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shminux comments on Initial Thoughts on Personally Finding a High-Impact Career - Less Wrong
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Out of the high-impact people you can think of, how many got there while not enjoying what they were doing and weren't that good at it? This should be enough of a clue that your first goal is to find something you both enjoy and have significant aptitude for. Of course, the best people often create their own careers (was there a meta-charity category before Give Well?).
Probably not the best choice right out of college.
Or, at least, I don't presently have any good ideas.
Well, it's not like there's some future point at which you'll receive a certificate authorizing you to create your own career. On the contrary, it will always seem like a "weird" thing to do.
The younger you are, the less reason you have to be conservative and the better an idea it is to take risks that may result in large payoffs.
(It's actually not really a question of chronological age but rather of interpersonal obligations and embeddedness in social networks and relationships [having a spouse, children etc.], which tend to be lower in youth. But even [typically older] people who have such ties don't give enough consideration to doing "weird" things, in my opinion.)
I'd want to pick up some experience and start-up income first.
A lot of the people who made their own careers (that I know of) didn't do it for their first career. GiveWell was made only after working for a hedge fund, etc.
I also have the "no good ideas" problem.
How long have you spent trying to solve the "no good ideas" problem?
It seems like the value of information here is ridiculously high. If you can think of even one good idea which enables you to start a career that you would love and that would allow you to make a huge impact on the world, certainly you could justify spending a whole year of your life just finding that one idea. But most people who make this statement can probably not report spending even a single hour applying their full effort to coming up with that idea.
I think most people who have a good career that they start based one one great idea went through dozens of good ideas in their mind before getting one great idea.
I don't think it's a good idea to try to convince someone who thinks he has no good ideas to go down that route if he's more comfortable taking an established path.
Entrepreneurs aren't made by being encouraged to think up an idea for a startup in an hour.
Yes: Guidestar has been around for quite some time.
The problem is that there is a wide variety of careers which I can enjoy and of which (I think I) have aptitude for. How do I choose?
Also, the careers I (think I would) enjoy the most are not the careers I (think I) have the most aptitude for, and vice versa. How do I make that trade-off?
That narrows it down, keep looking until you find the intersection.
That's entirely unhelpful.
Aptitude is much less important than ability; if you enjoy the career, you will develop the ability soon enough.
This advice sounds like 'do what you're passionate about', which conflicts with the research done by 80k hours, though. See here and here.
These posts are well worth reading for anyone struggling with said advice, e.g. because they aren't passionate about anything. To paraphrase (though this doesn't do the 80k hours posts justice): Find something which is valuable and which you're likely to be good at, and you'll grow to enjoy it, too.