Many people think that “ivory tower” intellectuals make little difference in the world. But some of the highest impact people in history have been researchers, and if you have good personal fit with academic research, we think it can be one of the highest-impact paths…In this article, we’ll cover why we think a career in academia has the potential to be very high impact in the right circumstances, how to figure out whether this option is for you, and how to maximise the impact you can have as an academic.
Whittlestone, J. (2018). Academic research. 80,000 hours.
This article is an incredibly deep dive into the relative benefits and disadvantages of an academic career. Whether you’re in the early stages of thinking about starting on an academic career or are already a full professor, you may find some very valuable context for planning your next move. If you think of your career as something that happens to you, then this article may be a good place to start thinking differently about the rest of your working life.
80 000 hours is an organisation that aims to help as many people as possible lead high impact careers. The idea is that you have about 80 000 working hours in your career, which means that your choice of career is one of the biggest decisions you’ll ever make. Therefore, it’s worth spending a bit of time figuring out how to use that time for good. Their About page has links to many more resources that I’ve found very useful for thinking about my career as an academic.