You might be a great fit if you have the potential to become obsessed with high-impact questions, have high levels of grit and self-motivation, are open to new ideas, are intelligent, and have a high degree of intellectual curiosity. You’ll also need to be a good fit for the particular area you’re researching (e.g. you might need quantitative ability).
- No location available
-
- [note::I think my ability to become obsessed with high-impact questions is my biggest hang up here.]

If we think about what has most improved the modern world, much can be traced back to research: advances in medicine such as the development of vaccines against infectious diseases, developments in physics and chemistry that led to steam power and the industrial revolution, and the invention of the modern computer, an idea which was first proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936 paper On Computable Numbers.2Many of these ideas were discovered by a relatively small number of researchers — but they changed all of society. This suggests that these researchers may have had particularly large individual impacts.
- No location available
-

That said, research today is probably lower-impact than in the past. Research is much less neglected than it used to be: there are nearly 25 times as many researchers today as there were in 1930.3 It also turns out that more and more effort is required to discover new ideas, so each additional researcher probably has less impact than those that came before.4However, even today, a relatively small fraction of people are engaged in research. As an approximation, only 0.1% of the population are academics,5 and only about 2.5% of GDP is spent on research and development. If a small number of people account for a large fraction of progress, then on average each person’s efforts are significant.
- No location available
-

There’s little commercial incentive to focus on the most socially valuable research. And most researchers don’t get rich, even if their discoveries are extremely valuable. Alan Turing made no money from the discovery of the computer, and today it’s a multibillion-dollar industry. This is because the benefits of research often come a long time in the future and can’t usually be protected by patents. This means if you care more about social impact than profit, then it’s a good opportunity to have an edge.
- No location available
-

When you look at our list of the world’s most pressing problems — like preventing future pandemics or reducing risks from AI systems — expert researchers seem like a key bottleneck.For example, to reduce the risk posed by engineered pandemics, we need people who are talented at research to identify the biggest biosecurity risks and to develop better vaccines and treatments.
- No location available
-

Pursuing research helps you develop deep expertise on a topic, problem-solving, and writing skills. These can be useful in many other career paths. For example:Many research areas can lead to opportunities in policymaking, since relevant technical expertise is valued in some of these positions. You might also have opportunities to advise policymakers and the public as an expert.The expertise and credibility you can develop by focusing on research (especially in academia) can put you in a good position to switch your focus to communicating important ideas, especially those related to your speciality, either to the general public, policymakers, or your students.If you specialise in an applied quantitative subject, it can open up certain high-paying jobs, such as quantitative trading or data science, which offer good opportunities for earning to give.
- No location available
-

Here the focus is on solving a more immediate practical problem (and if pursued by a company, where it might be possible to make profit from the solution) — and there’s lots of overlap with engineering skills. For example:Developing new vaccinesCreating new types of solar cells or nuclear reactorsDeveloping meat substitutes
- No location available
-

It’s hard to know exactly how spread out the distribution is, but there are several strands of evidence that suggest the variability is very high.Firstly, most academic papers get very few citations, while a few get hundreds or even thousands. An analysis of citation counts in science journals found that ~47% of papers had never been cited, more than 80% had been cited 10 times or less, but the top 0.1% had been cited more than 1,000 times. A similar pattern seems to hold across individual researchers, meaning that only a few dominate — at least in terms of the recognition their papers receive.
- No location available
-
- [note::How much is this influenced by network effects? (i.e. "I was reading this great paper from [well-known author]")]

Practically, the important question isn’t how big the spread is, but whether you could — early on in your career — identify whether or not you’ll be among the very best researchers.There’s good news here! At least in scientific research, these differences also seem to be at least somewhat predictable ahead of time, which means the people entering research with the best fit could have many times more expected impact.
- No location available
-

The large spread in productivity makes building strong research skills a lot more promising if you’re a better fit than average. And if you’re a great fit, research can easily become your best option.And while these differences in output are not fully predictable at the start of a career, the spread is so large that it’s likely still possible to predict differences in productivity with some reliability.
- No location available
-

Some of the key traits that suggest you might be a good fit for a research skills seem to be:Intelligence (Read more about whether intelligence is important for research.)The potential to become obsessed with a topic (Becoming an expert in anything can take decades of focused practice, so you need to be able to stick with it.)Relatedly, high levels of grit, self-motivation, and — especially for independent big picture research, but also for research in academia — the ability to learn and work productively without a traditional manager or many externally imposed deadlinesOpenness to new ideas and intellectual curiosityGood research taste, i.e. noticing when a research question matters a lot for solving a pressing problem
- No location available
-

Here are some broad milestones you could aim for while becoming a researcher:You’re successfully devoting time to building your research skills and communicating your findings to others. (This can often be the hardest milestone to hit for many — it can be hard to simply sustain motivation and productivity given how self-directed research often needs to be.)In your own judgement, you feel you have made and explained multiple novel, valid, nontrivially important (though not necessarily earth-shattering) points about important topics in your area.You’ve had enough feedback (comments, formal reviews, personal communication) to feel that at least several other people (whose judgement you respect and who have put serious time into thinking about your area) agree, and (as a result) feel they’ve learned something from your work. For example, lots of this feedback could come from an academic supervisor. Make sure you’re asking people in a way that gives them affordance to say you’re not doing well.You’re making meaningful connections with others interested in your area — connections that seem likely to lead to further funding and/or job opportunities. This could be from the organisations most devoted to your topics of interest; but, there could also be a “dissident” dynamic in which these organisations seem uninterested and/or defensive, but others are noticing this and offering help.
- No location available
-
- [note::Yeah, I just don't see myself being the type of person that rapidly passes each of these milestones.]

In general, it’s not necessary to obsess over being “original” or having some new insight at the beginning. You can learn a lot just by trying to write up your current understanding.
- No location available
-

When you’re getting started building research skills, there are three factors to consider in choosing a field:Personal fit — what are your chances of being a top researcher in the area? Even if you work on an important question, you won’t make much difference if you’re not particularly good at it or motivated to work on the problem.Impact — how likely is it that research in your field will contribute to solving pressing problems?Back-up options — how will the skills you build open up other options if you decide to change fields (or leave research altogether)?
- No location available
-

Richard Hamming used to annoy his colleagues by asking them “What’s the most important question in your field?”, and then after they’d explained, following up with “And why aren’t you working on it?”You don’t always need to work on the very most important question in your field, but Hamming has a point. Researchers often drift into a narrow speciality and can get detached from the questions that really matter.
- No location available
-

One approach is to ask yourself which global problems you think are most pressing, and then try to identify research questions that are:Important to making progress on those problems (i.e. if this question were answered, it would lead to more progress on these problems)Neglected by other researchers (e.g. because they’re at the intersection of two fields, unpopular for bad reasons, or new)Tractable (i.e. you can see a path to making progress)
- No location available
-

There’s little money in answering the question. This can be because the problem mostly affects poorer people, people who are in the future, or non-humans, or because it involves public goods. This means there’s little incentive for businesses to do research on this question.
- No location available
-

The political incentives to answer the question are missing. This can happen when the problem hurts poorer or otherwise marginalised people, people who tend not to organise politically, people in countries outside the one where the research is most likely to get done, people who are in the future, or non-humans. This means there’s no incentive for governments or other public actors to research this question.
- No location available
-

It’s new, doesn’t already have an established discipline, or is at the intersection of two disciplines. The first researchers in an area tend to take any low hanging fruit, and it gets harder and harder from there to make big discoveries. For example, the rate of progress within machine learning is far higher than the rate of progress within theoretical physics. At the same time, the structure of academia means most researchers stay stuck within the field they start in, and it can be hard to get funding to branch out into other areas. This means that new fields or questions at the intersection of two disciplines often get unfairly neglected and therefore provide opportunities for outsized impact.
- No location available
-

There is some aspect of human irrationality that means people don’t correctly prioritise the issue. For instance, some issues are easy to visualise, which makes them more motivating to work on. People are scope blind which means they’re likely to neglect the issues with the very biggest scale. They’re also bad at reasoning about issues with low probability, which can make them either over-invest or under-invest in them.
- No location available
-

Working on the question is low status. In academia, research that’s intellectually interesting and fits the research standards of the discipline are high status. Also, mathematical and theoretical work tends to be seen as higher status (and therefore helps to progress your career). But these don’t correlate that well with the social value of the question.
- No location available
-

You’re bringing new skills or a new perspective to an established area. Progress often comes in science from bringing the techniques and insights of one field into another. For instance, Kahneman started a revolution in economics by applying findings from psychology. Cross-over is an obvious approach but is rarely used because researchers tend to be immersed in their own particular subject.
- No location available
-

If you think you’ve found a research question that’s short on talent, it’s worth checking whether the question is answerable. People might be avoiding the question because it’s just extremely difficult to find an answer. Or perhaps progress isn’t possible at all. Ask yourself, “If there were progress on this question, how would we know?”
- No location available
-

High Impact Science by Carl ShulmanHow to succeed as an early-stage researcher: the “lean startup” approachPodcast: Luisa and Robert Long on how to make independent research more funA list of potentially high-impact research questions, organised by discipline
- No location available
-

You might be a great fit if you have the potential to become obsessed with high-impact questions, have high levels of grit and self-motivation, are open to new ideas, are intelligent, and have a high degree of intellectual curiosity. You’ll also need to be a good fit for the particular area you’re researching (e.g. you might need quantitative ability).
- No location available
-
- [note::I think my ability to become obsessed with high-impact questions is my biggest hang up here.]

If we think about what has most improved the modern world, much can be traced back to research: advances in medicine such as the development of vaccines against infectious diseases, developments in physics and chemistry that led to steam power and the industrial revolution, and the invention of the modern computer, an idea which was first proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936 paper On Computable Numbers.2Many of these ideas were discovered by a relatively small number of researchers — but they changed all of society. This suggests that these researchers may have had particularly large individual impacts.
- No location available
-

That said, research today is probably lower-impact than in the past. Research is much less neglected than it used to be: there are nearly 25 times as many researchers today as there were in 1930.3 It also turns out that more and more effort is required to discover new ideas, so each additional researcher probably has less impact than those that came before.4However, even today, a relatively small fraction of people are engaged in research. As an approximation, only 0.1% of the population are academics,5 and only about 2.5% of GDP is spent on research and development. If a small number of people account for a large fraction of progress, then on average each person’s efforts are significant.
- No location available
-

There’s little commercial incentive to focus on the most socially valuable research. And most researchers don’t get rich, even if their discoveries are extremely valuable. Alan Turing made no money from the discovery of the computer, and today it’s a multibillion-dollar industry. This is because the benefits of research often come a long time in the future and can’t usually be protected by patents. This means if you care more about social impact than profit, then it’s a good opportunity to have an edge.
- No location available
-

When you look at our list of the world’s most pressing problems — like preventing future pandemics or reducing risks from AI systems — expert researchers seem like a key bottleneck.For example, to reduce the risk posed by engineered pandemics, we need people who are talented at research to identify the biggest biosecurity risks and to develop better vaccines and treatments.
- No location available
-

Pursuing research helps you develop deep expertise on a topic, problem-solving, and writing skills. These can be useful in many other career paths. For example:Many research areas can lead to opportunities in policymaking, since relevant technical expertise is valued in some of these positions. You might also have opportunities to advise policymakers and the public as an expert.The expertise and credibility you can develop by focusing on research (especially in academia) can put you in a good position to switch your focus to communicating important ideas, especially those related to your speciality, either to the general public, policymakers, or your students.If you specialise in an applied quantitative subject, it can open up certain high-paying jobs, such as quantitative trading or data science, which offer good opportunities for earning to give.
- No location available
-

Here the focus is on solving a more immediate practical problem (and if pursued by a company, where it might be possible to make profit from the solution) — and there’s lots of overlap with engineering skills. For example:Developing new vaccinesCreating new types of solar cells or nuclear reactorsDeveloping meat substitutes
- No location available
-

It’s hard to know exactly how spread out the distribution is, but there are several strands of evidence that suggest the variability is very high.Firstly, most academic papers get very few citations, while a few get hundreds or even thousands. An analysis of citation counts in science journals found that ~47% of papers had never been cited, more than 80% had been cited 10 times or less, but the top 0.1% had been cited more than 1,000 times. A similar pattern seems to hold across individual researchers, meaning that only a few dominate — at least in terms of the recognition their papers receive.
- No location available
-
- [note::How much is this influenced by network effects? (i.e. "I was reading this great paper from [well-known author]")]

Practically, the important question isn’t how big the spread is, but whether you could — early on in your career — identify whether or not you’ll be among the very best researchers.There’s good news here! At least in scientific research, these differences also seem to be at least somewhat predictable ahead of time, which means the people entering research with the best fit could have many times more expected impact.
- No location available
-

The large spread in productivity makes building strong research skills a lot more promising if you’re a better fit than average. And if you’re a great fit, research can easily become your best option.And while these differences in output are not fully predictable at the start of a career, the spread is so large that it’s likely still possible to predict differences in productivity with some reliability.
- No location available
-

Some of the key traits that suggest you might be a good fit for a research skills seem to be:Intelligence (Read more about whether intelligence is important for research.)The potential to become obsessed with a topic (Becoming an expert in anything can take decades of focused practice, so you need to be able to stick with it.)Relatedly, high levels of grit, self-motivation, and — especially for independent big picture research, but also for research in academia — the ability to learn and work productively without a traditional manager or many externally imposed deadlinesOpenness to new ideas and intellectual curiosityGood research taste, i.e. noticing when a research question matters a lot for solving a pressing problem
- No location available
-

Here are some broad milestones you could aim for while becoming a researcher:You’re successfully devoting time to building your research skills and communicating your findings to others. (This can often be the hardest milestone to hit for many — it can be hard to simply sustain motivation and productivity given how self-directed research often needs to be.)In your own judgement, you feel you have made and explained multiple novel, valid, nontrivially important (though not necessarily earth-shattering) points about important topics in your area.You’ve had enough feedback (comments, formal reviews, personal communication) to feel that at least several other people (whose judgement you respect and who have put serious time into thinking about your area) agree, and (as a result) feel they’ve learned something from your work. For example, lots of this feedback could come from an academic supervisor. Make sure you’re asking people in a way that gives them affordance to say you’re not doing well.You’re making meaningful connections with others interested in your area — connections that seem likely to lead to further funding and/or job opportunities. This could be from the organisations most devoted to your topics of interest; but, there could also be a “dissident” dynamic in which these organisations seem uninterested and/or defensive, but others are noticing this and offering help.
- No location available
-
- [note::Yeah, I just don't see myself being the type of person that rapidly passes each of these milestones.]

In general, it’s not necessary to obsess over being “original” or having some new insight at the beginning. You can learn a lot just by trying to write up your current understanding.
- No location available
-

When you’re getting started building research skills, there are three factors to consider in choosing a field:Personal fit — what are your chances of being a top researcher in the area? Even if you work on an important question, you won’t make much difference if you’re not particularly good at it or motivated to work on the problem.Impact — how likely is it that research in your field will contribute to solving pressing problems?Back-up options — how will the skills you build open up other options if you decide to change fields (or leave research altogether)?
- No location available
-

Richard Hamming used to annoy his colleagues by asking them “What’s the most important question in your field?”, and then after they’d explained, following up with “And why aren’t you working on it?”You don’t always need to work on the very most important question in your field, but Hamming has a point. Researchers often drift into a narrow speciality and can get detached from the questions that really matter.
- No location available
-

One approach is to ask yourself which global problems you think are most pressing, and then try to identify research questions that are:Important to making progress on those problems (i.e. if this question were answered, it would lead to more progress on these problems)Neglected by other researchers (e.g. because they’re at the intersection of two fields, unpopular for bad reasons, or new)Tractable (i.e. you can see a path to making progress)
- No location available
-

There’s little money in answering the question. This can be because the problem mostly affects poorer people, people who are in the future, or non-humans, or because it involves public goods. This means there’s little incentive for businesses to do research on this question.
- No location available
-

The political incentives to answer the question are missing. This can happen when the problem hurts poorer or otherwise marginalised people, people who tend not to organise politically, people in countries outside the one where the research is most likely to get done, people who are in the future, or non-humans. This means there’s no incentive for governments or other public actors to research this question.
- No location available
-

It’s new, doesn’t already have an established discipline, or is at the intersection of two disciplines. The first researchers in an area tend to take any low hanging fruit, and it gets harder and harder from there to make big discoveries. For example, the rate of progress within machine learning is far higher than the rate of progress within theoretical physics. At the same time, the structure of academia means most researchers stay stuck within the field they start in, and it can be hard to get funding to branch out into other areas. This means that new fields or questions at the intersection of two disciplines often get unfairly neglected and therefore provide opportunities for outsized impact.
- No location available
-

There is some aspect of human irrationality that means people don’t correctly prioritise the issue. For instance, some issues are easy to visualise, which makes them more motivating to work on. People are scope blind which means they’re likely to neglect the issues with the very biggest scale. They’re also bad at reasoning about issues with low probability, which can make them either over-invest or under-invest in them.
- No location available
-

Working on the question is low status. In academia, research that’s intellectually interesting and fits the research standards of the discipline are high status. Also, mathematical and theoretical work tends to be seen as higher status (and therefore helps to progress your career). But these don’t correlate that well with the social value of the question.
- No location available
-

You’re bringing new skills or a new perspective to an established area. Progress often comes in science from bringing the techniques and insights of one field into another. For instance, Kahneman started a revolution in economics by applying findings from psychology. Cross-over is an obvious approach but is rarely used because researchers tend to be immersed in their own particular subject.
- No location available
-

If you think you’ve found a research question that’s short on talent, it’s worth checking whether the question is answerable. People might be avoiding the question because it’s just extremely difficult to find an answer. Or perhaps progress isn’t possible at all. Ask yourself, “If there were progress on this question, how would we know?”
- No location available
-

High Impact Science by Carl ShulmanHow to succeed as an early-stage researcher: the “lean startup” approachPodcast: Luisa and Robert Long on how to make independent research more funA list of potentially high-impact research questions, organised by discipline
- No location available
-