Answer: Three decades of research have shown that to have a fulfilling career you should do work you’re good at and that helps others. Don’t look for a high-paid, easy job and don’t expect to “follow your passion” either. Instead, look for these five key ingredients of a dream job:

Answer: Many common ways of doing good, such as becoming a doctor, have less impact than you might first think. Meanwhile, less conventional options can save thousands or even millions of lives. What separates them? Find out why your choice of career is so important:

Answer: With the right approach, you can make a huge difference in the lives of others without changing careers or even making a major sacrifice. You can do this by donating effectively, doing political advocacy, or being a multiplier to help effective people do more. Learn three evidence-backed ways to have a real impact in any job:

Answer: To maximise your impact, don’t focus on the issues everyone is talking about. Look for a problem that is big in scale, neglected, and has avenues for progress. Discover how to compare world problems:

Answer: People in high-income countries who want to do good often turn to things like health, education, or social issues where they live. But global poverty is a far bigger and more solvable problem, and issues like factory farming, pandemics, and risks from AI are even bigger and more neglected still. Read our framework for deciding which problems are the most urgent:

Answer: When we think about careers that do good, we tend to think about professions like medicine, teaching, or working for a charity. But these are not always the highest-impact options. Think broadly about how you can contribute, including research, taking a high-paying job to donate effectively, communicating ideas, organisation-building, or working in government and policy:

Answer: Three common career mistakes include failing to invest in yourself by building career capital, not asking how to (actually) advance most efficiently, and waiting too long to have an impact. Find out more about how to best invest in your career:

Answer: The most valuable skills are those that are needed in impactful jobs, quick to learn relative to their value, transferable, and likely to increase in value due to AI. The latter means skills that are hard to automate, are needed for AI deployment, produce things people want more of, and are difficult for others to learn quickly. Explore our list of most valuable skills:

Answer: Look for jobs that progress you rapidly towards the most impactful careers while providing a good environment for rapid learning. Examples include working at smaller, high-performing, growing organisations; graduate studies in carefully chosen subjects; established routes into policy careers; crash courses in concrete, verifiable skills that employers actually value; and doing anything that might be impressive or impactful in the coming years. Learn the five categories of jobs that best advance your career:

Answer: Don’t expect to figure out what you’re best at right away, especially through endless introspection, ‘going with your gut,’ or career tests. Instead, think like a scientist: make best guesses, list your key uncertainties, then investigate those uncertainties by doing research and cheap tests. Learn how to find a career that fits:

Answer: Here are four strategies to help you strike the right balance between exploration and execution. Aim higher than you would otherwise, especially if you have a longer time horizon. If really uncertain, plan to try several paths sequentially. Consider trying a wildcard to avoid getting stuck in a ‘local optimum.’ And if you’re in doubt about whether you’re on the right path, quit. Learn the four research-backed strategies for deciding when to commit:

Answer: Forget lists of pros and cons. Decades of research have shown that the four most important ways to make better decisions are to (1) generate more options, (2) structure your decision by rating 3–7 relevant factors, (3) identify key uncertainties and try to resolve them, and (4) check your gut — if you feel uneasy, figure out why. Learn how to escape paralysis and make career decisions:

Answer: Rather than trying to pinpoint the single best option for the rest of your life, accept that your plan will change. Instead of “keeping your options open,” think about your career in stages: exploring, building career capital, and deploying it to tackle world problems. Have a vision, but focus most of your effort on taking the best next step. Organise your options into a plan A and plan B, but also an acceptable plan Z in case it all goes wrong. Find out how to make a career plan:

Answer: Getting a job is a sales process with three stages: generating leads, convincing employers, and negotiating offers. Don’t just send out your CV in response to job listings. Get leads through your connections and prove you can do the work (by doing some). Treat your search like a 9–5 and use every technique you can to stay motivated. See our summary of the best advice on getting the job you want:

Answer: Avoid networking events and joining random groups on social media. Instead, meet people you like, help them out, and build genuine relationships. Do five-minute favours, run a feed about your industry on social, or hold small mixer events. Join a community of people working in the same area as you and you’ll gain hundreds of connections at once. Learn how to network towards a more fulfilling career:

What will you wish you’d done with your life, looking back? Plus a one-minute summary of the entire guide.

Answer: A lot of self-help advice is offered without data to back it up, but there are plenty of evidence-based ways anyone can become more productive, impactful, and happy in any career. Don’t neglect the basics like your mental and physical health. Consider “meta” skills that can make you more effective at everything else, like learning how to learn, think, improve your social skills, and set goals. Discover 15 evidence-based ways to be more successful: