What makes for a dream job? | Benjamin Todd
About this episode
The episode explores what truly makes a job fulfilling, challenging common career advice and presenting research-backed insights.
What actually makes a job fulfilling? It's not what most career advice tells you. "Follow your passion" sounds inspiring, but it's misleading — and the research backs that up. Drawing on hundreds of studies, we’ve identified five key ingredients of a dream job. High income barely moves the needle. Low stress is actually counterproductive. And the correlation between doing what you already love and actually enjoying your job? Surprisingly weak. What matters far more is getting good at something that genuinely helps other people. This narration is of Chapter 1 of Benjamin Todd’s new book — "a ridiculously in-depth guide to finding a fulfilling career that does good" — out on May 26! Order now to help us get more people into impactful careers (& access a private career Q&A marathon with the author). Get it from your local bookstore, or online at https://80k.info/career-guide Chapters: Rob's intro (00:00) What makes for a dream job? (01:55) Where we go wrong (02:30) What you should really aim for in a dream job (15:54) Don't follow your passion — instead, do what matters (23:44) How to put these ideas into practice (26:24) Audio editing: Milo McGuire Production: Elizabeth Cox…
More episodes of 80,000 Hours Podcast
- How AI could create the world’s biggest problems (article by Zershaaneh Qureshi)
- #245 – Rohin Shah on what it's really like to run AGI safety at Google DeepMind (and where I disagree with 'doomers')
- #244 – Benjamin Todd on how we’re updating our career advice for the strangest time in history
- Can AIs already start 'rogue deployments' inside AI companies? (Landmark new METR report)
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the 80,000 Hours Podcast podcast page.