We examined over 60 studies concerning what constitutes a dream job. Here is what we discovered.

We all desire to find a dream job that is both enjoyable and meaningful, yet what does that truly signify?

Some individuals imagine that the answer will strike them in a sudden flash of clarity, whereas others believe that what counts is that their dream job is undemanding and handsomely paid.

At 80,000 Hours, we have scrutinized three decades of research into what creates a satisfying career, pulling from hundreds of studies, and found little support for either viewpoint. Rather, we uncovered five essential components of a dream job.

These do not encompass income, nor are they as simplistic as "pursuing your passion." What is vital is to become skilled at something that assists others.

Let us commence with where we go astray.

Do not follow your passion

Throughout much of history, individuals tended to pursue the same occupations as their parents. Subsequently, the emphasis shifted toward securing a steady job that would enable you to purchase a house and a car. However, my generation was raised with different guidance: if you seek a fulfilling career, pursue your passion. Starting around 2005, this became a defining emphasis of career advice.

The underlying implication is that discovering a great career hinges on pinpointing your strongest interest — "your passion" — and following it as a full-time pursuit. This is an appealing notion: simply dedicate yourself to what you most enjoy and you will attain a fulfilling career. And when we observe successful individuals, they are frequently passionate about their work.

We too are advocates of being passionate about your work. As we will discuss soon, intrinsically motivating work renders people far happier than a hefty paycheck. Nevertheless, there are three principal ways in which "follow your passion" can be misleading counsel.

The first is that numerous people do not feel they possess a passion that could pertain to their career. Advising them to "follow their passion" at best leads them nowhere, and at worst, leaves them feeling insufficient and demotivated.

Secondly, this guidance implies that passion is all that is required. Yet if a basketball enthusiast works alongside dreadful colleagues, receives inequitable pay, or perceives the work as meaningless, they are still going to detest their job, even if they are employed by the NBA.

Similarly, an individual who is passionate about acting but winds up at 40 and unemployed may harbor some regrets. In reality, "following your passion" can render it more difficult to obtain the ingredients we will contend are most critical for job satisfaction, because the domains you are passionate about tend to be the most competitive ones.

A survey of 500 Canadian students revealed that their top passions were dance and ice hockey. Nearly 90% stated their greatest passion involved either music, art, or sport. Yet census data gathered around the same period indicates that fewer than 3% of Canadian jobs were in sport or the arts. Thus, even if merely one in ten of those students pursued their passion, the majority would fail.

Furthermore, even if you manage to land a job, researchers have discovered that the extent of alignment between your interests and your job correlates only weakly with job satisfaction.2

The third issue is that instructing people to concentrate on what they are already passionate about can cause them to unnecessarily restrict their options. If you are passionate about literature, it is easy to assume you must become a writer to enjoy a satisfying career. Yet, in truth, there are likely numerous other jobs that could satisfy you, provided they are fulfilling in other respects.

Additionally, our interests evolve over time, and more than we anticipate.3 Reflect on what you were most interested in five years ago, and you will likely discover it is quite distinct from what interests you today. This signifies that your interests do not provide a particularly steady foundation for career planning.

More harmfully, individuals frequently believe that their "one true passion" will be instantly apparent, prompting them to discard options that do not feel rewarding from the very start. However, most careers involve drudgery at the entry level, and you need to experiment to learn what suits you. This implies it is normal not to recognize what you are passionate about immediately. Instead, as we will observe, passion is something you cultivate over time — often in wholly unforeseen directions.

We have collaborated with hundreds of people who cultivated passions for novel career paths. Jess Whittlestone adored philosophy as an undergraduate, and was particularly attracted to philosophy of mind. Unsurprisingly, she contemplated proceeding to graduate school. Yet something restrained her. Even if it would be intellectually stimulating, if she failed to make a difference, would it truly be fulfilling?

After exploring several avenues, she settled on psychology and public policy. Over time, she discovered roles and topics that held meaning, and grew passionate about them. Ultimately, she became the director of AI policy at a prominent think tank, and in 2023, TIME recognized her as one of the 100 most influential people in AI. We will detail how she achieved this in Chapter 11.

Why you should not follow your intuition either

Even if there were such a thing as your "one true passion," how would you actually discover it? The customary method is to attempt to envision various jobs and consider how fulfilling they appear. If this were a standard career guide, we would commence by having you draft a list of what you most desire from a job, such as "working outdoors" or "working with ambitious individuals," and trying to locate jobs that correspond. The all-time best-selling careers book, What Color Is Your Parachute, advises precisely that. The assumption is that, deep within, people understand what they genuinely want.

But they do not. Or at least, not especially well. You can likely recall instances in your own life when you were enthusiastic about a vacation or a party — only to discover that when it actually occurred, it was merely satisfactory. In recent decades, research has demonstrated how widespread this is. We are not always skilled at anticipating what will make us happiest, and we frequently fail to realize just how poor we are at it.4

It transpires that we are even poor at recollecting how enjoyable different experiences were, let alone forecasting them. A meta-analysis of more than 50 studies discovered that we recall experiences based on how enjoyable they were at their peak, or at their conclusion, rather than how enjoyable we would have rated them at the moment.5

In a seminal study, individuals rated a colonoscopy as less painful if it concluded less painfully, even if the pain endured longer.6 As Dan Gilbert, one of the world’s foremost happiness experts, expresses it:

The fact that we frequently evaluate the pleasure of an experience by its ending can lead us to make some curious choices.

This signifies we cannot merely rely on our intuitions when attempting to determine what will satisfy us most. We require a more methodical approach to ascertaining which job is best.

What might a more methodical approach resemble? It is enticing to presume that your dream job will satisfy two supposedly attractive criteria: that it will be effortless and well remunerated.

This is implied in much mainstream career guidance. CareerCast furnishes one of the foremost career rankings in the US. The initial four criteria they employ to rank careers are:

Is it low-stress?

Is there a good work-life balance?

Is there high job security?

Is it well paid?

In essence, less demanding, secure, high-paying jobs are rated more favorably. Based on these criteria, the top job proved to be: actuary. That is, an individual who employs statistics to gauge and manage risks within the insurance sector. This is the identical answer they provided back in 2015 when I initially wrote about their list, and it has remained near the pinnacle ever since.7

Would we all be happier if we retrained as actuaries? It is accurate that actuaries are more content with their job than the average, yet they are not among the most content. And merely 36% state their work is meaningful.8 This demonstrates that the factors utilized by CareerCast do not encompass everything. Actually, abundant evidence indicates that money and stress avoidance may even be counterproductive to prioritize. Let us begin with money.

Do not chase the money

It is a cliché to claim that "money cannot purchase happiness," yet superior pay is frequently people's foremost priority when seeking a new job.9 When individuals are asked what would most enhance the quality of their lives, the most prevalent response is "more money."10 Which side holds the truth?

As is frequently the situation, the truth lies somewhere in between. After examining the finest studies we could locate on this question, we discovered that money does render you happy, but only marginally.

Participants were requested to assess how satisfied they were with their lives on a scale from 1 to 10. The outcome is displayed on the y-axis, while the x-axis depicts their household income. The chart reveals that a rise in pre-tax income from $40,000 to $80,000 was merely linked to an increase in life satisfaction from approximately 6.5 to 7 out of 10. Attaining another half point necessitates an additional doubling to $160,000. That represents a substantial amount of extra income for a modest improvement.

This is scarcely astonishing. We all know individuals who have entered high-earning professions and wound up unhappy. Your expenditures gradually increase, and you rapidly come to take your salary for granted. Simultaneously, you are working extended hours, encroaching upon time with friends and family.

Yet even this could be exaggerating the significance of money. If we examine day-to-day mood, income seems to be even less consequential. The identical study inquired of people at varying salary levels whether they reported feeling happy the previous day, which the researchers termed "positive affect." The left-hand y-axis displays the proportion of people who reported "yes." This line becomes essentially level around $75,000.

Admittedly, this discussion is far from settled. While this data indicates that positive affect plateaus entirely around $75,000, a more recent 2021 study discovered that it actually persists in climbing. It is simply that it ascends very gradually, and more gradually than life satisfaction. This may be because high income causes people to feel successful, even if it does not make them happier.11

From a practical standpoint, this does not create much difference. Once you exceed approximately $100,000, money appears to make merely a minor difference to happiness.

Furthermore, these data might still be overemphasizing the importance of money. These studies are correlational, signifying that the link between money and happiness could be driven by a concealed third variable. For instance, being healthy could render you both happier and enable you to earn more. Factoring in all conceivable additional variables could diminish the influence of money even further.

What income level should you target, considering your personal circumstances? The graphs in this chapter pertain to household income in 2009, yet the average US household comprises 2.5 individuals. If you are single, your expenses will be somewhat higher, so economists would typically state that $100,000 of household income equates to an income of roughly $50,000 for someone living alone.12 Adjusting for inflation brings that to approximately $75,000 in 2025.13 Each dependent residing with you will contribute an additional half to that amount.

These are also averages for the entire US. If you reside in a pricey city such as New York, you would need to add roughly 50% to account for the elevated cost of living,14 and because our satisfaction is strongly influenced by how our income stacks up against those around us. Relative to New York, incomes and cost of living are a further 10–20% higher in Zurich, but 20–25% lower in London, Paris, and Sydney, and 60–80% lower in Shanghai.15 Relative to the US overall, incomes in the UK are approximately 40% lower16 and the cost of living is about 10% lower. This implies that $75,000 in the US is equivalent to roughly £42,000 in the UK,17 or $115,000 in New York.

As of 2023, the typical university graduate in the US can anticipate earning around $77,000 annually over their working lifetime, whereas the average Ivy League graduate makes upwards of $120,000.18 In the UK, university graduates earn about £52,500, and figures are comparable in Western Europe and Australia.19 The bottom line is that if you are a university graduate in a high-income nation, there is a strong likelihood you will fall into the range where additional income exerts minimal impact on your happiness.

Do not strive for an easy life

Numerous individuals inform us they wish to locate a job that is not stressful. And, previously, physicians and psychologists held that stress was broadly detrimental to us. Nevertheless, more contemporary evidence regarding stress indicates the picture is somewhat more intricate.

One conundrum is that investigations of senior government and military leaders discovered they exhibited lower concentrations of stress hormones and less anxiety than other employees, notwithstanding sleeping fewer hours, overseeing more individuals, and bearing greater responsibilities.20

One broadly endorsed explanation is that possessing a stronger sense of control buffers them from the demands of the role. Stated differently, if you are confronting a stressful project, yet you have the autonomy to determine how to approach it, you are likely to feel far better than if you are being micromanaged.

Similarly, a stressful project that will endure only a single week might not pose an issue, whereas one that persists for two years certainly could. People are also far more capable of withstanding stress if it serves a goal they deem meaningful.

What you should truly aim for in a dream job

Rather than pursuing your passion, adopt a methodical approach to ascertaining what will or will not yield satisfaction. There are now three decades of inquiry into positive psychology — the science of happiness — to steer us toward what that could be, in addition to decades of surveys and research examining job satisfaction and motivation specifically. We have synthesized all of this to formulate the subsequent five criteria for a dream job. (If you wish to delve into the evidence more thoroughly, consult our evidence review.)21

The primary lesson is that what truly counts is not your salary, prestige, or even your job designation, but rather what you engage in day by day and hour by hour.

Work that is engaging

Engaging work is labor that captivates you, maintains your focus, and allows you to attain a state of flow — the feeling of immersion that arises when engrossed in a task. It explains why meandering, disjointed meetings feel like sheer toil, whereas an hour devoted to playing a video game can seem like no time whatsoever: games are engineered to be maximally engaging.

Why are video games captivating while so many facets of office life are not? In a large-scale meta-analysis, researchers pinpointed the following four elements, which have been termed "the most empirically verified predictors of job satisfaction":22

Autonomy to determine how to carry out your work

Clear tasks with a distinctly defined beginning and conclusion

Variety in the character of those tasks

Feedback, so you are aware of how well you are performing

These factors exhibit a correlation with job satisfaction roughly twice as strong as the alignment between your interests and your job.23 And, while they hold even greater significance for individuals who particularly crave achievement and learning, they are consequential for all.

Interestingly, these four elements pertain to how your work is organized, not its substance. Financial administration that has been arranged to resemble a game could generate a sense of flow, whereas being compelled to endure a health and safety presentation could bore you to tears, even if it serves the purpose of motocross racing, which happens to be your dream sector.

Having said that, while video games are intensely absorbing, they do not represent the key to a fulfilling life, and that is because you additionally require the second vital component.

Work that assists others

Here are three ostensibly desirable and engrossing occupations. And yet, when surveyed, fewer than 30% of individuals performing them stated they found them meaningful:24

Fashion designer

Television newscast director

Software engineer

The subsequent three jobs, in contrast, are viewed as meaningful by nearly everyone who undertakes them:

Fire service officer

Nurse or midwife

Neurosurgeon

What distinguishes them? Well, the second category of jobs palpably assists other individuals. That is what renders them meaningful.

The studies we have just discussed also identified a fifth pivotal factor: the importance of the tasks. Tasks are more significant the more they affect others.

In addition, a mounting body of evidence indicates that assisting others constitutes a core component of life satisfaction overall. To offer merely a handful of examples, a meta-analysis of 23 randomized studies demonstrated that carrying out acts of kindness renders the benefactor happier. Individuals who volunteer experience less depression and enjoy better health. And a worldwide survey discovered that people who contribute to charity are as content with their lives as those who earn twice as much.25

In an effort to encapsulate what has been gleaned by the discipline of positive psychology thus far, its founder, Martin Seligman, enumerated the foremost drivers of wellbeing. One is engagement, and another is a sense of purpose.26 While assisting others is not the sole pathway to a meaningful career, it stands among the most potent.

Work you excel at

Another critical component of fulfilment on Seligman’s list is a sense of competence.27 This is the sensation derived from extending your abilities, particularly valuable ones. It is intrinsically rewarding, enhances your capacity to achieve a flow state, and fosters self-assurance. For the majority of individuals, it stems from becoming proficient at their work — whatever that might be.

Proficiency at work is not solely gratifying; it empowers you to bargain for the other elements of a fulfilling position — such as the opportunity to work on meaningful projects, undertake captivating tasks, and secure equitable remuneration. If people prize your contribution, it becomes simpler to negotiate for what you seek in exchange.

This is why competence ultimately prevails over passion. If you chase a career as an artist yet lack proficiency, you will wind up performing derivative and uninspiring design work for companies you hold no regard for — no matter how passionate you may be about art.

This is not to suggest you should solely pursue work you are already adept at, but you do require the potential to become skilled in it.

Work alongside supportive colleagues

It might appear self-evident, yet if you detest your colleagues and are employed by a boss from hell, you are not going to feel fulfilled.

Positive relationships constitute Seligman’s fourth essential element of wellbeing, and possibly the most vital.28 In light of this, it is advantageous if you can forge friendships with at least a few individuals at work. Nonetheless, you are not obliged to befriend everyone, and you surely do not need to like every colleague. One extensive meta-analysis established that "social support" ranked among the foremost predictors of job satisfaction.

It does not imply you ought to feel obligated to socialize during evenings and weekends — rather, it pertains to whether you can obtain assistance when you are facing difficulties. Another meta-analysis discovered that various forms of "organisational sponsorship," including readily available supervisor support and training prospects, were among the strongest predictors of career satisfaction.

This is likewise not equivalent to advocating that you ought to encircle yourself with individuals identical to you. People who are disagreeable and possess an entirely divergent perspective can often furnish the most valuable feedback, assuming they genuinely care about your welfare deep within. This is because they are more prone to speak candidly. Organizational psychology professor Adam Grant refers to these individuals as "disagreeable givers."

When we contemplate dream jobs, we typically concentrate on the role itself. Yet, whom you collaborate with is equally significant. A poor boss can mar an ideal position, whereas even tedious tasks can become enjoyable if performed alongside a friend. As we observed with engagement, this represents another instance where context surpasses content.

Work that is not actively disagreeable

Securing your dream job is not solely about obtaining these favorable elements; you also need to endeavor to sidestep forces that render work actively disagreeable. In the research we examined, each of the following was associated with job discontent:

A lengthy commute

Excessively long hours

Remuneration you perceive as unfair

Job insecurity

For instance, one survey encompassing more than 60,000 individuals discovered that protracted commutes correlated with diminished life satisfaction. The most adverse effects were tied to travel durations lasting between 61 and 90 minutes. (And the most unfavorable mode of transportation was buses, which, as a Londoner, strikes me as entirely logical.)

Extended hours can be managed when they form part of a time-limited, significant undertaking, but immoderate and unremittingly long working periods displace other facets of your life. Similarly, even if remuneration exhibits merely a weak correlation with happiness, the perception that you are being compensated inequitably relative to your peers is a separate issue.29

If your occupation is situated in the incorrect city, that will damage your relationships, and contentment with location constitutes a notable driver of life satisfaction.30 Correspondingly, be vigilant for other significant clashes between your job and what you hold dear in the remainder of your life.

Although these points may seem apparent, individuals frequently disregard them. The adverse repercussions of an atrocious commute can suffice to counterbalance numerous other favorable aspects.

You are not required to obtain every constituent of a rewarding life from your employment. It is feasible to merely secure a position that covers your expenses, and uncover purpose and gratification elsewhere. Many individuals derive a sense of mastery from a side venture, or assist others via philanthropy or volunteering.

Do what matters

How might we encapsulate all of this? Instead of "follow your passion," our maxim for a gratifying career is: become skilled at something that benefits others. Or, more succinctly: do what matters.

We commence with "get good" because once you excel at something that others prize, you will not only possess a feeling of competence, you will also have a broader range of career possibilities overall, affording you an improved likelihood of attaining engaging work, supportive colleagues, and your other fundamental prerequisites.

You can have all other elements arranged, nonetheless, and still perceive your work as meaningless. This is why you must also discover a means to assist others.

Assisting others is not merely gratifying; it can also render you more prosperous. Devote yourself to aiding others, and individuals will wish to facilitate your success. This may sound like fanciful thinking, yet there exists some empirical substantiation to support it.

In his publication Give and Take, Adam Grant contends that individuals possessing a "giving mindset" are more liable to rank among the most accomplished, both because they are more driven by their impulse to contribute, but also because they receive greater assistance.31

And, for those who favor appeals to authority above scientific investigations, the notion that serving others constitutes the key to a meaningful life is a motif that recurs across numerous ethical and spiritual traditions:

Fix your heart upon performing good deeds. Do so repeatedly and you shall be imbued with joy.

— Buddha

A person's genuine riches consist of the good they enact in this world.

— Muhammad

Every individual must choose whether they shall tread in the radiance of creative altruism or in the gloom of destructive selfishness.

— Martin Luther King, Jr

Yet even more than in the era of these spiritual leaders, we are going to observe that every one of us possesses a tremendous opportunity to aid others. Ultimately, this constitutes the genuine motive to pursue it.

We can now perceive that "follow your passion" gets the sequence reversed. Instead of commencing with our preexisting passions, anticipating that success and fulfillment will ensue, we ought to begin by "doing what matters." By cultivating valuable skills and dedicating them to significant challenges, passion and a genuinely gratifying life will surface over time.

Hopefully this comes as a solace — you are not required to discern your single true passion immediately. In actuality, you possess a greater array of options for a rewarding career than you presume. Two decades ago, I could never have envisioned feeling passionate about careers guidance — that would have sounded utterly tedious — yet here I stand, composing this guide.