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Part 8: How to find the right career for you
---
client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
---
Everyone says it’s important to find a job you’re good at, but no one tells you how.
The standard advice is to think about it for weeks and weeks until you “discover your talent.” To help, career advisers give you quizzes about your interests and preferences. Others recommend you go on a gap yah, reflect deeply, imagine different options, and try to figure out what truly motivates you.
But as we saw in an earlier article, becoming really good at most things takes decades of practice. So to a large degree, your abilities are built rather than “discovered.” Darwin, Lincoln, and Oprah all failed early in their careers, then went on to completely dominate their fields. Albert Einstein’s 1895 schoolmaster’s report reads, “He will never amount to anything.”
Asking “What am I good at?” needlessly narrows your options. It’s better to ask: “What could I become good at?”
That aside, the bigger problem is that these methods aren’t reliable. Plenty of research shows that while it’s possible to predict what you’ll be good at ahead of time, it’s difficult. Just “going with your gut” is particularly unreliable, and it turns out career tests don’t work very well either.
Instead, you should be prepared to think like a scientist — learn about and try out your options, looking outwards rather than inwards. Here we’ll explain why and how.
Source:
https://80000hours.org/career-guide/personal-fit/
Narrated for 80,000 Hours by Perrin Walker of TYPE III AUDIO.
Share feedback on this narration.
View all episodes
By TYPE III AUDIO---
client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
---
Everyone says it’s important to find a job you’re good at, but no one tells you how.
The standard advice is to think about it for weeks and weeks until you “discover your talent.” To help, career advisers give you quizzes about your interests and preferences. Others recommend you go on a gap yah, reflect deeply, imagine different options, and try to figure out what truly motivates you.
But as we saw in an earlier article, becoming really good at most things takes decades of practice. So to a large degree, your abilities are built rather than “discovered.” Darwin, Lincoln, and Oprah all failed early in their careers, then went on to completely dominate their fields. Albert Einstein’s 1895 schoolmaster’s report reads, “He will never amount to anything.”
Asking “What am I good at?” needlessly narrows your options. It’s better to ask: “What could I become good at?”
That aside, the bigger problem is that these methods aren’t reliable. Plenty of research shows that while it’s possible to predict what you’ll be good at ahead of time, it’s difficult. Just “going with your gut” is particularly unreliable, and it turns out career tests don’t work very well either.
Instead, you should be prepared to think like a scientist — learn about and try out your options, looking outwards rather than inwards. Here we’ll explain why and how.
Source:
https://80000hours.org/career-guide/personal-fit/
Narrated for 80,000 Hours by Perrin Walker of TYPE III AUDIO.
Share feedback on this narration.