books are very very very very
difficult to make a career out of and so
we shouldn't even try says Cal Newport
and I broadly agree instead what we
should do is we should find a career
that takes other boxes and that helps us
live the kind of lifestyle that we want
and then within that career we just
become really really good and the better
you become at a thing the more you feel
like you're playing to your strengths
the more career Capital you develop
which means you can cash in that career
capital for autonomy autonomy is a good
part of what makes a career or a job fun
and also there's just this idea that
like the better you are at a thing the
more likely you are to be actually be
enjoying doing the thing and the third
point to mention here on the I want a
career that helps me have fun angle is
that experimentation is a really
important part of this a mistake that a
lot of people make and I've seen this a
lot in medicine is people who are like
hey I want I I reckon being a doctor
would be quite fun I reckon I might
enjoy a career as a doctor why don't I
just apply to medical school
um and this is a bit of a weird thing
because medical school is really long
and you're sort of signing yourself up
to a very very very long process whereas
there's a lot of experimentation you can
do beforehand you could do work
experience for example for a few days or
a few weeks or a few days of probably
isn't enough but a few weeks to see what
is life as a doctor actually like and
you could speak to other doctors and be
like are they actually enjoying it when
it comes to going out to dinner at a
restaurant you know we spend maybe I
don't know 10 15 minutes deciding what
restaurant to go to and it might last
like two hours so what is that 10 of the
time that we spend at the restaurant we
are spending deciding what restaurant to
eat at And yet when it comes to making
decisions about our careers we spend a
lot less than 10 of our total work time
to actually make that decision and if we
calculate that total work time that's
like a 40 hour week for 50 weeks of the
year for about 40 Years of our life that
adds up to 80 000 hours and we
definitely don't spend 8 000 hours of
Our Lives actually making decisions
about what career to pursue even though
we probably should so the moral of the
story here is that if you want a career
that helps you have fun a don't try and
follow your passions but B try and do
some like low risk experimentation where
you're not signing yourself up to a
super super long career path to just
find out what it's like like and you're
actually taking some time in advance to
figure out does this seem like the sort
of thing that I could actually enjoy
part three I want a career that lets me
help people all right now we come to the
interesting stuff the helping of people
now if you ask most people they'll say
that yeah I wanna I wanna help people in
my career I'm gonna feel like I'm making
a difference I want to feel like I'm
having some kind of meaningful impact in
the job that I do and this makes perfect
sense like all of the research shows
that when we feel like we have purpose
when we feel like we're working towards
something that's bigger than us when we
feel like we are helping other people
that's just a good for the world
obviously but it's also good for our own
personal fulfillment and the
meaningfulness that we associate with
our work and with our life and there's
broadly three ways that I like to think
of this idea of helping people when it
comes to making decisions about my
career and that's firstly what is the
problem that you are working on like
what problem area is it secondly how
effective are you at working on it and
thirdly how much personal fit do you
have for that particular thing so let's
start with the problem area now the
thing to consider here is that how big
of a problem is it that you're solving
and how neglected is the problem that
you're solving things are a big problem
so for example climate change is a
really really big problem and it's great
to have a career in climate change but
it's not a particularly neglected
problem like these days there are
there's loads of funding and loads of
people into climate change thanks in
part to the work of a small number of
activists about like 20 30 years ago but
now the climate change movement actually
has a large amount of funding in it but
if we take a different example for
example it might sound a bit science
fictiony but most researchers say that
the risk from artificial intelligence
becoming kind of growing out of our
control is actually pretty major and a
bunch of experts who estimate this put
it at like a sort of 30 to 50
probability in the next 50 years or so
that artificial general intelligence
could become a serious threat to the
world a serious threat to humanity
whatever you want to call it so that's a
pretty big problem if it ends up
happening and even if there's only say a
10 chance of it happening or a one
percent chance of it happening if you
for example went on an airplane and the
pilot was like don't worry guys there's
only a 10 chance that it's going to
crash and kill everyone on board you
wouldn't feel particularly reassured by
that because I think 10 chance of dying
or even a one percent chance of dying at
plane crash is absolutely huge there's
no way I'm getting on that so we can
take this concept of expected value the
probabilities and sort of multiply them
out to basically see how big the problem
is but also artificial intelligence and
the risks associated with that is a very
very neglected problem have a look at
this graph for example it shows that as
of 2020 there were 40 000 people working
on making AI more powerful but like 300
people working on making AI more safe
this is a very neglected problem if you
are the 301st person working on a
problem you can probably have way more
impact on the thing than if you are the
40 000 and first person working on that
problem another example is the issue of
pandemic prevention uh people in the
effect of altruism movement have been
going on about pandemic prevention for
like years
um one of the chaps I interviewed on the
podcast will mccaskill written a
fantastic book called what we are the
future you should check it out he warned
like the Scottish government in like
2015 he was like you know they asked him
hey what's the biggest issue that the
world faces and it was like oh probably
pandemics and they were all just loved
him off they were like oh don't try and
scare us this is rabies pandemics is
never going to happen but obviously a
few years later we have seen that
pandemics have killed around a 21
million people and so clearly that's a
pretty big scale problem like working in
pandemic prevention could actually save
a large amount of lives but it's also
still a surprisingly neglected thing
like have a look at these graphs this
shows how much money is being spent on
counterterrorism compared to pandemic
prevention now obviously preventing
terrorism is an important thing but if
we compare it with the graph of how many
people actually die through terrorism
compared to through pandemics it's just
it's just kind of interesting like it's
somewhat counterintuitive the places
that we put our time money and effort
including what we do with our careers
compared to what the big problems in
life actually are and how neglected they
are and so this idea of neglectedness
comes into this idea around how do I
help people in the most in the maximum
possible way pick an area that's a bit
more neglected the next thing we want to
talk about is the idea of Effectiveness
how much good can you actually do in a
particular career now a problem might be
absolutely huge but if it's impossible
to solve the problem then you're trying
to solve that problem if it's completely
possible it's not actually going to be
particularly effective but also there's
this idea that when it comes to doing
good in our careers there are some
things that are just way better than
other things that we could be doing for
example again if you care about climate
change which we all should because it's
super important then you as an
individual campaigning for people to
stop stopping using plastic straws or
campaigning for individuals to start
recycling that's all well and good but
you actually could be doing like 100 or
a thousand times as much to reduce
carbon emissions if you instead for
example took fewer flights or if you
instead did an Elon Musk and promoted
the transition to renewable energy or if
instead you happen to be a policy maker
at a big company in like India or China
or the US that guzzles out large amounts
of CO2 and you happen to be that one
person that made them change their
policy to become more like climate
change friendly finally let's talk about
the idea of personal fit so it's all
well and good like be like yeah I want
to do this thing and I want to be
effective in this but really personal
fit is really important because if you
don't fundamentally enjoy working in the
area or if you personally are not very
good at working in the area then you're
not actually going to be that effective
like for example if I'm thinking what to
do with my career the fact that I have a
medical background means that I could
probably have a decent personal the
field of pandemic prevention or public
health stuff the fact that I do this
YouTube stuff means I could spread the
message about like effective altruism
and other stuff that we're talking about
in this video but it probably wouldn't
be a good personal fit for me to become
a researcher in artificial general
intelligence because that would just not
be very good at it and it's like like
even though that's an important thing or
climate change for example even though
those are important me trying to become
a researcher and like working on those
things is very unlikely to be personal
fit within me and so that's also an
important part of choosing your career
yes it's important to pick an area
that's important and pressing and
neglected and it's important to figure
out how you can be effective in it but
if you don't have that personal fit or
if you're just really bad at the thing
it's not actually going to be
particularly useful how do you know what
your personal fit is going to be well
partly comes down to the idea of
experimentation that we talked about
earlier in the having fun component but
also you can be generally way more
effective as an individual in any career
if you develop useful skills within that
career and if you develop compounding
skills that are useful regardless of
what kind of career you're in for
example knowing how to communicate
knowing how to public speak knowing how
to convince people of stuff is generally
a useful thing that will help you in
almost any career and you can become
more effective at those things to then
become more effective in your career
which will then a help you have more fun
but also help you help more people now
if any of the ideas in this video vibe
with you and you're looking for
actionable next steps you should
definitely check out the completely free
careers guide over at 80 000 hours who
are very kindly sponsoring this video 80
000 hours is genuinely an incredible
organization their offices are actually
just down the road from where I'm
filming this they're a non-profit and
their whole aim is to help people
recognize that you know 80 000 hours is
the length of the average career and
your decision about what you're going to
do with your career is one of the most
impactful decisions that you can
possibly make and so the entire job of
80 000 hours again it's a non-profit
they're not trying to make money all
they're trying to do is help people
figure out where is a career that they
can have personal impact in that they
can have personal fit and that they can
be effective at yeah everything on the
website is completely free they do not
charge a penny for anything they are
funded by open philanthropy and other
effective altruism funds so everything
is free you can stick your email address
in the link down below and they'll send
you their step-by-step careers guide
they also have a completely free
newsletter that you can join you just
enter your email address and then
they'll send you up to dates about what
are some potentially high impact jobs
that are around and other research
around what makes for a higher impact
and fulfilling and enjoyable career and
if you like this video you might like to
check out this video over here which is
my book summary of what we owe the
future by Will mccaskill who is a
philosopher a moral philosopher and
actually one of the co-founders of 80
000 hours and the effective altruism
movement and this is a video all about
the idea of long-termism and how
actually one of the ways we can have the
most ridiculously large impact with our
careers is focusing more on long-term
problems so check out that video over
there thank you so much for watching and
I'll see you hopefully in the next video
bye
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