Making A Difference- 80,000 Hours

What more can we do to make a difference in others’ lives? The website 80,000 Hours is an incredible resource for helping you discover how to make a difference with your career. Let’s say your career lasts 40 years, and you work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. This amounts to a whopping total of 80,000 hours (Todd & Macaskill, n.d. Start here). If you have this many hours in your career, you have a wealth of opportunities to use these hours to contribute to others.

Jobs That Allow For Big Contributions

You might be wondering if certain career types provide you with more contribution opportunities. According to 80,000 Hours, this is true in some ways (Todd, 2022). Jobs in government policy may be a good option because you can have a positive influence over large groups of people. Likewise, careers in the field of communication can lead to successful contributions. Ideas in this sphere include journalism or creating documentaries. Social media can be a viable platform as well for contribution (Todd, 2022).  

*A quick note on exploring jobs that make a difference—If you are interested, you can visit the  job board that 80,000 Hours (2023) has created. The jobs in this system are inspired by what 80,000 hours calls “the world’s most pressing problems”. In fact, you can filter your job search by selecting certain problems you are interested in helping with, such as global health and development or climate change.

Less Direct (But Still Powerful) Contribution Routes

Perhaps you have a career that doesn’t scream “My job helps everyone around me!” There are still methods in which you can make meaningful contributions (Todd, 2022). One of these methods is mobilization. Essentially, mobilizing in the context of careers means coming across a job that would lead to good change, and, instead of pursuing that job, giving someone you know the opportunity to go for it, knowing that, compared to you, they may match the job even more perfectly. Although you won’t be making the direct changes this job offers, these changes are still effected, because you took the initiative to mobilize someone else. If you do this, you are a multiplier: someone who engages others in acts of contribution (Todd, 2022).

Another way to use your career indirectly to make good change is by donating some of your income (Todd, 2022). Software engineers, accountants, and others who do not have nonprofit careers can still set aside a portion of income to give away, possibly allowing those who are in the nonprofit world to keep salaries.