Benjamin Todd
speaker
4,140 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2023
last heard 28 May
Benjamin Todd’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
In a classic study, people rated a colonoscopy as less painful if it ended less painfully, even if the pain lasted longer.
As Dan Gilbert, one of the world's leading experts on happiness, puts it, the fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.
This means we can't simply trust our intuitions when trying to figure out what will satisfy us most.
We need a more systematic way of working out which job is best.
What might a more systematic approach look like?
It's tempting to assume that your dream job will meet two supposedly appealing criteria, that it'll be easy and well-paid.
This is implicit in a lot of mainstream career advice.
CareerCast provides one of the leading career rankings in the US.
The first four criteria they use to rank careers are, is it unstressful?
Is there good work-life balance?
Is there high job security?
Is it highly paid?
Essentially, less demanding, secure, high-paid jobs are rated more highly.
Based on these criteria, the number one job turned out to be actuary.
That is, someone who uses statistics to measure and manage risks in the insurance industry.
This is the same answer they gave back in 2015 when I first wrote about their list, and it's been close to the top ever since.
Would we all be happier if we retrained as actuaries?
It's true that actuaries are more satisfied with their job than average, but they're not among the most satisfied.
And only 36% say their work is meaningful.
This shows that the factors used by career cast don't capture everything.
Showing 61–80 of 4,140 · page 4 of 207
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