I have spent time thinking about – What is the best career for me. I did not think of it as My Most Important Decision, but in retrospect I think it is.

I recently watched a TV show that talked about a website and social movement called 80000hours.org .

The hours represents the number of hours we work in an average lifetime. 40 hours per week, times 50 weeks a year, times 40 years, equals 80,000 hours.

Consider Your Career Carefully

If you will work 80,000 hours at a job or career, it only makes sense that you should carefully consider

what you want to work at.

My Job Criteria

I wished I had the internet resources of today, back in 1972, when I was graduating high school. If I did, I may have made a different career choice than I did.

Coming out of high school, my job criteria was – will I like it, can I do it, and can I get hired.

Drumming fit all those criteria. I liked it, was good at it, and I was able to get hired.

Broader Criteria

Today, some youth with vision have added the criteria of – Making a contribution to the world. This is the vision of the 80000hours movement.

They are delving deep into the world’s problems, and finding which ones that are under funded and under served –

How pressing are the problems

How effective are the solutions you are pursuing

How much leverage can you apply to these areas

Do you have a personal fit for this work or career.

Research Your Career

If you agree that your career is your most important decision, then why would you not spend 400 hours, or 5% of the career time, in researching your career ?

If I go back to my high school days, information was far more limited with no internet, and the idea of researching, would be reading books about a career and trying to find people to talk to who worked in that career.

It seems to me that young people today, have far more resources in this regard, that I did when I was a teenager.

The Biggest Problems

The 80000hours.org site says that Climate Change and Nuclear War are a couple of the world’s biggest problems.

The pandemic has been a new big priority, but most countries have not put more money into their welfare, education, and health programs because of the pandemic. This may be in part, because programs that are in place for a long time, have garnered a big budget.

“As individuals, our role should be to find the biggest gaps in the priorities

served by the current economic and political system, and do our best to fill them. “

If you can see a gap like this maybe you could help fill it. This is what happened to a young doctor, who realized that her knowledge could be put to use in the pandemic. She took a Public Health Program, and was able to work into the field of pandemic control, which was a small field at the beginning of the pandemic.

My Career Experience

I am now retired, but looking back on how I chose my career back in the early 1970’s, it was based on my limited vision of the world. I did not have the thought that I could attempt to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems.

Kudos to the bright young people of today who can entertain and act on that thought. I’d say that they are putting themselves in the right place at the right time, with regard to a world issues.

A saying of Wayne Gretsky would apply here. When asked how he was able to score so many goals, he said, “ I skate to to where the puck is going to be.”