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Need some feedback on my career plan. — EA Forum

Hello everyone. I've just about finished my career plan, and I'm looking for feedback/questions/concerns. I've attached my plan. I appreciate any feedback! Here's a quick summary:

My plan A is to become a software engineer and a landlord and earn to give. I have received a large cash windfall, and I am in the fortunate position of being able to put a down payment on a house and rent it out to pay the mortgage. But before I can do that, I need to bring up my annual income (currently making 30k per year as a fitness instructor while I figure out my career) to qualify for a mortgage. I'm also interested in pursuing AI safety as I develop my knowledge and skills in tech and software.

As a plan B, I can become a personal trainer, pursue becoming a landlord, and earn to give.

This is a total wild card, but I believe I'd be well-suited to journalism. I love research. I have a knack for getting people to open up. I'm also a naturally strong writer.

A little extra context: I'm 29 and live in Canada.

Anyway, I've attached my plan below. Cheers!

80,000 Hours career guide

Career planning template

This template is where we tie everything together from our career guide and help you make a career plan you can feel confident in.

If you fill it out, you’ll have drafted a complete career plan, have clear questions to get feedback on, and have a list of next steps to put into action.

Click here to make your own copy

How to use this template

This template is designed to be used after reading our career guide, which introduces all the concepts used, though you can also dive into it directly.

If you’ve already worked through the exercises in the guide, the template will be quick to complete, since it mainly recaps the most important exercises and puts them into the format of a career plan.

We start with what to aim for longer-term and then show how to translate that into concrete next steps.

If you’re facing an immediate decision where you need to compare several options, it’ll be quicker to use our career decision process instead. (Or if you’d like something much more in-depth, see the 8-part planning guide.)

We recommend you start by making a rough guess at all the answers over an afternoon, then identifying the areas that seem most useful to investigate further and consider spending more time on those. Another option is to work through one section each week. Just bear in mind, your answers to later sections might change the earlier ones.

It can be very useful to make a copy of your answers and share it with friends for comments or to work through it with a friend.

We've made this template a Google Doc so that you can copy, edit, print, and/or share it for your own purposes. Make whatever changes seem helpful.

1. Your key criteria for a fulfilling career

We argue there are six ingredients to aim to find in a dream job long-term: work that helps others, that you’re good at, and that's engaging, done with supportive colleagues, meets your basic needs, and which fits enough with your personal life.

But it’s useful to further personalise these, so now write out the 4-8 factors that are most important to you in a dream job.

Helping others improve wellbeing
Doing work that aligns with my strengths and gifts, or things I could become good at
Work that gives me time for the other aspects of my life - research and field testing, friends and family, hobbies, fitness. Working between 40-50 hrs per week
Pays me 120k per year
Working with people I like

If you’re not sure, ask yourself:

What have you found most / least fulfilling in the past?
Exercise
Research + field-testing
What did those situations have in common?
Personal growth and enhancing wellbeing
If you were going to die in ten years, how would you spend your time?
I’d go to therapy, learn guitar, learn french. I’d study philosophy and epistemology. I’d delve into spirituality. I’d travel a little.
What does your ideal work day look like, hour-by-hour?
Wake up 8:30am. Start my day at 9:30-10am. Work for 6 hrs - 3 x 2hr blocks. Gym and guitar in between work blocks. Work from home.

And see the additional exercises in the article on what makes for a dream job.

2. Optional: Your starting position

2.1. Optional: What's the most valuable career capital you already have?

The aim is to get good at something that helps others, so it’s helpful to pause on what you might already have to offer.

Consider your:

List the top 5 most valuable elements of your career capital

9 yrs of self-help research and implementation
Fixed social skills; overcame social anxiety
Fixed my love life
Fixed my diet
Exercise 4x per week
Significantly improved my focus
Developed strong work ethic
Overcame various addictions
Significantly developed my ability to regulate my emotions
Learned how to communicate effectively
Fixed my OCD
Overcame depression and anxiety
Developed a new high-quality friends group
Have great hobbies that I practice daily, weekly, or monthly.
Strong sense of self; lots of self-understanding - I know my values.
Developed significant financial literacy and have 4 yrs of runway
Working daily to discover my LP
Have a powerful vision for my life and a plan to get there. Executing the plan daily.
2.5 yrs of experience in fitness
A bachelor’s degree in Psychology
4yrs of financial runway
Life coaching experience

If you're stuck, list out the five achievements you're most proud of and ask what they have in common.

2.2. Optional: What might you be able to get good at?

Write down any further thoughts you have about what skills or roles you have the potential to be best at based on your reflections and life experience so far. If you’d like to reflect in more depth, see the article on personal fit and our article on finding your strengths.

Coding and software engineering
Politics

3. Global problems

3.1. Which global problems do you think are most pressing?

Given what you’ve learned so far, write out your current list of the 2–5 most pressing global problems for you to work on. Don’t worry if you feel very uncertain — especially early in your career, it’s fine to focus mainly on building skills and figure out how to deploy them later. Though, it’s worth thinking seriously about this question at some point, especially before making big commitments.

Risks from AI
Climate change
Global priorities research
Improving decision-making
Mental health

If you’d like to think about this further, there are two broad approaches:

Find someone whose judgement you trust and use their views as a starting point (adjusting based on your values). If that’s us (!), see our list.
Do your own research. We have a short guide.

4. Longer-term career paths to aim towards

The aim of this section is to have a shortlist of longer-term career roles you’d most like to aim towards. When combined with your list of problems, this comprises your ‘vision.’

4.1. Make a long list of ideas

Start by making a long list of ideas. These could range from broad skillsets (e.g. economist or software engineer), or specific jobs (e.g. think tank researcher working on the impacts of AI) — generally getting more specific later in your career. Typically, they’re options you’ll aim towards over 3–20 years.

Here are some prompts to help generate ideas:

For each category of impactful career, try to generate 1–2 options within each you might pursue: building organisations, communication and community building, government and policy, earning to give, research, etc. Also, see our list of career reviews and note down any other ideas there.
Earning to give: landlord or SWE (or, ideally, both)
Communicating ideas + community building: Therapist or Essays for Growth
Research: Mental health/therapy
Govt’ + Policy: N/A
Organization building: N/A
For the global problems you listed earlier, what do they most need (you see some thinking about this question in our problem profiles)? Can you think of any career paths you might be able to take that could help address those needs?
Risks from AI: Talented engineers
Understanding the hardware and software involved in AI
Climate change: Faster implementation of environmental policies, bringing cleaner energy sources to market at an affordable price, reducing CO2 from animal agriculture, and much more.
Policy in gov’t.
Animal rights activism.
Advances in clean energy and reducing the green premium
Mental health
Dealing with isolation
Social skills problems
Abusive homes
Poverty
I think it needs skilled researchers who can develop scalable solutions that can be deployed in communities to alleviate abuse in homes and mental health problems in individuals.
Given what you wrote in section two, which paths or skillsets do you think you might be able to get good at?
Coding and SWE
Personal training
Being a therapist
Which paths might best meet your criteria for a satisfying job from section one? If money were no object, what would you do?
First question:
work that helps others, that you’re good at, and that's engaging, done with supportive colleagues, meets your basic needs, and which fits enough with your personal life, makes me 120k/year
Personal training (would it make me 120k/year?)
Earning to give as an SWE while working from home
Second question:
If money were no object, I’d focus on guitar, french, travel, building a self-help app, building essays for growth, archery, cooking, spirituality, therapy, philosophy and epistemology.
Might you be able to combine any of the above to get the best of both worlds?
SWE + landlord
Personal training + landlord
What would a wise friend say you should do? (Maybe ask one.)
I don’t know. I’ll ask Leo if I can get back onto the forum.

List your ideas for longer-term career paths

Becoming a landlord and earning to give
Becoming a software engineer and earning to give
Getting into AI safety
Becoming a therapist and/or mental health researcher
Becoming a personal trainer

4.2. Make a rough guess at which 2–7 longer-term paths are most promising

Given what you know now, weigh them up on the balance of impact, potential personal fit, and your other criteria for a fulfilling career. Again, it’s OK if you feel very uncertain — we’ll come back to how to further investigate your options later, and it’s even possible to push ahead without this list.

Becoming a software engineer
Earning to give as a landlord
A career in the fitness industry - head coach at OT and perhaps climb the corporate ladder, or perhaps personal training, or a combination of training and fitness instructing.

Take a break…

5. Next steps

The previous sections have focused on what to aim for longer term. This section is about the immediate next step you need to take, typically over 1–3 years.

5.1. Which career stage is the best match for you?

Select the priority that seems most important right now:

Exploring to find your fit
Building career capital towards a particular longer-term path (but with a back-up plan)
Deploying your existing career capital
Other (e.g. building transferable career capital with the intention to clarify your plan later)

Write your current career stage, and why you chose it

Exploration. I don't know what I'm going to do as a career.

5.2. Generate options for your next step

First, clarify the next step you need to take. Then again, the aim is to generate a long list of options for that step. Here are some questions to use:

Work backwards: given what you’d most like to do longer term, which next steps would most accelerate you on that path? Or how could you test out that option?
Work forwards: are you aware of any opportunities that could be interesting, or where you might excel, even if you’re not sure where they’ll lead?
What jobs could you take that would generally boost your career capital? See our list of categories.
Skim over our job board, and note any interesting opportunities.

List your ideas here (try to get to at least 10, the more the better)

Question 1:

Question 2:

I think I’d be a great journalist. That is a total wildcard, but I really have a talent for getting people to open up and talk. Plus I love doing research
Michael making an explicit offer to refer me is an opportunity.
I could start getting into personal training right now.
I could apply to grad school to become a therapist
With the 130k, I could acquire my first rental property
My contacts in tech can be leveraged to increase the likelihood that I get a job.

Question 3:

With Michael, there’s a chance I could work at a growing organization with a great rep
I could go to grad school to become a therapist
I can develop a concrete skill by learning coding and SWE - this ties back to point 1.
Even though it’s a bit random, I might excel as a journalist. I know how to write, and I am great and getting people to open up.

See more tips on coming up with next steps.

5.3. Which next steps seem most promising?

Make an initial guess at the 5–10 most promising next steps, based on the balance of career capital, exploration value, personal fit, and impact (prioritising these factors based on your career stage).

Give extra weight to options that offer high potential upsides but have limited downsides (we’d generally recommend eliminating any options that might have big downsides, burn you out, or do significant direct harm, even if they seem like they might let you have a greater impact).

List 5–10 most promising next steps

Develop my coding and software abilities and reach out to Michael (and other contacts in the industry)
Learn about real-estate investing by talking to Winnie and Brian. I can also talk to Chek and Katherine.
Start a personal training business
Pursuing journalism
Masters in counselling psych

If you’d like to compare your ideas for next steps in more depth, use our career decision-making process.

6. Sketch your A/B/Z plan

Now, let’s make an initial guess at how to tie everything together. In the next section, we’ll cover how and whether to further investigate your plan.

6.1. Your Plan A

Your Plan A is the plan you’d most like to pursue. Typically, it’ll be a combination of a longer-term role (+ problem(s) it'll help with) you’d like to aim towards and the best next step towards that. (Though, it could also be a plan to try out several longer-term paths to find your fit or build transferable career capital.)

Become a software engineer so I can earn to give to the foundation against malaria and other highly effective charties. I also want to use my coding skills to develop a gamified personal development app. Finally, I’d like to become a landlord to increase my earning potential and, by extension, my capacity to earn to give.

I may also pursue AI safety in the future.

6.2. Your Plan B

Your options for Plan B are promising alternatives to your Plan A that you can switch into if Plan A doesn’t work out.

6.2.1. Why is Plan A most likely to not work out?

Tough economy/job market. AI could make junior devs (and possibly mid and senior devs) obsolete.

6.2.2. What are some good Plan B options you could take in that case?

Start a personal training business + become a landlord.

6.3. Your Plan Z

If all of the above goes wrong, what will you do? Writing this in advance makes it easier to take risks — e.g. could you move in with your family or go back to your old job?

Write out 1–3 Plan Z options

Keep coaching at OT. Pursue a role as head coach and become a landlord
Live off savings until I figure out my next move.

If your plan Z isn’t acceptable, consider changing your plan A to focus on putting yourself in a better position.

6.4. Optional: more risk management

What’s the realistic worst case scenario if you pursue the plan above?
I can’t get a job as a software engineer and I end up losing two-three years. I’ve still been making 30k/year over those three years and now I’m 32. At this point, barring any new opportunities coming to light, I would build a personal training business and potentially continue to coach, possibly pursuing a role as head coach.
How can you make that less likely to happen?
Leverage my existing contacts in tech to help me get my foot in the door.
Go to networking events.
Ask my current contacts if they can introduce me to anyone who may be able to help me find a job.
Build a very impressive portfolio of projects to showcase to potential employers
Be well-prepared for job interviews.
If it does happen, how will you cope?
Having a 6-figure networth as a safety net makes taking the risk much easier.
I’ll leverage my career capital in fitness. If I end up going down the personal training route, I’ve got contacts/knowledge/skills to help me get started.

OK, you’ve done the hard work. There’s just a little more to finish off. Before we go on, take a break…

7. Investigate your plan

7.1. Rank your key uncertainties

Go through each section above, especially your lists of problems, longer-term paths, and next steps, and think about the key uncertainties in each of these lists. Roughly rank them in terms of (i) which are easiest to resolve and (ii) which would most change your plan if resolved.

Example: if you require a certain level of pay, can you eliminate jobs that pay less than that?

Problems

Risks from AI
By the time I’m ready to address the issue, will there be a place for me?
Climate change
Global priorities research
Improving decision-making
Mental health
Would I enjoy working in this space?

Longer-Term Paths

Becoming a landlord and earning to give
I have no clue what goes into being a landlord.
Becoming a software engineer and earning to give
Can I break into the industry?
Getting into AI safety
What skills do I need to get into AI?
What does my CV need to look like to get into AI?
Am I intelligent enough to get into AI? Could I compete?
Becoming a therapist and/or mental health researcher
To go into research, what would I need to do?
Becoming a personal trainer
How do I get started?

Next Steps

Develop my coding and software abilities and reach out to Michael (and other contacts in the industry)
What skills do I need to work at Michael’s company?
What skills do I need for AI?
Learn about real-estate investing by talking to Winnie and Brian. I can also talk to Chek and Katherine.
Start a personal training business
How do I get clients?
How do I find a space to train people?
Pursuing journalism
Is this even a viable career path?
How do I get started?
Masters in counselling psych
Would I enjoy being a counsellor?
What would I need to be accepted to a masters program?

7.2. Step back and reflect on your plan

Now’s a good time to consider your plan as a whole and see if you can spot further issues or uncertainties.

7.2.1. How do you feel about your plan?

Although you shouldn’t ‘go with your gut,’ if your gut feels uneasy, it’s very important to understand why.

7.2.2. How are you most likely to be wrong about your plan?

Asking yourself (and ideally other people) this question is one of the most powerful ways to reduce bias in your thinking.

The most likely thing I’m wrong about is that I can find work as a software engineer. The market is tough. AI is a threat. It’s harder for junior devs to find work. Perhaps all my contacts won’t be able to come through for me.
That a head coach position will open up in a timely manner
That it will be relatively easy to become a landlord, given my cash on hand. Interest rates are high. Perhaps it will be difficult to find the right property. Perhaps I won’t have enough income coming in for the foreseeable future to own a house, even if I’m renting it out.

7.3. Make a plan to investigate your key uncertainties

Start with the cheapest ways to gain information. For example, you could start by reading relevant career reviews or problem profiles and then decide to talk to people in an area. If you want to invest more, you could test out a project. Often the best way forward is just to apply to lots of jobs and see what offers you get.

Does it seem worth further investigating any of these uncertainties, or should you just take a bet on your current plan? Career decisions often affect years of your life, so they are worth spending at least a few weeks researching. But, if you can’t see cheap ways to investigate more, it might be time to just try something for a few years.

List actions you will take to investigate your key uncertainties

By the time I’m ready to address the issue (AI safety), will there be a place for me?
Would I enjoy working in mental health?
I did not enjoy my volunteer work in Victoria. I did not enjoy coaching very much.
I have no clue what goes into being a landlord.
Can I break into SWE?
Only way to find out is to try.
What skills do I need to get into AI?
I can research this if and when I decide to move into that space. For now, I have my sights set on software engineering.
What does my CV need to look like to get into AI?
Can look into this if I decide to go into AI.
Am I intelligent enough to get into AI? Could I compete?
Only one way to find out.
To get into mental health research, what would I need to do?
I’d need a Ph.D.
How do I get started as a personal trainer?
How do I get clients?
Can talk to my contacts, including Neil.
How do I find a space to train people?
Neil can shed light on this.
What skills do I need to work at Michael’s company?
I can talk to Michael when we go play pool. Can also review our texts.
Is journalism a viable career path?
There are people on youtube who have their own journalism channels. Seems like it can be done.
How do I get started?
Would I enjoy being a counsellor?
I didn’t enjoy the mental health work I did in Victoria, nor did I enjoy coaching, so probably not.
What would I need to be accepted to a masters program?
I can figure that out by asking the admissions dept.

7.4. Get some feedback

Now is an especially good time to run your plan past someone else. One option is to send a copy of your whole plan to several friends and ask for them to comment. Another option is to approach people about specific uncertainties you’ve listed above.

Now’s also a great time to go and meet some people in our community and talk to them about your plan (and if you haven’t yet applied to speak to our team one-on-one, you could do that now).

7.5. Update your plan and make an overall best guess

Based on what you learn from investigation and feedback, update your earlier answers. You may not ever feel especially certain about your plan — but stop investigating when your best guess next steps stop changing dramatically.

7.6. Set a review point

Is there an event coming up where you’ll gain a lot of information about your plan (e.g. exam results)? If not, by default we recommend reviewing it roughly once a year (with the exact frequency depending on how much you’re learning and how fast the situation is changing).

Write when you'll review your plan

dd/mm/yyyy

Also, set a reminder in your calendar.

8. Put your plan into action

8.1. Define next actions

What are the three most important steps to take in order to get into your top options?

Try to be as specific as possible. Some good examples: follow up with my boss at my last internship; write 10 applications; meet three people in the industry; find someone to job hunt with. The key steps probably involve speaking to people.

When are you going to do each of these? Many studies have shown that writing down when you'll do a task makes it much more likely you'll actually do it — it's called an "implementation intention."

Next actions	When you'll do them

And so on…

For anything you can't do right away, add a reminder in your calendar.

8.2. Succeed in your role

See our advice on how to get a job, and how to be more successful in a role.

Congratulations on making your plan!

Although you may still feel uncertain about what to do, if you’ve worked through everything, you can feel satisfied knowing you probably haven’t missed something obvious — you’ve now probably put more thought into your plan than 98%+ of people! Thank you for taking this time and for trying to do good. We’re rooting for you!