I enjoyed Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Will MacAskill who, at 28-years old, is possibly the youngest tenured philosophy professor on the planet, and at Oxford no less.
Will believes people spend FAR too little time planning their careers. To wit:
1. We take five minutes to choose a restaurant for a 2-hour dinner (some of us much more!)
2. That means we spend 5% of our time planning the meal, and 95% eating
3. A normal person will work 80,000 hours in their life (roughly 40 working years, at 40 hours per week; both assumptions are conservative)
4. The same 5%, therefore, would equal 4,000 hours or 2 whole years!
I assume Will would recommend those 4,000 hours be spent throughout your career, and not entirely in a two-year binge (which would drive even the most fanatic planner insane…)
Even with the caveat, we should all spend more time doing things like:
- researching career paths
- finding better jobs
- deciding what skills to develop and why
- building good systems and habits
By the way, this also means you have PLENTY of time to switch careers…more than once!
Plans are nothing, but planning is indispensable – Eisenhower
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