You have about 80,000 working hours in your career: 40 years x 50 weeks x 40 hours. With so many hours dedicated to work, your choice of career could determine whether you can make a positive impact with your life. Choice of career is not only your best opportunity to make an impact with your life, but also probably the biggest ethical decision you will ever make.
The website, 80000hours.org helps you work out how you can best use your 80,000 hours to help others, and to make an impact with your career. The site provides research and support to help students and graduates switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most pressing problems, and interestingly, this is provided free of any charge or obligation.
The online guides cover several key ideas that are often not covered by career development counseling provided in schools and colleges. Among the ideas that the site provides guidance on are: How to compare careers in terms of impact; which global problems are most pressing; ideas for new high-impact career paths; and how to make a career plan.
The website’s section on key ideas to make an impact, begins by defining impact and then goes on to describe the four key drivers of impact, which can be used to compare your options in terms of the difference they make. The section concludes with an introduction to the most important elements of career strategy.
There are about 20 key articles, which can be read over a weekend. At the end you will have covered everything you need to know to start making a new career plan. There are also optional secondary articles, a podcast interview, and a two-minute summary.
The website is the brainchild of two Oxford graduates, Ben and Will, who as fresh graduates in 2011 were wondering what to do with their own careers. Back then, there was not much practical advice on career choices around, and the two decided to start doing their own research. The enthusiastic response they received from the audience to their initial lecture on the subject led them to develop 80000hours.org
Many people are not in a position to spend time on social impact, let alone make it a large focus, and that this is just fine, according to the website. If you are not able to change your career right now, you can still have a big impact without changing your job, through advocacy, political engagement and donations.
If all this might sound like a lot of work, remember if you can increase the impact of your career by just 1 percent, it would be worth spending up to 800 hours learning how to do that. And the website believes it can increase your impact by much more, and in much less time.
As of June 2022, the site has had millions of readers and over 200,000 subscribers to their newsletter. Thousands of people who have engaged with the site, have written positive reviews on how the site helped them to significantly change their career plans and how they expect to have a larger social impact as a result.
The ultimate aim of 80, 000 Hours is to spark a global conversation about how people can best use their careers to help the world, to inspire more people to take this path, and to get the next generation of leaders tackling the world’s biggest and most neglected problems.
So what are you waiting for? Welcome and dive right into 80,000hours.org.
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