Benjamin Todd

What's the magnitude of this problem?

How much does it affect people's lives today?

More crucially, how much of an effect will solving it have in the long run, including the very, very long run, if there are any such effects?

Two, neglected.

How many people and resources are already dedicated to tackling this problem?

How well allocated are the resources that are currently being dedicated to the problem?

Are there good reasons why markets or governments aren't already making progress on this problem?

And three, solvable.

How easy would it be to make progress on this problem?

Do interventions already exist to solve this problem effectively?

And how strong is the evidence behind them?

To find the problem you should work on, also consider personal fit.

Could you become motivated to work on this problem?

If you're later in your career, do you have the relevant expertise?

See how we apply this framework in the next chapter.

Chapter 5.

The World's Biggest Problems and Why They're Not What First Comes to Mind We've spent much of the last 10 plus years trying to answer a simple question.

What are the world's biggest and most neglected problems?

We wanted to have a positive impact with our careers, and so we set out to discover where our efforts would be most effective.

Our analysis suggests that choosing the right problem could increase your impact by over a hundred times, which would make it the most important driver of your impact.