#587 80,000 hours with Benjamin Todd (A Career Well Spent Series)

**Benjamin Todd** (0:00)
The things that people are passionate about when young, it tends to be the same as what everyone else is passionate about, and you're getting led into the most competitive areas, where it's then harder to get all the other things that matter for being satisfied.

**Helen Tupper** (0:12)
We are going to be talking about your book, 80,000 Hours, and probably not just the book, but also the work that has gone into it.

**Benjamin Todd** (0:20)
You could be super passionate about art, but if you have a terrible boss, you're going to end up pretty miserable even if it's in your dream field.
Passion follows from mastering valuable skills, because then you get that sense of competence. You also get the bargaining power to get all the other aspects of a fulfilling career that you want. The kind of motto I suggest instead is do what matters, or build valuable skills and apply them to meaningful problems.

**Helen Tupper** (0:43)
What are the problems in the world that you choose to work in, and how can you use your time to solve them?
Hi, I'm Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast, and you are listening to the last episode of our summer series, where we decided to focus on what does it mean to have a career well spent. Sarah and I thought, whilst we've got our reflections, we'd rather get some insights from some experts. So over the month, we've been talking to four different people to get some insights on purpose, longevity, building the right relationships, spending your time on the right things. And today's conversation, which is going to be about, how do we make sure that we are doing the work that matters most to us? What does it mean to do good work? And for that conversation, you're going to hear me in discussion with Benjamin Todd, the author and founder of 80,000 Hours. And Benjamin's work is really about asking ourselves, what does it mean to have fulfilling work? What are some of the questions we should be asking? What are some of the reflections we should have in terms of where we're spending our time and what we're working on? And where can we all make a bigger difference? I think this is a brilliant end to the series. I would love your reflections on today's conversation and on the things that you've heard over the series. Overall, please send them our way. We're just Helen and Sarah at squigglycareers.com. But for now, let's get started with my conversation with Benjamin.
So welcome, Benjamin, to the podcast, where we are going to be talking about your book, 80,000 Hours, and probably not just the book, but also the work that has gone into it, that has led to the book and the insights and how they connect to Squiggly Careers.

**Benjamin Todd** (2:32)
Thanks. Yeah, great to be here.

**Helen Tupper** (2:34)
So before we get into 80,000 Hours, how we make a difference with our time, how it connects to Squiggly Careers, all that stuff, can you just give us a bit of an overview of your Squiggly Careers so far and how it's led to the book?

**Benjamin Todd** (2:46)
Yeah, sure. I mean, my career was maybe wasn't that squiggly in that I was a student at Oxford and I was wondering what to do with my own life. And yeah, I mean, the longer story as I was involved with this community called Giving What We Can, which is a group of people who all pledge to give 10% of their income to life, to charity, whichever charities they think are most effective.
And so we were all there really interested in how can we make a difference more effectively. And we just realized these ideas applied to our time as well as our money. And I ended up meeting Will McCaskill, who was then a philosophy PhD student as well. And he was also asking a lot of the same questions. So we, yeah, we kind of, we didn't really feel like anyone else was asking the questions quite in the same way that motivated us. So we started doing our own research into which careers we could make the biggest difference in. And yeah, we gave a talk in Oxford and I think about 25 people came and then about five of them ended up like totally changing their life plans after that. And they said we should start an organization based on the ideas. So I actually ended up working full time straight after I graduated and then was CEO of the organization for 10 years.
So I just kind of did that one thing. And then yeah, after that, then I've now I've been kind of, I handed over that role in 2021 or 2022 And now after that, I've had more of like a portfolio kind of thing doing writing and some consulting and research and things like that.