“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

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From the moment when your aunt asks you at your birthday party, until years later when you sit across from a career coach with your diploma and CV, that burning question is what occupies the minds of many. And of course your answer will change over time – you cross astronaut and professional football player off the list, and add IT consultant and lawyer. Regardless of whether you’re 5, 25 or 45, that focus on professions and careers will always be present.

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But if you want to make the biggest possible difference in the fight for a better world, your profession actually matters less than you might think. Even more important than what you do is what you work on. No matter how brilliant you are as a lawyer, if you work for the wrong companies, the world still won’t be a better place.

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Remember that most jobs are created not to solve the world’s most pressing problems, but to fill a gap in a commercial market. So if you want to maximise your positive impact, you need to start doing things differently: identify an unmet need in the market of doing good.

What would you do if you had superpowers?

Rob Mather was already past 30 when he discovered his superpower.

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One weekday evening, Rob was sitting on the sofa watching TV when he stumbled across a documentary about Terri, a young girl who had suffered horrific burns at the tender age of two. Rob was deeply moved. He had two young children of his own, and he just couldn’t get Terri’s story out of his mind: he felt compelled to do something.

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So Rob called a few people and started organising a sponsored swim to raise funds. In turn, those people called loads of other people. And yes, those people also called people. The result? Ten thousand people from 73 countries took part in 150 swim events, all to raise money for little Terri.

Rob discovered he was fantastic at bringing people together: he was actually a kind of super-connector. And in the year that followed, Rob wanted to achieve even more, and help even more people. That’s how he ended up facing the choice that every do-gooder has to make: where do you want to put your talent to good use?

Importance, tractability, and neglectedness

A good place to start is looking for problems that meet three basic criteria: importance, tractability and neglectedness.

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Let’s start with importance. This essentially is about how good it would be for the world if you could solve this problem. How many people or animals would you help? And how much would it matter to those people or animals? For instance, a problem like climate change affects the whole world, so it achieves significant importance.

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Second, let’s discuss neglectedness. Fortunately, many large-scale problems get lots of attention. This is a good thing, but it also means that the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in those areas has often already been picked. Let’s go back to climate change: by now, governments are pumping billions of euros into greening our electricity production, but sustainability is often overlooked in the agricultural sector. With so many problems that remain neglected, there are still many ways to make a huge difference.

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Finally, it pays off to think about how you could solve the problem. That is much harder than it may seem: even the best of intentions can work out differently in actual practice. For instance, Australian researchers concluded in 2019 that “40 to 70% of donated medical devices go unused because they are not functional or suitable, or because staff was not trained to use them”. Or take the company that donated a pair of shoes for every pair it sold: again, it sounds nice, but scientific research has shown that it made no difference in the lives of the people who received them. Tractability basically comes down to building a solid case for what you are going to do: is there convincing evidence that your approach will work?

Seven jumbo jets crashing every single day

After raising money for Terri, Rob started listing other causes he could organise something for. Very early on, he made an important decision:

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“The easy choice in the beginning was to not focus on a disease in the developed world,” Rob explains. “Relatively speaking, there is already a lot of support for those problems. But there are still large parts of the world where a very small amount of money can get you very far.”

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So Rob made a list of problems in developing countries: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, land mines, clean drinking water, diarrhoea and... malaria. When Rob learned more about malaria, the choice was easy: malaria, it turns out, is the prime example of a problem that meets those basic criteria.

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First the importance: up to 500 million cases of malaria every year, and three thousand dead children every day. One of the most common causes of death in pregnant women and children under five. Or, as Rob puts it: “That’s seven jumbo jets full of children dying of malaria every single day.”

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But unlike an actual plane crash, you won’t easily find any mention of the daily malaria disaster in the news. Malaria, like so many problems in poorer countries, is systematically under-reported and neglected. When Rob started in 2004, only 5 million mosquito nets containing long-lasting insecticide were distributed annually – despite the fact that research shows that, statistically speaking, a few hundred mosquito nets can already save one child’s life.

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And that makes malaria reasonably solvable: either by distributing mosquito nets with insecticide, or by providing access to malaria pills (the same ones you get when you go on holiday to a country where malaria is prevalent). Since 2000, investments in malaria control have prevented almost 12 million deaths (and we are mainly talking about children under five). It is still one of the cheapest ways to save a life.

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What problem do you want to solve?

Meanwhile, the organisation that Rob founded – the Against Malaria Foundation – has raised more than half a billion dollars and distributed over 200 million mosquito nets. In doing so, it has made a huge contribution to the fight against malaria.

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There is an important lesson to learn from Rob’s story. Inspired by pure empathy, Rob sprang into action to help someone else, and in the process discovered that he had a great talent for mobilising a maximum number of other people. But it was only when he took a step back, and really started thinking about where his talent was needed most, that his impact shot through the roof.

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For most of us, this means adopting a different mindset than we are accustomed to when it comes to our work. What you do still matters: after all, you still need to find your superpower before you can use it to make the world a better place. But before choosing a job, be especially mindful of what problem you want to solve, because that’s probably where the real impact is.

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Translation by Joy Phillips

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