Benjamin Todd

Power corrupts is a cliché for a good reason.

This might be hard to imagine if you're at the start of your career, but if you end up in a powerful position in government, running a large organisation, with a degree of fame, or with lots of money…

You may face situations where acting ethically will pose a risk of losing the large influence you have, like a politician lying to stay in office.

This can be true even if you didn't originally seek power for your own benefit.

You may also face difficult ethical trade-offs, such as taking roles you think involve an element of harm in order to achieve a potentially greater positive impact.

And typically the more influence you have, the harder it will be for people to disagree with you, because they'll fear the consequences, so you'll become less able to make good decisions just at the point you most need to.

Working on problems that are unusually important and neglected also further raises the stakes.

Because if you slip up, you've set back a more important issue, and the fact that few other people are working on the issue magnifies your potential for harm.

One key point is that we don't generally recommend taking jobs or actions you think are harmful for the greater good.

We talked about that in the section on earning to give above, but it can come up with whatever approach you choose to take.

It's also one reason why we see building good character as an important part of career capital, which is coming up in the next chapter.

What's the right approach for you?

We've now seen that by thinking broadly, considering earning to give, communication, research, government and policy, and organisation building, there are many ways to make a big contribution to solving pressing problems.

If you want to choose between these broad categories, how might you approach it?

What's most crucial is your degree of fit.

Any of these categories can be an impactful career if you're good at it.

Throughout this chapter, there is a vital general principle to bear in mind.

The most successful people in a field have far more impact than the typical person.

For instance, a landmark study of expert performers found A small percentage of the workers in any given domain is responsible for the bulk of the work.

Generally, the top 10% of the most prolific elite can be credited with around 50% of all contributions, whereas the bottom 50% of the least productive workers can claim only 15% of the total work, and the most productive contributor is usually around 100 times more prolific than the least.