> Todd, Benjamin. 'How to Have a Meaningful Career with a Large Social Impact'. _80,000 Hours_, [https://80000hours.org/career-guide/introduction/](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/introduction/). Accessed 9 Apr. 2025. # How to Have a Meaningful Career with a Large Social Impact - On average, you'll spend 80,000 hours working in your career. Choose wisely. - In areas where lots of people work, you might have less of an impact. In other words, to have a bigger impact, you might want to seek fields where few people work. # 1. What Makes for a Dream Job? - **==Look for work you're good at, that helps others, and with supportive conditions.==** - **We're not good at predicting what will make us happy.** - Money makes you happy, but only a little. And above $90,000 per year, the correlation becomes almost nonexistent. - Stress is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that you have control over your work conditions and social support. - Compromise between anxiety and boredom, similar to the flow state (see [[@riandorisHowUnlockInsane2023|The four pillars of flow state]]). - Six ingredients to look for: 1. **Work that's engaging**: where you have freedom, clear and varied tasks, and feedback, similarly to [[@veritasiumThingsItTakes2022|Deliberate practice]]; 2. **Work that helps others**; 3. **Work you're good at**; 4. **Work with supportive colleagues**; 5. **Work that doesn't have major negatives** (e.g. a long commute, long hours, unfair pay, job insecurity); 6. **Work that fits with the rest of your life**: you don't have to get all those ingredients from your job alone. - "Follow your passion" can be misleading advice. You can _become_ passionate in a new job. - **Rather than following your passion, ==get good at something helps others==.** - You could become more successful and it's the right thing to do. # 2. How much difference can one person make?