[Crossposted from my Substack]

Introduction

Want to maximise your positive impact, but not yet sure how to do this based on your current circumstances? This could be through your career over the long term, or through specific projects that you are doing or problems you are trying to solve in the nearer term. Understanding what resources and constraints you have is important to help you leverage your resources to achieve your goals^[1], and thinking about it in a structured way helps you be more strategic about your approach while requiring less effort.

This article summarises types of resources and constraints, to help you identify different types you might have (broader than just money!), and give you an overall overview without indexing too much on one specific type. After this, an example approach of how to prioritise your resources, as well as pitfalls to avoid, is given to help you think about using your resources with both your short- and long-term goals in mind. If you would like to think about it more deeply, or have a summary that you can show someone when asking for advice, I have also created a workbook version of this article for you to fill in.

However, before going into using your resources and constraints to achieve your goal, you first need to work out what that goal actually is.

Work out what you want to do

Before working out which resources are most useful, you should first work out what you want to do, as otherwise it’s difficult to identify what your most relevant resources are, and what constraints you have. It is useful to have both your overall long-term goal, and specific short-term goals that help you achieve this, in mind^[2]. Depending on your current situation and particularly for those early in their career, it may make sense to initially build up more resources (including skills and reputation).

Prioritisation of goals is outside the scope of this article, however you might find other articles such as these useful to look at^[3].

Now based on this, it’s time to think about which specific resources and constraints are most relevant.

Resources and Constraints

Types of Resources

This section summarises various types of resources, where resources have been broadly defined as ‘anything that you use to help you achieve your goals’. Money is an important resource, and you should certainly aim to never run out of it, but there are many other types of resources^[4].

So, what are (some) resources?

• Money
  • How much money you (or the project/organisation) have, both overall and what you are able to access quickly
• Team
  • If applicable, other people who you are directly working with, and how you can help each other, e.g. with solving problems
• Advocates
  • People who know you and what you are capable of, who can advocate for you, to help you access resources and future opportunities
• Feedback/advice
  • The amount of good quality feedback or advice you are able to get, both to help you achieve your goals, but also to avoid potential pitfalls
• Connections (business)
  • Who is in your professional network, and how they might be able to help you for getting guidance, accessing other resources, solving problems, and being able to access opportunities
• Support Network (social)
  • How much of a personal support network you have, including friends, family and/or your partner, and communities that you are a part of, who can help you e.g. by providing emotional support
• Health/energy
  • How you are feeling physically and mentally, including whether or not you are burned out
• Time
  • How much (free) time you have at the moment given your commitments and life circumstances is the most action relevant, but (useful for longer term planning) may also include overall time, e.g. years remaining in career
• Autonomy
  • The ability or ease of which you can choose your own priorities and approach without oversight
• Flexibility

  • The amount of logistical flexibility you have, such as being able to choose where or when you can work. Financial liquidity, or easy access money, may also be here (or in ‘money’)^[5]

• Open infrastructure
  • External resources available to anyone in your area who can afford them or otherwise has the resources to access them, e.g. a car, food delivery services, software, libraries, open access courses
• Closed infrastructure
  • Any external resources that you have access due to your specific situation, networks or role, e.g. offices you can work out of, workplace/university counselling, guidance documents, data access
• Skills
  • Valuable and relevant skills that you have, which can help with both problem solving and being able to get future opportunities
• Accomplishments
  • Key notable accomplishments or credentials that you have, which can help you get future opportunities
• Reputation
  • What others think about you and the work you do, which can help with accessing resources and getting future opportunities. This could be you reputation within your networks, but also more broadly public perceptions or goodwill for your project
• Authority
  • How easily or how much you can get people to listen to you or take actions based on what you have to say, which can help with accessing resources, solving problems, and potentially getting future opportunities. Authority may be built up over time (e.g. through accomplishments), dependent on perceived characteristics and based on your situation

Some of these might be more obvious than others, however, having a list in front of you makes it easier to consider various different types of resources - if I try to do it from memory, I always miss at least one.

Many of these resources also interact with each other. For example, skills and accomplishments feed into your reputation, but someone might have a good reputation while having less of these or vice versa depending on how aware people are of them. When the resources are combined, this can lead to opportunities and pathways that would not otherwise be available. For example, the combination of your networks (and reputation within them), skills, accomplishments and credentials all increase the opportunities that you have available, which may not be available to others.

Each of these areas is also very broad, and you will likely have both resources and constraints in each specific area.

Types of Constraints

As well as thinking about what resources you have, you need to think about what constraints you have. Constraints can be categorised pretty much the same way as resources, but as the (at least partial) absence of that sort of resources, e.g. being unskilled in a particular area. Of course you can have both resources and constraints in a particular area, e.g. you will have some skills, but not others.

There are some additional constraints that are not on the resources list:

• Dependents
  • Whether you have dependents, e.g. children, who you need to take care of
• Other commitments
  • The other commitments that you have that you cannot drop, or would lead to significant consequences if you drop them
• Accessibility barriers
  • Accommodations that you require for any physical or neurological differences you have, which your current or potential future environments lack or might lack
• Logistical/legal constraints
  • Any logistical or legal considerations you have, e.g. whether you would need to move to a different city or country, whether you are on or would need a visa
• Cultural/language barriers
  • Cultural or language differences that may make it more difficult for you or mean you have to work harder compared to someone who is part of the dominant culture, e.g. language proficiency, cultural communication differences, unfamiliarity with local customs or norms
• Discrimination/bias
  • Unfortunately if you face discrimination or bias, it is more difficult to do things than it otherwise would be

However, for ‘other commitments’ in particular, it is important to consider just how important these other commitments are, and whether there is a way to push these to a later time or to delegate these. This might or might not be possible, and you might need to or prefer to maintain the other commitment, but this will help you differentiate whether it is truly a constraint or rather a priority which you might then decide to focus on less if something else is a greater priority.

Once you have worked out what relevant resources and constraints you have, it is then useful to think about how to use them.

Using resources

Prioritising resources

The following are important considerations when prioritising using your resources:

• Amount: How much of each type of resource do I have?
• Compound: Which resources, if used, can lead to positive compound effects or other future opportunities that make sense given my long-term goal?
• Timing: Which of these resources are likely to be most useful given my intended or available timeframe?
• Surroundings: How does the wider context and environment influence which resources might be best to use?

Amount: How you would prioritise which resource to use depends on how much of each resource you have, and it might be advantageous to primarily focus on using the resources that you have the most of. The obvious one is that the more money you have, the easier it is to throw money at a problem to make it go away, but this might also involve things like choosing which specific skills and accomplishments to emphasise when applying for jobs or growing your network.

Compound: Using some of your resources might lead to you gaining more of that or other resources. For example, you might gain skills when using your skills to solve problems. Using your network might help you build up a larger network, and doing good work could help you improve your reputation. When prioritising your resources, it is useful to consider both improving on your current strengths (e.g. trying to make these your competitive advantage), and addressing current weaknesses which may lead to disproportionate returns. Which of these might be most valuable depends on your long-term goal. Keeping your long-term goal in mind can therefore help you decide your approach to short-term goals to make best use of compound benefits, both for yourself but also for others as well through the impact you achieve.

Timing: The more quickly you want or need to get something done, the less you can rely on being able to turn one type of resource into the others. A major benefit of money is that it can be traded for (most) other resources, but often this cannot be done quickly^[6]. You can also over time turn other types of resources into money^[7], but again, that takes time. At the same time, just because you can throw money at a situation to improve does not mean that it is the best way of improving the situation, or that the situation is improved as much as it would be if you approached things a different way.

Surroundings: You should consider broader context, not just your own situation. This would include things like what the overall market conditions are, such as whether there is an existing recession or one is likely. This also includes things specific to the field or area most related to your goal, including what the job market looks like, how much investment is going into the space, and whether the field is growing, shrinking or is otherwise projected to change over time.

Once you have considered the above, think about the initial short-term goal that you set yourself. You might have more resources than you initially realised, which might mean you should consider setting more ambitious goals. Conversely you might find that setting additional, shorter term goals to be valuable to help you first build up additional resources, and then you can plan how to use your existing resources to get these. Having fewer (current) resources does not mean you should not be ambitious or that you should change your long-term goal, but rather that you might need to take a different approach.

Ask yourself:

• Given my resources and constraints, should I consider adjusting my short-term goal?

For example, you might realise that you have access to mentorship and support through your networks or through your university, transferable skills or supportive friends or family that would temporarily allow you to live with them, which reduce the risks of trying ambitious projects which have a high potential benefit but also larger chance of failure. Or you might find that to do such projects you first need to develop specific skills, build up a financial runway, or expand your networks in the field to reduce the consequences of failure and increase your chance of success.

Or both of those can be true at the same time. So what is ‘good enough’ in terms of resources to try to achieve your goals?

This in part depends on the type of resource, and on your individual risk tolerance and circumstances. Certain resources can be gained ‘on route’ to achieving your goals rather than specifically making increasing those resources a short-term goal. An example could be doing a course vs learning a skill through action, but this would depend a lot on the skill and the consequences for getting it wrong (e.g. leadership is often something you learn through doing, usually initially on small projects, whereas if you need to be first aid trained you would need to do a course).

The next section goes more into depth on risk tolerance, and also pitfalls to avoid to make sure you don’t accidentally cause long term harm to yourself or others.

Things to avoid

This section outlines some specific things to avoid.

This is not saying not to take risks - whenever you try things, there is always a risk that you will fail, and trying things is necessary for success. Being too cautious itself also carries risks as it means you may miss certain opportunities, however, you should prioritise your potential failures. Some failures have few negative consequences and can easily act as a learning experience, some failures are unpleasant but you can still buffer them, yet other failures are very difficult or even impossible to come back from. The latter type should be avoided wherever possible.

This list is primarily based on my own experiences and from interacting with others. Of course, depending on your situation and risk appetite you might want to do a more detailed risk assessment, and those with a larger safety net can afford to take more risks due to the consequences of those risks being lower, but I think this is the minimum and should act as a starting point. The greater the potential risks, and where decisions are not reversible, the more time should be spent looking at potential risks^[8].

Some priority things that you should consider when deciding which resources to use:

• How likely you are to run out of money
  • Remember to consider the amount of money you can access quickly (liquidity) as well as the overall amount of money you have, and how quickly you would be able to get more money coming in. Credit is also a potential option, but you should be much more careful about how much you use this.

• How likely you are to burn out^[9]

  • Burnout is brutal and makes it much more difficult to do anything else to make your situation better, so try to work out how much you are at risk of this. It is generally useful to build up an awareness of what gives you energy and takes energy from you, and what early indicators of you burning out might be, but in its most basic sense think about how burned out you currently feel.

• Be careful about losing any resources that are very difficult to get back if you do lose them
  • This might be things like social support and your health (broader than just burnout) which might either take a long time to build back up again, or affect your ability to get any other type of resource.

At the same time, it’s important not to just consider yourself and your own situation, but the effect on other people.

• How likely is this approach to accidentally cause major inconvenience or harm to other people?

Consider whether your chosen approach might unintentionally harm others, which is particularly important if dependents, people with less work or life experience, or people in vulnerable positions might be affected by your decisions.

While people can and should take informed risks (e.g. someone might take a job at a startup with the knowledge it is more likely to go under than a larger company), this does not mean they have consented to every potential risk. At minimum, you should consider how your actions and approach might impact others, whether this leads to unreasonable risks for them, and therefore whether a different approach or mitigation measures might be needed.  

Workbook

A summary of the above lists of resources, constraints and considerations have been included in a Google Doc workbook, to make it easier for you to copy and use if you would find it helpful. It might be helpful to write down responses to the prompts to help you think about it more deeply, or to give an overview when asking for advice. You can access the workbook here.

Conclusion

When working out how to approach having an impact and achieving your specific goals, it is useful to work out what your resources and constraints are, and how you may be able to use your resources to reach your goals despite your constraints. You may do this based on factors such as the amount of each resource you have, which approach is likely to give compound benefits over time and that might work best based on the time you have available, and the overall broader context including market conditions.

Using your resources to achieve your goals is an ongoing and iterative process. As you progress, you might reduce your uncertainties on the best approach (or gain new ones). You might find that your resources compound over time, or that you take risks that don’t pay off and find you need to build your resources back up again, or that you take risks that do and your resources or impact multiply more than you expected. But make sure you take risks in an informed way, to consider how your actions and approach might impact other people, and I would strongly recommend against taking risks that you cannot come back from.

There’s no one correct answer to this. But thinking about this in a structured way seems beneficial, and if you later find that a given approach is not the optimum one, you can slightly adjust your short-term goals and approach without changing your long-term goals.

With thanks to everyone who reviewed and left feedback on a draft of this article, including Dylan Balfour and Steve Thompson for their useful comments. All mistakes are my own.

The cover image was created using elements on Canva, as a play on “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. I did so by throwing money at the problem and paying for Canva Pro in order to unlock some of said elements.

1. ^{^}

    Basically this quote from a rationality fanfiction that has stuck with me for years, but as practical guidance: “My favorite three questions are, 'What do I want?', 'What do I have?', and 'How can I best use the latter to get the former?’”

2. ^{^}

    Of course, it is normal and healthy to have multiple long-term goals for different parts of your life. However as this article is about resources and constraints around achieving a specific goal, rather than deciding on or prioritising between goals, I am primarily using the singular framing for that short- or long-term goal.

3. ^{^}

    Note: these articles were selected because I think these are resources and sites that people reading this might find useful. I reached out to people at these organisations to see if they were happy to give feedback, as I believed they would have useful input based on the focus and quality of their work. Note also that I did a research fellowship with Charity Entrepreneurship, but this was after the research process that the linked article refers to.

4. ^{^}

    My brain supplies me with ‘cash is king, but it’s a constitutional monarchy’, which I think I like as an analogy. However, I don’t actually know enough about the limitations of constitutional monarchy to be confident about its aptness, or a desire to research this much further. But it’s that sort of direction.

5. ^{^}

    The main aim here is to help you think about different types of resources, rather than prescribe exactly what category each specific resource might fall into. Put specific resources into categories that make the most sense for you.

6. ^{^}

    For example, you can trade money for health for a given amount of time, e.g. by paying for gym and other fitness memberships, going to therapy, getting healthy food delivered rather than cheaper fast food; but to get the health benefits this needs time and success here is not guaranteed. You can trade money for skills (training costs money!), connections (networking events and conferences cost money!), and even the less obvious things like reputation (e.g. marketing). The main exception I can think of is that a social support network cannot be bought with money, although it does make doing things to meet people easier.

7. ^{^}

    For example by getting better/higher paying jobs, contracting work, or even selling some of the open infrastructure resources.

8. ^{^}

    Note that I am also working on an article about recovering when risks do not pay off, which will be published at a later date.

9. ^{^}

    I have now been in or around multiple burnout cultures, so I think burnout is a fairly common risk and one to be particularly careful of.