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TEDx Talks
Published: 2015-03-26
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKlx1DLa9EA
when I graduated from university I didn't know what curry I wanted to cheese I had a lot of interests but which interested I pursue and try and turn into a job so back then I was really interested in martial arts his me but I didn't once ten dot into a career his my face I was really interested in and I was studying philosophy but one of
the philosophers I'd most enjoyed reading lights at night in my dorm room recently sat philosophy is a bunch of anti ideas and there's no jobs in philosophy anyway so that was out being a slightly with kids I was really interested in investing and finance and that even taken a portion of the small savings I had invested in into gold when I was a teenager now I
need the following the finance rate would be a really well paid Korea and but I was wondering like maybe I wouldn't make as much difference as I could to not it wouldn't help society so in the end it wouldn't really be dot the filling and so I was left with the question how could I choose a filling Correia and maybe many of you have asked yourself
the same question and I thought about this question I realize it in even know how to go about choosing a cramp and I need you know read books I went to Coreys advises I just can really find information I really need it what would I be get out in the end what skills I learned now which areas that a great social need right could make a
difference these on on on some questions lead me through and kind of delay the decision by a few years instead of actually settling on a career I founded an organization dedicated to researching the question of which current the cheese and this organization is called eighty thousand hours but the number of hours you have in your working life that's a long time so it's worth really doing
some serious research and trying to work out how best to use them we help you do some of this research we publish all of our findings the parts of a free online courage guide to eighty thousand hours to oak his us some of the team today surrounded by laptops and white boards as normal Sir you might at this point be thinking to yourself well you hardly
look like you're above the legal age to drink what could you tell me about choosing a career well it's true that one of the main things we discovered is that we have a lot to learn choosing a career is a complex problem know enough serious research has been done and how best to do it but we have spent the last three years doing research with academics
at the university of Oxford most importantly we've coached hundreds of people on how to make real courage decisions all this research and thinking has led us to the conclusion that courage advice today focuses on the wrong thing throughout most of history people basically did what our parents did some people in the nineteen eighties for the greed is good and they focused on making money but our
generation grew up with some different careers advice and that's that you should follow your passion can see the use of this phrase increased dramatically from the mid nineties but today I think we need to move beyond follow your passion as the car is a vice to focus on and instead of asking what our own interests and passions are we should be focusing much more on what
we can do for other people and to make the world a better place okay so let's go back to my decision how would follow your passion apply to me I think what follow your passion tells you to do is three things the first is to identify your greatest interests second fine careers that match those interests thirdly pursue those Korea's no matter what finding a filling Korea
it's just a matter of having the courage to pursue your passion in my case I was interested in martial arts and philosophy Amanda so which current should I pick any ideas and I should obviously become Shaolin monk but isn't it and martial arts together okay Sir what's the theory behind this advice you got passion match then you're right you really enjoy your work to really motivates
it so you more likely to be successful and if you're successful doing something a passion about then you have a feeling current and spell out like not this really does sound like pretty reasonable advice right and I can get we maybe here behind not and but let's just think about it a bit more depth turns out if you follow your passion you're probably going to fail
why do I say that let's look at the data a survey of five hundred Canadian students found that my greatest passions well ice hockey and danze ninety percent so that they were passionate about sports arts music something like that but if we look at census data we can see that only three percent of jobs are in our sport and music so it just has to be
the case that even if only one in ten people followed the passion still the majority would fail to be successful so this first step just doesn't work I think the second step is also not reliable in not even if you match your passion with your work and your successful you can still quite easily fail to have a feeling Correia not because you might not find the
work meaningful this is a bit like me deciding not to go into finance I thought well I was interested in it maybe I could be successful but I wouldn't make a difference so maybe it would still end up not being filling so I think the seconds that doesn't work either now at this point you're probably you might be thinking okay sure passion isn't anything that Max
is a follow my passion doesn't guarantee that all succeed but maybe at least makes me more likely to succeed and have a filling career as career advice this is the best we can do but I think that is wrong as well pitch it yourself now the most %HESITATION assertive person you know who's really passionate about selling in persuading in that really extroverted surely someone like that
should go and come and become an advertising accounts manager like a madman or they should become a car salesman something might not something which you know that's a selling in being extroverts in talking to people well it turns out that that would be a really bad decision analysis of the time and study showed that really passionate sales people really persuasive assertive types he went into those
kinds of sales jobs actually ended up more likely to burn out and in fact died younger than normal people who take those jobs following the passion actually made them more likely to die and more generally researchers have tried to show for decades dots there's a strong relationship between interest match and how successful and happy people end up in the work but so far they failed to
show a strong connection between the two I think this isn't because your interests don't just don't matter but it's just that when it comes to real career decisions you interested just know a decisive factor other things much much more like what your skills on what your mind set as indeed we think our interests matzah a lot more than they do because we really underestimate how much
they change just think are about your own interests five or ten years ago and how different they are from today mean back then you're probably about this tool and your program just in completely different things five or ten years time you will be interested in code totally different things again all this means that your present interested just know a solid basis on which to choose the
correct okay server not gonna focus on interests and what should we focus on if you know just gonna follow your passion what should you do instead if I had to sum up Chris advice as a single slogan here's what I would tease do what's valuable by this I mean focus on getting good at something that genuinely helps others and make the world a better place that's
the secret to a fulfilling career now obviously doing what's valuable is gonna be better for the wealthy gonna do more good like that but people have also thought from Alanya that helping others is the secret to being personally fulfilled and happy I just got I represent couple of quite said just read out the first one a man's true wealth is the good he does in this
world today we actually have hard data to back this up professor of psychology Martin Seligman in this twenty eleven dot flourish aim to sum up the last couple of decades of empirical research into what really causes people to be satisfied and happy in their lives and two of the key ingredients identifies just are doing what's valuable the first of these is achievements or sometimes called mastery
and this means getting really good at something working hard and getting good at something the second is meaning or cycle purpose this means striving to do something greater than just make yourself happy so it means making the world a better place put the two together to get good at something that makes the world a better place do what's valuable I think doing what's valuable has lots
of other personal benefits as well for instance even if you work in a charity the people who have the greatest impacts the the most valuable things find it easiest to raise funding and that for the pay the bills not simple into and I've at least on my own experience if you focus on helping others than lots of people want you to succeed so it's actually easier
to be successful as an out tryst and competitors being in it yourself Sir it now turns out that actually the advice follow your passion just gets things backwards rather than start from what we have conception about now and then hope that success in fulfilling career will follow still it's much more true to say that we should focus on doing what's valuable and that will lead to
passion and the filling Korea I've definition this in my own experience if when I was sixteen you had given me this chorus test would you like to give courage guidance to people I would have clicked the hated Boston I was pretty shy and in science in the idea of giving her advice people was not appealing it'll but now I spend all my time thinking about careers
advice is absolutely obsessed and fascinated by it focusing on doing what's valuable has given me clear concrete meaningful goals not made my life a lot better is no more endless reflection on which of my interests represents my true calling which doesn't exist anyway so how can you actually do what's valuable in your car as what practical steps should you follow this is what we spend most
of our time trying to work out to eighty thousand hours I'm just gonna give you a super quick summary of three things we'd say that you can do the first of these is to explore learn all you can about the wealth contest itself out in different things if you want to do what's valuable you have to discover that out that in the world's you couldn't figure
it out just by thinking about your own interests secondly get some sleep go off to some skills in trying get good at them knee skills that I really in demand and can be used in many different areas I might pick computer programming as an example for the next decade this bit is where your passions do come in thinking about your passions does come in because what
your passion about now can give you clues about what you can get really get out in the future so that's worth thinking about but the not the only thing that matters and then when you get those skills go and find the biggest most pressing social problems you can apply your skills to solving them don't just pick a problem that is important try and find one that's
been on Fanny unfairly neglected by other people is not so I will have the greatest impact and finally don't think that in order to do what's valuable you have to become a doctor and personally go to Africa and help people with your own two hands big social problems can be and often are so by research by developing new technology by spreading big ideas in the office
and key is to workout where your skills can fit since I have the greatest impact the thing the idea that we should focus on doing what's valuable is actually really insurance of one I want you know just imagine that you're on your deathbed and you looking back at you eighty thousand our career rather than just about stopped it and pitch it yourself two ways it could
have gone in the first to save yourself I was good at what I did I enjoyed what I did I made a lot of money now I have two houses and yachts but what was that all full in the second you save yourself absolutely worked my ass off at a charity and it often wasn't easy but through my efforts I was able to prevent the deaths
of a hundred children due to malaria but what was it all full the fastener happens all the time but the second scenario is almost unimaginable of course that was a worthwhile current altruism is one thing you'll never regrets if we really want to be filled in our anchor is we have to stop focusing so much on our own interests and instead ask what we can do
for other people imagine a world in which thought was the thoughts on everyone's minds so to find what you love don't just follow your passion rather do what's valuable spittle build skills so big pressing problems and from that the film ends and a passionate career will emerge you've got a thousand I was in your career don't waste than do what's valuable
