80,000 Hours

How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good

By: Benjamin Todd

Narrated by: Benjamin Todd

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A ridiculously in-depth guide to finding a fulfilling, AI-proof career

"This career guide is among the most thoughtful and grounded I've seen."—Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Slow Productivity

You have about 80,000 hours in your career: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. That makes it the most important decision you’ll ever make.

Choose well, and you can have a more rewarding, interesting life, and also help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. Choose poorly, and you could waste decades.

So what should you do? Most advice is based on no research, offering only misleading platitudes like “follow your passion.” It's surprisingly out-of-date, focusing on traditional paths rather than those most likely to thrive in an age of AI.

Benjamin Todd is the founder of 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit that has spent over fifteen years researching how to have a fulfilling and impactful career that still pays the bills. In this book, he introduces a tried-and-tested toolkit that has already helped thousands of people change their career paths. It covers:

· What really makes for a dream job, and why it probably doesn't involve “following your passion”
· How to have a positive impact in your career, and why doing so might involve focusing on AI as much as on climate change
· Which roles are likely to be automated, and how to ensure yours isn't among them

Whether you're just starting out, looking to switch paths, or want to have a bigger impact in your current career, it’s full of practical tips and tools that can help. You’ll come away with a plan to use your 80,000 hours in a way that’s rewarding, future-proof, and makes a difference.

Critic reviews

“This career guide is among the most thoughtful and grounded I’ve seen.”—Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Slow Productivity

“Perhaps no one has thought harder about how to spend your working life than Benjamin Todd of 80,000 Hours. This book is a lively, readable, thorough guide to one of life’s most consequential decisions.”—Brian Christian, bestselling author of Algorithms to Live By

“Every college grad should read this.”—Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why

“Excellent. 80,000 Hours is the most informative book you can read if you’re stuck trying to make one of life’s most important decisions. If this had been published a decade earlier, it’d have saved me many restless nights.”—Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World

“A ridiculously in-depth guide about how to find that perfect career for you.”—Ali Abdaal, YouTuber, ex-doctor, and productivity entrepreneur

“If you’re worried about wasting your life, read this book.”—Rutger Bregman, author of Humankind

“The best book ever written about how to have a fulfilling and impactful career.”—Liv Boeree, poker champion and science communicator

“This will resonate with those seeking to contribute to the greater good.”—Publishers Weekly

Terrible Narration

Narration will put you to sleep while driving when it isn’t pissing you off because you cant understand what he’s saying. The combination of low legibility and very generic sounding info for the first parts of the book trick your brain into developing a habit of ignoring it. So then you just have this overly soft overly-nice-guy voice playing like the kind of background music you never listen to in your car because it’s likely to put you to sleep and kill someone.

JUST BECAUSE YOU WROTE THE BOOK DOES NOT MAKE YOU A GOOD NARRATOR.

It’s unfortunate because the content is good, what the organization is trying to do is good, the website is good, and most importantly this book is all about doing the most good and reducing the most harm. You cannot write a book with that objective but turn the audiobook into a killing machine.