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Week 8: Putting it into Practice
In this final section, we hope to help you apply the principles of effective altruism to your own life and career.
You probably won’t be ready to make a career change just yet - you might want to read and reflect more before you do that. So instead we’ll help you to think through some of your key uncertainties, generate tests for those uncertainties, and plan out how you can make sure you follow through on your intentions.
Required Materials
Two different attitudes that you can try on this session:
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Call to vigilance (5 mins.)
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Effective altruism as one of the most exciting causes in the world (3 mins.)
Career choice:
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Summary of 80,000 Hours’ key ideas (5 mins., but we encourage you to explore the rest of the site too)
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My current impressions on career choice for longtermists (40 mins., but we encourage you to skim and focus on the sections you’re most interested in)
Donations:
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GiveWell (5 mins. exploring the site)
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Giving What We Can (5. mins exploring the site)
Dealing with demandingness:
Exercise (see below)
Exercise (1.5 hours)
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For this exercise, you’ll begin to think about what these ideas might mean for your life. We don’t expect you to come up with a full plan now: you should probably continue to explore the ideas and think through various options. But we think that it can be useful to come up with some initial guesses at this stage, to structure your thinking.
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1. Based on the readings in previous sessions, which global problems do you think are most pressing and why? (Remember, experts are quite uncertain about this question!)
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2. What are your 3-5 biggest uncertainties about the above?
3. What could you do over the next few weeks to explore those uncertainties? (For example, do more reading, talk things through with a friend, or write an EA Forum post on your key uncertainties to get feedback.)
4. What aptitudes are you most interested in exploring or using next? You might want to think about what you’re unusually good at, what activities make you feel energized, and what skills seem especially useful for addressing the problems you listed above.
5. How could you begin to test out those aptitudes over the next few weeks?
6. While you’re figuring out your uncertainties, are there any actions to improve the world that you want to do now? (E.g. make a donation, or do things that make it more likely that you remember to apply these ideas in your life (like signing up to newsletters, committing to discuss your career with a friend, or making a task to apply for high-impact jobs/internships)).
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More to explore
Career advice:
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Evidence-based advice on how to be successful in any job - 80,000 Hours (45 mins.)
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A (free) weekly career planning course for positive impact - 80,000 Hours (8 weeks)
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Probably Good - a slightly different perspective on effective career choice.
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Ideas for high-impact careers beyond our priority paths - 80,000 Hours (20 mins.)
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Problem areas beyond 80,000 Hours' current priorities - EA Forum (20 mins.)
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Why founding charities is one of the highest impact things you can do (5 mins.)
Cross-cause career profiles:
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Founder of new projects tackling top problems career profile (10 mins.)
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Operations management in high-impact organizations career profile (10 mins.)
Donations:
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A guide to giving effectively (11 min article or 17 min video)
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Why make a giving pledge when you could just donate? (5 mins.)
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Media coverage about people giving effectively: ‘“I give away half to three-quarters of my income every year”’ - The Guardian and “New year’s resolutions: ‘I’m going to give away 10% of my income” - The Guardian - lifestyle pieces about Giving What We Can’s members.
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Written member profiles or videos of Giving What We Can members sharing their experiences and motivations
Volunteering:
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Where’s the best place to volunteer? - 80,000 Hours (3 mins.)
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Is skilled volunteering for you? - Animal Advocacy Careers (2 mins.)
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Paths to Impact for EA Working Professionals - High Impact Professionals (3 mins.)
Other:
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Take action - EA Forum
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Doing good together (40 mins.)
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Rowing, Steering, Anchoring, Equity, Mutiny - Holden Karnofsky explores some key different approaches to improving the world. (22 mins.)