Should you do something that nobody else but you could do?

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Should you do something that nobody else but you could do?

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A nagging priority

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When thinking about what I should do in my life, I gravitate towards the idea of finding something that I would be uniquely good at doing. There are some problems with this form of thinking, but I’ve found it compelling enough to be an undercurrent to a lot of my considerations in life.

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This is essentially a peak impact optimization for one’s life. I began thinking this way about my own life before I found open philanthropy’s criteria for choosing important problems, but I have re-contextualized my thinking in relation to those criteria. I believe they are thorough and are a useful framework for thinking about any type of optimization:

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Below, I would like to translate these criteria to the perspective of an individual’s work.

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A couple caveats

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For the sake of this discussion I will assume all possible work would pay equally and thus avoid the opportunity cost of earning to give. Issues of pay cannot be ignored normally, but this allows us to focus on what the problem of the work itself.

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Also, this type of optimization is restricted to discussions of how to do as much good as one can for the world. Many parts of one’s life should not be subject to this type of optimization, and I would argue that that is the path to being optimal

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The criteria for individuals

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Let’s translate Open Philanthropy’s criteria from above, leaving neglectedness for last as I think it is the most relevant one.

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Importance

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Importance: How many individuals does this issue affect, and how deeply?

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This seems fine as it is. The arguments for this are basically utilitarian, but I won’t dive into this subject here.

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Tractability

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Tractability: We look for clear ways in which a funder could contribute to progress.

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This would probably change to describe an individual’s access to work that can make progress in a certain space or on a certain problem. Simple noun substitution seems to take care of most of it:

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Tractability: I see clear ways that I could contribute to progress.

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This could mean that there are companies that offer jobs that deal with the important problem. This could also mean that there are some really helpful solutions or systems that are conceivable, but not yet realized.

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Neglectedness

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Neglectedness: All else equal, we prefer causes that receive less attention from other actors, particularly other major philanthropists.

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This is where the translation to an individual’s perspective gets more interesting. There are two ways of looking at neglectedness with regards to individuals:

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Attention neglect

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Attention neglect is the simplest form of neglect, and the one that I believe Open Philanthropy focuses on the most as well.

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If nobody is giving certain work or a certain job that is both important and tractable, then that qualifies as attention neglect. Working on such a problem would rank high on an optimization scale.

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Work that fits this description would be in supply to some degree, and yet be in low demand. So sometimes markets are able to correct for this attention neglect, but not all work of this kind has a good market environment.

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Niche neglect

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Examples:

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Nobody is focusing on the relationship between these two problems and how they are similar or different

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Nobody is focusing on this part of the pipeline of the problem ( solve problems upstream, where in the stream are people focused?)

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What about quality neglect?

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Maybe you think you can do something better than most other people. That’s fair, but the more demand there is for certain work (e.g. competing with many other for a job) the less confident you must be with that belief.

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How to find your niche

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Take everything you love, and see how many of them you can pack into an idea that fits the criteria above. The more open-minded you are about including your different interests, the more likely you will be to find a niche that is neglected. The harder part here will be to find a way to find tractability and importance within that niche.

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More than just ethical optimization

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I do believe it’s ok if your niche doesn’t fit the criteria of importance. Passion is hard to transfer, and it may be more important to find work you love.

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What is missing?

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Not everyone can fit their life to their liking

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this is a human rights problem

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