Effective Altruism Career Guidebook

Download your copy of 80,000 Hours

And buy on Amazon.

Find a fulfilling career that tackles the world's most pressing problems, using this guide based on five years of research alongside academics at Oxford. 

You have about 80,000 hours in your career: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. This means your choice of career is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. Make the right choices, and you can help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, as well as have a more rewarding, interesting life. For such an important decision, however, there’s surprisingly little good advice out there. 

Most career advice focuses on things like how to write a CV, and much of the rest is just (misleading) platitudes like “follow your passion”. Most people we speak to don’t even use career advice – they just speak to friends and try to figure it out for themselves. 

When it comes to helping others with your career, the advice usually assumes you need to work as a teacher, doctor, charity worker, and so on, even though these paths might not be a good fit for you, and were not what the highest-impact people in history did. 

This guide is based on five years of research conducted alongside academics at the University of Oxford. It aims to help you find a career you enjoy, you’re good at, and that tackles the world’s most pressing problems. 

It covers topics like: 

1. What makes for a dream job, and why “follow your passion” can be misleading. 
2. Why the most effective ways to make a difference aren’t always the obvious ones like working at a charity, or becoming a doctor. 
3. How to compare global problems, like climate change and education, in terms of their scale and urgency. 
4. How to discover and develop your strengths.

It’s also full of practical tips and tools. At the end, you'll have a plan to use your career in a way that's fulfilling and does good.

What people are saying 

“Based on evidence and good sense, not platitudes” 
- Steven Pinker, New York Times bestselling author Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. 

“This incredible group is helping people have a greater social impact with their careers.” 
- Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

“Every college grad should read this” 
- Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why. 

Read more online 

This book is based on the free guide you can find on the 80,000 Hours website, where you can find many more articles and our most up-to-date content. All profits from the book are used to fund 80,000 Hours, expanding our research and enabling us to reach more people. 

About the authors 

80,000 Hours is an independent non-profit founded in Oxford in 2011. It performs research into career choice, and provides online and in-person advice. 

Benjamin Todd is the CEO and co-founder of 80,000 Hours. He grew the organization from a student society at Oxford to a non-profit that's raised $1.3m in donations, and has 100,000 monthly readers. He has a Master’s degree in Physics and Philosophy from Oxford; has published in climate physics; and speaks Chinese, badly. 

Ben is advised by the rest of the 80,000 Hours team, including Professor Will MacAskill, author of Doing Good Better, co-founder of the Effective Altruism movement, and the youngest tenured professor of philosophy in the world.

On Philosophical Counseling

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Would you ditch your therapist for a “philosophical counselor”?

http://qz.com/804534/is-philosophical-counseling-the-new-therapy/

Instead of going to traditional psychotherapists for advice and support, growing numbers of people are turning to philosophical counselors for particularly wise guidance. These counselors work much like traditional psychotherapists. But instead of offering solutions based solely on their understanding of mental health or psychology, philosophical counselors offer solutions and guidance drawn from the writings of great thinkers.

Philosophy and Feelings

Philosophy prizes reason and arguments, clear and critical thinking.

What, then, does philosophy say about emotions, about feelings?

Let's think, briefly, about feelings. 

First, "I just feel this way . ." is rarely a good reason to believe anything. Emotions can lead us astray and sometimes they do. Emotions can contribute to poor reasoning and to mistaken beliefs. If someone believes something merely on the basis of their emotions, their belief is unlikely to be true. Anger, for example, can distort clear thinking and cause a disregard for fact-finding. So, just because someone feels a certain way about a topic, that doesn't mean that their thoughts about that topic are correct or that we should accept that thought. 

On the other hand, emotions can sometimes point to the truth of the matter. For example, the feelings of empathy and sadness about what happened to someone can serve as some indication that that individual was treated wrongly. And those emotions can be stifled by a dismissive thought concerning whoever did the harm, that "They had to do that," "They had no choice," "There was no other way." Insofar as thoughts and claims like these are often false, they can distort the positive influence of the emotion: the emotion was 'telling us' that something is wrong, and a thought - although a false thought - undercut that, which is bad. 

Thoughts, however, can correct mistaken emotions. Someone might, for example, see an action that they thought brought about intense suffering, and emotionally respond accordingly to that perceived suffering. If reason reveals that, contrary to initial appearances, there really was no suffering, then reason can correct that emotion.

In sum, concerning feelings there are:

• Feelings that are not supported by good reasons, i.e., feelings supported by beliefs that are false or unreasonable or contrary to the evidence. Here, the feelings are typically bad to have. 

• Feelings that are supported by good reasons, viz. true or reasonable beliefs. Here, someone isn't believing on the basis of "just their feelings," since there are, or could be, reasons supporting those feelings. This is typically fine, and often good, insofar as we really should have feelings and emotional responses to good and bad actions and events. 

And there are beliefs, held with good reason and without, and then with or without various emotions. What to say about these seems to very much depend on the particular belief, and particular feeling, and what, if anything, results from the combination: e.g., unreasonable beliefs, held in anger, can often lead people to feel and act badly. 

We are not Mr. Spock (not that there would be anything wrong with that? Or would there be?) and so feelings are appropriate for us to have. But this seems to be the case when, and only when, they can be supported by reasons also.

At least I think that's how I feel. (Sad trombone!). 

Success Poster

Available here in PDF.

A Logic-Based Therapy Training Event

Any philosophers interested in psychotherapy and mental health issues, especially those near Chicago, should check out this upcoming event, which should be quite good: http://npcassoc.org/training/lbt-workshops/

Career Counseling Assignment

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.

Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman

A few years ago I developed an assignment called "Calling and Careers" that was intended to help students start to find their "calling." That assignment is posted here, although the formatting is a bit off. I'd be curious to learn of any other assignments like this that anyone else has incorporated into their courses.

Two Forthcoming Books

Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy, Editors: Elliot D. Cohen and Samuel Zinaich, Jr.

Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Edited by KWM Fulford, Martin Davies, Richard Gipps, George Graham, John Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini, and Tim Thornton