This week’s learning objectives

Learning objectives

By the end of this week, you will be able to:

• Write a clear theory of change for your own impact

• Apply the explore/build/deploy framework to your career decisions

• Make a specific giving plan you can act on

• Identify your comparative advantage across the four pathways

• Turn your thinking into specific commitments with deadlines

Time commitment

• Reading: ~60 minutes (course text, the 80,000 Hours career guide, Giving What We Can, and a political-action article). The cause-specific resources at the end are optional.

• MCQs (on Circle, interleaved between lessons): ~10 minutes

• Exercises and workbook: ~85 minutes, including drafting your own career plan in the workbook

• Presentation preparation: ~45 minutes (can be spread across the week)

• Total pre-session work: ~3.5–4 hours

This is the longest week by design — you’re translating everything from the course into a concrete plan. Consider spreading the work across several days rather than doing it in one sitting.

Why this matters

Over the past four weeks, you’ve built a serious analytical toolkit. You’ve learnt about crazy variations in impact (Week 1), how you can evaluate interventions in terms of cost-effectiveness (Week 2), reason under uncertainty (Week 3), and prioritise between cause areas (Week 4). You’ve even chosen a problem to focus on.

But knowing which problems matter most doesn’t automatically translate into doing something about them. There’s a well-documented gap between intention and action—psychologists call it the “intention-action gap”—and it’s especially wide for the kinds of commitments we’re talking about here. Changing your career trajectory, giving away a meaningful share of your income, spending your political capital on neglected issues: these are costly, uncomfortable decisions that compete with inertia and social pressure.

The gap isn’t a character flaw. It’s a design problem. People who make vague commitments (“I should probably give more to charity”) almost never follow through. People who make specific commitments (“I’ll donate 3% of my post-tax income to the Against Malaria Foundation, set up a monthly standing order by Friday, and review annually”) usually do. The difference isn’t motivation. It’s concreteness.

This week is about closing that gap. You’ll think through four pathways to impact—career, giving, political voice, and being a multiplier—and draft a plan that’s specific enough to actually act on. The plan won’t be perfect. It shouldn’t be. The point is to have something concrete enough to test, revise, and hold yourself accountable to.

A note on tone: this week asks you to make commitments, and that can feel heavy. It’s worth saying explicitly: any step in a more impactful direction is worth celebrating. Donating 1% of your income to a well-chosen charity is genuinely remarkable—most people never do it. Spending an afternoon researching career options is more than almost anyone does. The goal isn’t to optimise yourself into exhaustion. It’s to make considered choices about the time, money and influence you already have.