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Moral Ambition

 I have definitely worked a lot of bullshit jobs in my career. After a while it became hard to escape the gnawing inner voice that reminded every morning that I was wasting my time and talents (such as they are) to earn a paycheck. That voice reminded me all the time, the sum of the bullshit jobs is still a large pile of bullshit. 

As such, when I look back I won't have much I could feel proud or happy about. Depending on the years a person has between the end of their professional life and death, that is a lot of time wondering about such waste. That said, I have not seen my moral ambition translate into work that checks all the boxes - not yet. I hope that will diligent effort, some day I will come closer to that ideal. The proposed solution will work for some but everyone who has stumbled into a bullshit job and can't get out:

A solution may present itself in the unlikely marriage between the idealism of a professional activist with the ambition and practicality of an entrepreneur. Just as a business looks for holes in the market when developing a new product, so does Bregman urge these would-be activist-entrepreneurs to focus on pressing but overlooked global issues.

The example is good and illustrative of what a valid intersection needs to look like

..he shares the story of Rob Mather, a successful strategy consultant from London who – after organizing a charity swim for a burn victim he saw on television – went on to found theAgainst Malaria Foundation because, while a cure for the infectious disease already existed, it wasn’t being made available to the countries that needed it most. 

There is the third component to the puzzle - having found the intersection, are you qualified to build the solution and/or have the ability to attract the talent needed for doing so. This third component in my experience has been the hardest, specially if you are looking to tackle the problem as your full-time job, no some part-time volunteer gig.

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