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Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear war
Great power conflict
Climate change
Capacity building
Building effective altruism
Global priorities research
Improving decision making
Other promising areas
Civilisation resilience
Artificial sentience
Promoting positive values
Space governance
Risks of stable totalitarianism
Factory farming
Easily preventable or treatable illness
Wild animal suffering
See all problem profiles →
See all our career reviews →
Top skill sets for tackling global problems
Political and bureaucratic skills
Organisation-building
Research
Communicating ideas
Programming
Experience with China
Specialist knowledge relevant to a top problem
Our list of top high-impact career paths
AI safety technical research and engineering
AI governance and coordination
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Information security in high-impact areas
Expert in AI hardware
Helping build the effective altruism community
China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
Forecasting research and implementation
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
Journalism
See more →
How to build great career capital
See our top recommendations →
See all career reviews →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Foundations
A definition of impact
Longtermism
Harmful jobs
Global priorities
Problem selection
Existential risks
Top problems list
Contribution
How to think about your contribution
Effective solutions
List of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Gut instinct
Differences in productivity
Comparative advantage
Strategy
Ambition
Coordination
Exploration
Impact and satisfaction
Accidental harm
Read the full series →
In-depth career planning series
How to figure out what matters to you
Which problems do you think are most pressing?
How to generate longer-term paths
Clarifying your strategic focus
How to figure out your next step
Planning to adapt
How to investigate your uncertainties
Putting your plan into action
Summary of planning series
See the full series →
Other career planning tools
Career guide planning template
Annual career check-up
Make good career decisions
Make an immediate decision
Improve your decision-making skills
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Career capital
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
Advocacy
Existential risk
Top-recommended careers
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
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Author archive: Huon Porteous

2023

July

Why many people underrate investigating the problem they work on
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80,000 Hours is an Effective Ventures project. Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) (EV UK) is a charity in England and Wales (with registered charity number 1149828, registered company number 07962181, and is also a Netherlands registered tax-deductible entity ANBI 825776867). Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. (EV US) is a section 501(c)(3) organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398). EV UK and EV US are separate charities that collaborate closely under the “Effective Ventures” name.

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