I have a heuristic that you basically shouldn’t try to optimize for multiple things at once. This is commonly known for charitable donations, but applies in many other cases as well: pretty much whenever you try to optimize for two things with one action, you’re cutting down the search space by a huge amount, so it’s probably not worth it.
Examples:
When choosing a job, don’t try to find something that’s both lucrative and does social good. You’ll end up in something like public interest law or tech work for nonprofits. This pays vastly less than the highest-paying jobs, like finance, and does vastly less good than the best direct work jobs, like working for an effective altruist organization, to the extent that either extreme is most likely better.
If you’re starting a company for altruistic reasons, you should either focus entirely on making as much money as possible and donating it, or entirely on creating as much value as possible through the startup. For instance, if you’re maximizing income you should be stingy with equity, whereas if you’re maximizing value-creation you should be generous. Also, for income you should definitely start your business in the US, but for value-creation you may want to consider a developing country instead.
I think this also holds in many other domains, e.g. hobbies, classes, and basically anything else where you choose one or more things based on multiple criteria. Thoughts?