✨ Who are you to touch your beating heart?
Everything we can’t see when we’re looking for our Dream Job
Genevieve is shuffling around in her car trying to move her bag to the passenger seat and plug her phone into the charger when she first picks up for our interview.
“Sorry! Sorry — I’ve just been running around… I’m at my break between classes and I needed to get lunch.”
She is remarkably pretty. It’s the middle of the day in Minnesota, and the white winter sun lights up her face without revealing so much as a laugh line. Rich brown eyes flash up at the camera between rustling movements as she settles herself in. It’s confusing — she is impossibly young, but when we make eye contact it’s like I’m looking at someone much older. Her gaze has an unsettling depth — the bearings of a wise old woman in the face of a forest nymph.
“How do I make a living? Well right now I don’t.” She says, with a self-deprecating laugh. “I am doing something completely different from what I used to be doing.”
“OK, well how about we start there — with what you used to be doing.” I say.
Her tone is no-nonsense, mathematical. She lays it out for me like she’s working through a proof — each step the only possible outcome of the one before:
A little girl loves playing outside, so when she gets to college she studies environmental science. In college, she discovers a passion for economics. Graduation arrives and it’s time for a public policy job working on climate change.
Everyone in the study has described some version of this process. You take a personal interest, add something impressive, sprinkle it with a little positive impact and then multiply by the amount of money you want to make. Boom! There you go: one ticket to a lifetime of wealth, fulfillment and happiness.
This is Dream Job Math.
“It felt like… obviously a GOOD thing. You know?” She trails off, looking out the car window.
“I read all these articles — the best way to do the most good in the world is to work on systems. You get the most bang for your buck when it comes to impact. It was a logical equation: I had enthusiastically studied everything; I had the knowledge — and plus, it was just an inherently good thing to do. It was the right thing … and you have to do the right thing.” She says, eyes wide and brows raised as she searches the floorboards for her mistake.
In 2011, two Oxford students found themselves in the same boat. Coming up on graduation, Ben and Will were floundering at the threshold of the working world. They read all the books and talked to their advisors and heard plenty of platitudes about following their passions, but it felt too imprecise. No one could give them a rational answer for how to best spend their lives.
Ben and Will turned their quest for El Dorado into 80,000 Hours — a non-profit designed to help students arrive at the right career, algorithmically. The program has a lot of good (somewhat ordinary) advice — don’t just go after a big paycheck, experimentation is key and yes it does really matter if you like what you do for a living. What sets it apart is their insistence that there is a knowable, determinate Best Way to Do Good … and it should govern what you do with your life.
This idea that you can calculate your morals had been brewing since 2000 — in 2011 (when Will and Ben founded their non-profit) it was finally given a name: Effective Altruism.1 A capitalism-as-benevolent-dictator philosophy that appeals to the likes of Peter Theil, Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried. It’s got all of the monism of religion with none the God!
“For effective altruists, a good cause is not good enough; only the very best should get funding in the areas most in need. […] Personal connections that might encourage someone to give to a local food bank or donate to the hospital that treated a parent are a distraction—or worse, a waste of money.”
As applied to your professional life, Effective Altruism extols that there is a surefire, mathematic way to find not only a Dream Job related to your passions but one that is proven to be most beneficial to the world around you as well. It gives me The Ick. I don’t need anyone else trying to convert me to their version of The Way, The Truth and The Light.
Just the same, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that kind of certainty is intoxicating. There’s a Destiny with your name on it; a single purpose for which you are uniquely designed — all you have to do is keep looking until you find it. Your current job is bad because it’s not The One — so you move to The Next One, and The Next One, on and on, tilting at windmills until you give up, burn out or retire.
“My first job in climate policy was during the Trump administration — it was … dry. Algorithmic. I had good bosses, good experiences, good teams — but it was boring. It was this constant tug-of-war. The Trump Administration does this, we respond by doing this. Everyone is just gathering up their armies to see who comes out on top. I just didn’t find it interesting.”
“I got a better job after that — coming up with new ideas, harnessing people and potential to deal with impact of climate change. I was the third employee, and it was much more stimulating. I had an amazing relationship with my boss and I grew massively — I could see how my whole future would go if I stayed in that job.”
She gets quiet for a moment, hugging her arms around her ribs and turning her body slightly away from the phone.
“Why didn’t you?” I ask.
“I had this idea — maybe naively — that a job should be deeply fulfilling. You're really making a difference, it’s super stimulating intellectually. That’s something worth putting all your time into. So if you get your Dream Job and you don’t love it, maybe there’s something wrong with the dream.”
We tend to think about our passions either as a born-in part of who we are, or an interest that we’ve developed over time. Born-in passions are tricky masters. A study2 found that even believing that your interests are an inherent, unchanging part of your identity will cause you to be less curious about things that don’t match up. A fixed mindset about your interests can lead you to underestimate how hard it may be to master something you love or feel defeated when you get that Dream Job and still run out of motivation.
In other words, the more certain you are that there is one Dream Job perfect for you, the less likely you are to notice the work that makes you happiest, even when it’s right under your nose.
“I just don’t love work.” She spits it out with a flinch like she bit something gritty in her sandwich.
“I don't love sitting down at a computer and writing a proposal, even if it's something I care deeply about.”
And there it was — the error in the proof. She’d figured her love of the environment would translate to a love of being stuck at a desk writing proposals to save it.
“OK, well what do you love?” I ask.
“I love gardening and painting and sewing — house projects. Usually things that involve some sort of physicality. I don’t find it tedious, even when it is. I get totally sucked in.” she smiles softly and her eyes shine a bit. Then she gives a sideways grin and peeks out the window from the corner of her eyes.
“I don’t get that feeling at work.” I wait for her to tell me what else she’s thinking.
“The caveat being cardiac surgery. I’ve fallen in love with it.”
Once she realized her Dream Job was a bust, Genevieve started to notice a soft, persistent little voice around the edges of her mind.
“What about medicine?”
But her dad was a doctor — a forever worker who’d put his job over his family, straining their relationship. Even considering the same career felt like a betrayal to her younger self. But that voice just wouldn’t shut up.
So she started doing little things — just to see. First, a few school applications. Then a little shadowing after work at a clinic near her house.
“I got to have all of these little short conversations with people — to really level with them. These little intimate, interpersonal moments that you don't really — you don't experience that in most careers. It was such a striking difference from my work day — it was actually fun. It left me with energy to spare.”
She was finishing her hospital rotations when we spoke and had just completed the two-week cardiac surgery specialty.
“I thought there was no way I’d do [cardiac surgery] — it’s this inherently difficult thing. It’s physically and mentally intimidating, but I could just stand there on my feet suturing forever. It’s the same feeling I get from gardening — everything falls away.”
“I used to think, who am I to touch a beating heart?? But I did — and I cried! She waits a moment and then looks up at me — studying my face to be sure I can be trusted.
Sometimes when I’m in the operating room I forget there are people around … and I just … it sounds crazy, but I start to sing.”
Effective Altruism is a tangent I just didn’t have time for here, and besides — why would I, when
has done such a great job with this article in MIT Tech Press?Implicit Theories of Interest: Finding Your Passion or Developing It?
Paul A. O’Keefe Yale-NUS College National University of Singapore Business School; Carol S. Dweck Gregory M. Walton Stanford University. In press at Psychological Science
Noticing the soft voice is the hardest part! It requires our self awareness and connection to our intuition. I love that she found her Dream/Purpose and I love how gently your interview flowed. Thanks for sharing with us!!
What an interview!! As someone who chased altruistic dream jobs her whole life, this deeply spoke to me. Thank you for writing this! 💖