Published 2026-05-31
Tags: #book-notes
To find a fulfilling career, get good at skills that help others. Passion will then follow, not the other way around. The book then has many superb resources on decision making, being a more effective human being, and finding a job. I’ll definitely be referring to this book’s checklist when I have to find a job again someday.
In the meantime though, here is an excerpt that I loved on job searching.
Your first job search may be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done . You may have never been rejected thirty times in a row before . It can involve months of work . And you may have to do most of it alone . It can make online dating look easy . This means you’ll need to throw every motivational technique out there at it . The most useful is to pair up with someone else who’s job - hunting .
Here is the book link. More quotes below.
Job search checklist. Revisit this making career decisions page when I want to find a job again.
Effectiveness improvements. So many good references from the How to be successful post! E.g. I added The social skills guidebook to my reading backlog.
Our slogan for a fulfilling career is : get good at something that helps others .
Why ‘get good’ comes first. We open with ‘ get good ‘ because once you get good at something that others value , you’ll not only have a sense of competence , you’ll also have more career opportunities in general , giving you a better chance of securing engaging work , supportive colleagues and your other basic conditions .
Get good, passion follows. Instead of starting from your pre - existing interests , research suggests satisfaction comes from mastering valuable skills and using them to do engaging , meaningful work . In short , get good at something that helps others , and passion will follow .
Helping defined broadly. What ‘ helping people ‘ consists of is left intentionally broad . We take it to include anything that enables people to live happier , healthier , more fulfilling lives , which are more in line with their wishes , free from avoidable suffering , and filled with rich relationships , understanding , beauty , excitement , and so on .
Harder than online dating. Your first job search may be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done . You may have never been rejected thirty times in a row before . It can involve months of work . And you may have to do most of it alone . It can make online dating look easy . This means you’ll need to throw every motivational technique out there at it . The most useful is to pair up with someone else who’s job - hunting .
Treat it like a job. Treat it like a job . … Find somewhere to serve as your ‘ office ‘ . Turn up at 9 a.m . and work until 5 p.m . … As with a real job , set yourself specific targets and deadlines , like speaking to five people each week until you have an offer .
See the 5 qualities here.
Be better than your replacement. if you become a doctor , you’ll likely be taking the place of someone else who would have gone to medical school . This means you’re probably not even increasing the number of doctors available to patients , because the number of medical students won’t change . Instead , your impact mainly comes from increasing the average skill level of people who become doctors – assuming you are more proficient at the job than the person who would have been accepted otherwise .
Community portfolio. What matters is that more good gets done – not that you do it with your own hands . … Rather than always trying to maximize your impact as an individual – assuming that what everyone else does is fixed – if you’re part of a community , think about what portfolio of opportunities would be best for the community to take , and which gaps you’re best placed to fill relative to others .
Donating beats personal cuts. By contrast , donating 10 % of a $ 70,000 salary to purchase carbon credits – which cost under $ 100 per tonne in the EU and create a legal obligation for companies to emit less – would reduce emissions by 70 tonnes per year , about seven times as much as entirely eliminating your personal emissions .
Under-talked problems. The problems your friends have been talking about lately are likely to be the problems that are already receiving the most attention . Instead , the most pressing problems – those where you can have the greatest impact – are probably in areas you’ve never considered .
The prestige test. A good test is to imagine you can never tell anyone you’ve done the job . Would you still want to do it ? If not , you’re probably pursuing it for prestige , rather than the skills you will actually learn .
What could I become good at? Asking , ‘ What am I good at ? ‘ needlessly narrows your options . Better to ask , ‘ What could I become good at ? ‘
Think like a scientist. think like a scientist : begin with a hypothesis , then test out your options , looking outwards rather than inwards . In other words , make contact with the world , rather than your own preferences and intuitions .
Love over abstract usefulness. It’s usually better to do a subject you love that’s a bit less generally useful than to struggle through an option that seems best in abstract .
PhDs ~ STDs. PhD programmes can be demoralizing . A survey in Nature found 41 % of graduate students had ‘ moderate to severe ‘ anxiety , and 39 % had moderate to severe depression , compared to 6 % of the general public . According to standard DALY weightings , in terms of years of health lost , this makes graduate school a public health hazard comparable to all STDs combined .
Do impressive work. the best career capital doesn’t come from either of these . It comes from doing impressive work . Doing impressive work stretches you , builds your reputation , and allows you to make connections with other high achievers . In fact , extreme enough success in almost any field can lead to connections , fame , influence and wealth that can be directed towards impactful aims in the future . If there’s a field – or even a hobby – where you think you have a chance of high achievement , put it in your shortlist of options for career capital , even if it’s not immediately related to doing good .
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