Benjamin Todd

What you've studied so far has little bearing on what you might do in the future.

Back in Chapter 1, we saw that an enjoyable and fulfilling job helps others, is something you're good at, and has the right supportive conditions, for example, engaging work, supportive colleagues, and fit with the rest of your life.

We've now also seen that the jobs that most help others, one, are focused on the most pressing problems, those that are big in scale, neglected, and solvable, as we covered in chapter four.

Two, take an approach that might let you make a big contribution, such as research, communication, earning to give, government and policy, and building organizations.

That's what we covered in this chapter.

And three, provide you with the chance to excel.

We'll explain how to work out where you have the best personal fit later on.

Should you sacrifice to do more good?

People often ask us whether they should sacrifice what they enjoy in order to have a greater impact.

But as we discussed above, doing good involves less sacrifice than it first seems.

A personally satisfying job involves helping others because that's fulfilling.

And a high-impact job will also need to be personally satisfying.

Because if you don't like your job, you probably won't be good at it and you'll burn out.

So there's a lot of overlap.

We've also seen there are lots of ways to have a big impact, and some of these probably won't involve much sacrifice.

Rather than making sacrifices, the key thing to focus on is finding these highly effective ways to help.

That's not to say there's no trade-off at all.

It's unlikely that the very best career for you personally is also the one that most benefits the world.

Ultimately, you'll have to make a value judgment about how to weigh helping others against your own interests.

But fortunately, the trade-off is less than it first seems.