The problem isn't that there isn't any impactful work, its that impactful work is hard to identify at the outset. We've allowed narratives to shape our view of

The problem isn't that there isn't any impactful work, its that impactful work is hard to identify at the outset. We've allowed narratives to shape our view of how "impact" gets made: the aha moment when a scientist discovers something in a movie. But the underlying connections between breakthroughs are much more subtle and actually impossibly difficult to predict. Who would have guessed that the video game industry would push graphics cards to a point where they are now incredibly beneficial to scientific applications? You could say the makers of PC games were just optimizing things for consumers, but there is a direct connection between what they did and the computing power we have for worthwhile applications today. Who would have guessed, in 1847, that Boole's philosophical papers on logic, would form the foundations of computing a hundred years later? George Boole died without every knowing any of this. The most impactful changes in people's lives are rarely direct. Seeking "impactful" goals is a trap in my experience. Find something that excites you and if its creative, my money's on that being more useful than you think.