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Your Career Plan Template
Your Career Plan Template
This template is designed to help you write an in-depth and actionable career plan, so that you
can find and follow your highest impact path. If you complete each part below, you will have
worked through the most important issues you need to think about when planning your career,
identified next steps, and have all your answers sketched out in one place.
The template is designed to be used alongside our career planning process, though it can also
be used directly — we link to relevant sections of the process throughout.
We've made this template a Google Doc so that you can copy, edit, print, and/or share it for
your own purposes. Make whatever changes seem helpful.
Either way, we encourage you to talk to friends and advisors, and/or send your template around
for comments. Read more about how to use the planning process in the companion process.
If you agree with our rough definition, you can leave this blank, or you can copy out a version of
it to keep in mind throughout the process.
1.2 Your top 3–6 personal priorities
The factors we argue are important for impact — working on a pressing problem, finding an
effective opportunity, and having a strong personal fit with your role — can also contribute to
personal fulfillment and happiness.
But there are other career-related personal factors that will be important for you in the long term.
For example, for most people it's also key to have engaging work, autonomy, supportive
colleagues, fair pay, and non-crazy working hours.
What are your top career-related personal priorities that won’t already be furthered by aiming to
have a positive impact?
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★ 2.1 Write out the global problems you think are most pressing
There are two main approaches for coming up with your ranked list. The ideal is to combine the
two:
Bear in mind that no one has this all figured out. So you'll probably want to do at least some of
your own analysis to adjust or confirm any views you work from.
If you want to go a bit more in-depth and start from scratch with your own research, we provide
questions in the appendix to help you work through the process. When you're done, come back
here to continue on.
Make sure you're thinking about which problems are most pressing in general, not yet taking
your personal fit into account—that comes later.
2.1.1 Based on what you learned above, list the 2–5 global issues you think are likely to
be most pressing
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2.1.2 Then consider 3–10 issues that might be even more pressing, but about which
you are more uncertain
You could include some of the issues we discuss on our longer list if you want.
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★ 2.2 What are your 3–5 biggest uncertainties about your list?
Think about questions where you're unsure, and where the answer would make a big difference
to how pressing you think different issues are. You'll return to these questions later.
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Don't worry if, after you do this exercise, you feel really uncertain about your options—you can
still make a great next career step, as we'll cover in Section 5.
As you go through, don’t forget about our list of career paths to consider. Also keep in mind that
it's generally wise to aim high and not rule options out too quickly.
For example, if one of your top problems is climate change, and you think what mitigating
climate change most requires is technological innovation, you might list 'running an incubator for
green tech startups' as a potential option. Write out 3–5 ideas in this category.
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★ 3.1.2. Develop transferable career capital
This means aiming to build skills, connections, reputation, and other resources that will give you
good options to work on top problems in the future (more detail).
E.g. you could aim to work your way up in government, or become known as an expert in
operations management. Write 3–5 options in this category.
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Now brainstorm another 2–5 ideas for longer-term paths that would allow you to capitalise on
these assets:
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What do these communities most need in order to have more positive impact? Brainstorm
another 2–5 ideas for longer-term paths you could take to help meet those needs:
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3.1.6 Generate any more options for longer-term paths you can think of
One of the biggest mistakes people make in career planning is not considering enough options.
Check out our lists of especially promising career paths and add any that might be a good fit for
you in the longer term.
● Elimination: If you couldn’t do any of your top ideas, what would you do instead?
● Good luck: What would you do if you knew you would have a high chance of success?
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★ 3.2 Write out a shortlist of your 3–6 most promising longer-term paths
Now that you have your long list, it's time to narrow it down to a shortlist of the most promising
options.
You can choose what factors to use to compare options, but we suggest:
● Targeted impact: How pressing are the problem(s) each longer-term path addresses,
and how much do they help you solve them?
● Transferable career capital or influence: How much will each path give you general-
purpose leverage to contribute to solving pressing problems?
● Personal fit: What are your chances of outsized success? (Also consider your relative fit
if you're working with a community.)
● How well does each path fit with your personal priorities from Section 1.2?
See our advice for more guidance on how to assess your paths based on the factors you
choose.
Again, don't worry if you're uncertain—you'll write your uncertainties below and come back to
them.
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★ 3.3 What are your biggest uncertainties about this list?
Try to come up with at least three.
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★ 4.1 Which strategic focus is the best fit for you right now?
Your 'strategic focus' is a heuristic you'll use for figuring out what factors to emphasise when
choosing what next career steps you want to take (which we'll discuss in the next section).
Here are four focuses that can be helpful at different points in your career (click here read about
them):
Write your current strategic focus, and why you chose it, here:
By next career steps we mean jobs or other opportunities you might take for up to a few years
— e.g. applying for a master’s degree in public policy, trying to shift into a management position
at your company, or taking an online course in machine learning.
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5.2 Narrow down your next steps and write down key uncertainties
★ 5.2.1 Clarify which criteria you’re going to use to compare your next steps
We generally recommend comparing your options based on (i) immediate impact potential, (ii)
specialist career capital potential, (iii) transferable career capital potential, (iv) personal fit, (v)
information value, and (vi) fit with your other personal priorities (read about these factors). But
you should feel free to add to or adjust these factors as you see fit.
Use the strategic focus you chose in Section 4 to help you identify which of these factors are
most important for you to consider, and write them down here:
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Also, keep in mind when narrowing down that you should probably eliminate potentially harmful
options if you can't mitigate their risks (why).
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^ This is your best guess at what you should try to do next in your career (part of your Plan A).
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You have all the ingredients for your Plan A: your best-guess next career step and any longer-
term paths from the shortlist you made in Section 3.2 that are compatible with it (what to do if
you don't have any).
E.g. Could you move in with family, or go back to your old job?
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★ 7.1 Step back, reflect, and make your final a list of key uncertainties
7.1.3 Change frame and ask yourself how you feel about your plan
Two more exercises for spotting potential key uncertainties about your plan are:
Do these exercises turn up any further uncertainties (or resolve any)? If so, add them to your list
in Section 7.1.1.
Write your prioritised list of uncertainties here (feel free to leave off any that are so low priority
you know they aren't worth trying to resolve):
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We discuss how (and whether!) to investigate key uncertainties, as well as how long to spend,
in the full process.
One general tip is to always start with the lowest cost ways to gain information. For example,
you could start by reading relevant career reviews or problem profiles, and then decide to talk to
people in an area. If you want to invest more, you could test out a project.
List actions you will take to investigate your key uncertainties here:
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You can also move some of your investigation steps to Section 8.1, and list them as 'next
actions' — so you don't have to finish them all before moving on. In truth, investigating
uncertainties, taking next actions, and moving toward next steps is not a linear process, and it's
fine to jump back and forth.
In particular, for now you'll need to make a judgement call on your Plan A — i.e. whether to stick
with what you came up with in Section 5.5 for now, or switch to one of your other options.
Don't worry if you don't feel fully settled — you can (and likely will) adjust your plans later as you
learn more throughout your career.
Now write down your best-guess career plan here, by filling in the blanks with what you have
above:
My strategic focus (and any other strategic priorities) right now is…
My Plan A is to…
My Plan B is to…
My Plan Z is to….
★ 7.5 Set review points
Your plan is done for now, but you should review and adjust it periodically as you advance in
your career.
You've put a lot of thought into how you'll use your career to help make the world a better place,
and you're now in as strong a position as you can be to go out there and do it.
Thank you for taking the time, and for your dedication to making a positive difference with your
career.
However, to get you started on executing on your plan, we've included some tips on putting your
plan into action, now that you have it.
You may also have more investigation steps from Section 7.3 that you haven’t done yet. You
can also add those to your list of next actions.
Write out what you’re going to do in the form of small, manageable next actions, as well as
when you’ll do them, here:
For anything you can't do right away, add a reminder in your calendar.
Keep adding to this list action plan (right click to insert a row below), taking your next actions,
and crossing items off as long as you find it useful.
We have advice on some of the key ingredients in this process—doing a job search and getting
a job, meeting people, and succeeding in your roles—on our website.
Now go out there and help solve the world's most pressing problems. We're rooting for you.
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Appendix
Your investigation of which global problems are most pressing
We provide some guidance in the full process on investigating and comparing global issues.
Here we go through the main ingredients.
You can see some examples of worldviews (like longtermism and neartermism) in the full
process.
Do you share any of the example worldviews? Do you have any reservations about them, or
want to combine parts of different ones? Do you have a totally different view of what's important,
what the world is like, and/or how we can know about it?
Use this space to write about your views — keeping in mind it's ok if they're sketchy or
uncertain.
Framework(s) for comparing issues
Learn about different frameworks you can use to compare issues. For example, we often use
the importance, neglectedness, and tractability framework, where how you assess the
importance and tractability of problems is partially determined by your worldview. (See a more
popular introduction to the framework).
Make any notes you want on frameworks you want to use here:
Use this space to brainstorm and write about your ideas. You don't have to be certain you've got
things right — just make your best guess and you'll record uncertainties as you go.
Compare
Now that you have your list of global problems, compare them according to your worldview and
using the frameworks you learned about above.
How to do it? Later sections of the process provide more detail, but in short: Once you generate
a long list of options, identify key uncertainties, and work out what research you might do to
resolve those uncertainties, then go ahead and do it, and then reassess and repeat. Use this
space to write out your thoughts.