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80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

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Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#51

Post by edshiro »

ivm wrote: post #49
edshiro wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you need to be prepared to seize opportunities that are congruent with your aspirations; in fact sometimes you need to make these opportunities happen. Planning therefore is important, but because so many things in between happen, your plan should consist of a far reaching vision so as to allow you to learn along the way, including taking paths that may end up in temporary setbacks. If you don't fail, you don't l…

And while you're learning, your attitude and world understanding constantly changes so much that you trash the plans of naive older self almost yearly, no?

Absolutely true. I have changed and changed and changed, and keep changing my world view over time. Some of my core principles though (honesty, fairness, empathy, strong family ties, etc.) remain; and hopefully will stay this way forever :).

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#52

Post by elevensies »

shortsightedsid wrote: post #29
adamredwoods wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen brother. After having a child, I threw all plans out the window.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything. - Eisenhower

Long range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions. - Peter F. Drucker

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#53

Post by sn9 »

iplaw wrote: post #50
Xeoncross wrote: post #15

Not to down play the usefulness of this, but be careful not to follow others ideas that your ultimate goal in life is X career plan. I have more of a "life plan" than a "career plan" since money and hacks/resourcefulness is pretty easy to the HN crowd relative to many other groups. Especially in the west, it takes talent to starve here. A work/life balance is what some people enjoy, while others want a work/work or l…

This is a good post. I was just having a discussion with someone on HN who considered $200k pre-tax to be affluent, and suggested that if you couldn't save $80k post-tax annually, you're doing it wrong. Having lived at $30k, $200k, and now more, I know that $200k isn't as lofty as it sounds. The dollars never seem long enough. It's all about living a life worth living. Part of that is buying time by paying for servic…

I get the point about picking and choosing where to spend your time and where you delegate things to others, but if living within your means expands with your means to that point, it's no wonder you find what's honestly a windfall to not be lofty.

And to take a different track than the anti-materialist route, I would ask you to think about how not taking advantage of that salary to save an amount of money that could be the salary of a few people put together is basically abandoning a ton of leverage to just leave a job or take other risks that would be infeasible to someone who's standard of living closely tracks their salary.

In choosing to buy the degree of things you buy and dismissing the sort of leverage a more "frugal" lifestyle could buy you (quotes because I'm using frugal in terms of still spending 6 figures a year), you're selling freedom of a different sort.

(That said, I don't know enough about you or what you spend your money on or what percentage of your income you're spending outside of what you detailed in your post to suggest you do anything other than think about that angle. I don't mean to suggest anything negative about your character.)

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#54

Post by pitt1980 »

jakubp wrote: post #45

Imagine you think on that worksheet and... "What is a fulfilling career to you" -> "I don't know..." "What is your most valuable career capital right now?" -> "No idea, if I knew how to turn something I have/can do into capital I wouldn't be planning things on that level would I?" "What global problems do you think are most pressing" -> How the hell should I know? this is only based on what I read in the media, I hav…

Right now I have a 3 and 5 year old

while they are not complete blank slates at this point, their range of future possibilities have not been significantly narrowed at this point

I've tried to put some thought into how to direct them such that their future possibilities won't be narrowed simply by wasting time aimlessly trying one thing after

here is the best I've come up with:

1) develop universal skills

There are some skills that are universally useful, regardless of what they wind up doing, My immediate thoughts about what would make these up are: reading skills, persuasive speaking skills (selling/negotiating), persuasive writing skills, some basic knowledge of the main ideas of human psychology, basic knowledge of the main ideas of rationality and logic, basic knowledge of the main ideas of probability and math, (added later after I considered it more), probably some basic financial literacy, probably some basic economic theory, (another edit) knowledge about processes to improve creativity

until you reach perhaps the top 10% of ability in each of those skills, any time you spend improving those skills will have good ROI, regardless of what you wind up doing in life

2) read a lot, and pay attention to the law of attraction

more skeptical readers will think this is BS, and in strict terms, it probably is bs, but it strikes me as useful bs

what I mean by this pay attention to what naturally peaks your curiosity, to what you don't have to make your self want to learn more about

our attention streams strike me as a mysterious but powerful force, sometimes you have to fight against them and do things that don't really capture your interests, but the less energy you can spend trying to redirect you attention, the more energy you can spend productively

3) the library is an amazing resource, when something captures you interest, dive as deep as you can for free at the library, dive deep at the library before you dive deep in life,

think being a programmer would be a good path?

Googling "book list for computer programmers" go through the first page, try to find 5 books the seem to repeat on those lists

read them, still interested? yes? great, now you have a lot more information to take next steps. no? that's ok, now you know a lot more about what computer programmers do

you can do this for any path in life, its a significantly cheaper method, in both time and money, for trying out a lot of career paths than getting formal credentials, and then getting a professional job in something (not that you shouldn't do those things, but those are expensive steps, you should take cheaper steps first)

I think this is an interesting blog post about diving deep:

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/breakdancing-universe/

I think this is another interesting link, only tangentially related http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#55

Post by nvusuvu »

deepaksurti wrote: post #37

Assuming the 10000 hour rule of gaining expertise and toning it down, because in a job you cannot just do deliberate practice for 10K hours :-), I guess a single fulfilling profession for 10 years, where you learn, become good enough to extract mileage out of it and then moving on to a new career, should be plausible. Anyone out here who has done that, much like Tarzan, holding onto the one career while switching to…

I'm an electrical engineer 12 years out of college. I did design work for 5 years, became an electronics quality manager in operations, then design validation test manager in R&D, and now questioning what to do with my career ... I'm leaning towards data analytics guru ...

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#56

Post by LanceH »

jasin wrote: post #27
toomanybeersies wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following that metaphor: it's always a good plan to wear a mouth guard so that your teeth don't get knocked out.

This is spot on, because often we prepare by wearing a mouth guard, while in reality their protection against getting knocked out basically zero.

Not true, a mouth guard absorbs a lot of impact from the lower jaw upwards.

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#57

Post by iplaw »

sn9 wrote: post #53
iplaw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good post. I was just having a discussion with someone on HN who considered $200k pre-tax to be affluent, and suggested that if you couldn't save $80k post-tax annually, you're doing it wrong. Having lived at $30k, $200k, and now more, I know that $200k isn't as lofty as it sounds. The dollars never seem long enough. It's all about living a life worth living. Part of that is buying time by paying for servic…

I get the point about picking and choosing where to spend your time and where you delegate things to others, but if living within your means expands with your means to that point, it's no wonder you find what's honestly a windfall to not be lofty. And to take a different track than the anti-materialist route, I would ask you to think about how not taking advantage of that salary to save an amount of money that could…

It's not a matter of salary or saving for me anymore. I've brokered a few patent acquisitions, each of which would have allowed me to stop working altogether. And it was an abrupt transition from earning $200k to netting a somewhat unexpected and fortuitous 8-figures.

BUT, I still stand by my statement that $200k isn't as much as most people think it is. Sure, you can minimize and scrimp on your house, your vehicles, your children's institutional education, etc. and squirrel some money away for a brighter future a couple of decades from now. But that route was never very appealing to me. It felt like I was selling present-me short for the benefit of future-me. Sure I saved money, utilized 401(k)s and Roth IRAs (until I was priced out), heavily took advantage of SEP IRAs, had a liquid safety net, etc.

But I also didn't save $80k post-tax cash.

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#58

Post by nsomaru »

spraak wrote: post #44
nsomaru wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange that you think spirituality and science are mutually exclusive.

Can you explain how you think they aren't? I think they can still be found together but generally they're at opposite ends. Also science was just one term I could think to describe that end of the spectrum

Sure.

If you mean 'science the world view' which means the philosophical stance that Consciousness (Spirit) is an emergent property of matter (amongst other things), then yes there's a spectrum and they're opposed.

On the other hand if you mean 'science the approach' — then there are many spiritual paths that follow the approach of the presentation of results and a method by which those results may be verified or refuted by a practitioner.

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#59

Post by spraak »

nsomaru wrote: post #58
spraak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how you think they aren't? I think they can still be found together but generally they're at opposite ends. Also science was just one term I could think to describe that end of the spectrum

Sure. If you mean 'science the world view' which means the philosophical stance that Consciousness (Spirit) is an emergent property of matter (amongst other things), then yes there's a spectrum and they're opposed. On the other hand if you mean 'science the approach' — then there are many spiritual paths that follow the approach of the presentation of results and a method by which those results may be verified or ref…

Thanks for explaining! I appreciate the differentiation you've made between the world view and the approach, as I'd forgotten about that. I agree that many spiritual paths do follow a very precise approach. And in fact, I'd reverse this:

> Consciousness (Spirit) is an emergent property of matter

to this:

> Matter is an emergent property of Consciousness/Spirit

from a spiritual point of view :)

Re: 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

#60

Post by 38kkdiu »

MR4D wrote: post #22

Being in my 40's and reading this, the only thing I can do is quote Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson

Yeah, being in my 40s and looking at that, my immediate thought was "oh, it seems I'm trying to figure out plan Z, even when I had pretty good plans A and B."

My advice from the other side is that there's too many unknowns to plan out your career. Fields shift in terms of content and culture, and you don't know what you like until you're really in the middle of it.

By a lot of metrics, I've achieved plan A, but found out, after a lot of work, that I am not a good fit for it and that plan B has a lot of similar problems. I never had a plan Z.

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