tl;dr: Duration: Maybe ~12 months. Hours of EA-related video per week during that time: Maybe 4? Hours of EA-related audiobooks and podcasts per week: Maybe 10-15. Hours of all other EA-related learning per week: Maybe ~5-15?
So maybe ~1400 hours total. (What!? That sounds like a lot!) Or 520 hours if we donât count video and audio, since those didnât actually take time out of my day (see below).
Duration
I learned about EA around September 2018, and started actively trying to âget up to speedâ around October 2018. Itâs less clear what âend pointsâ to useâi.e., when was I now âup to speedâ?
Two possible âend pointsâ are when I wrote my first proper forum post and when I was offered an EA researcher job. Both of those things happened around the end of December 2019, suggesting this was a ~14 months process.
But maybe a better âend pointâ would be around August 2019. By around then, I was running an EA-based club at my school and organising and presenting at local EA events. And in September, I attended EAGxAustralia, and feltâto my surprise! - like I was unusually familiar with EA ideas, among the people there. So that suggests this was a ~10 month process.
Hours of video per week
I watched EAG, EAGx, and other EA-related videos only while on an exercise bike or while eating. So it didnât really cut into my schedule, except in that it meant I wasnât watching other things at that time (e.g., random history lectures, Netflix). Iâd guess this amounted to roughly 4 hours per week.
Hours of audio per week
I listen to audiobook and podcasts while commuting, doing housework, donating plasma, or doing other tasks that donât require much focus but also donât allow me to be on my laptop. This seems to amount to roughly 1-2.5 hours per day. As with the video, this doesnât really cut into my schedule except by displacing other audio things (and also by making me extra helpful with housework when Iâve got a really good book/âpodcast!).
(I also listen at 1.5-2x speed, but skip back often, so the 1-2.5 clock hours are probably ~1.5-3.5 content hours.)
Hours per week ignoring video and audio
During these 10-14 months, I was also teaching at 0.8 FTE and doing a Masters of Teaching (but with a lower course-load than I expect most Masters have, as it was integrated with my actual teaching). This was part of the Teach For Australia program, which people tend to find very busy and intense by itself. So I crammed my âEA studyâ into weekends, after-work hours, and (teacher) holidays, alongside the (limited and pretty easy) Masters coursework.
So it wasnât a huge number of hours per week, simply as I had few available. On the other hand, I think Iâm happy with workingâand tend to workâmore hours than is average. And I also just found learning EA-relevant things veryinteresting, so that didnât drain me at allâit was more like the carrot I dangled in front of myself to get myself to do my other, actual work more efficiently!
And the matter of hours per week is further complicated by the fact that (a) teachers get long holidays, but (b) I had a lot of Masters work and teacher prep work to do during holidays.
So Iâd pretty unconfidently guess I spent 5-15 hours per week on this, averaging out across that whole period (including both the work weeks and holiday weeks).
[My original answer ignored the video and audio time, since Iâd been trying to remember how much time I allocated to EA-related stuff, and the video and audio didnât really require allocating special time so I overlooked it.]
tl;dr: Duration: Maybe ~12 months. Hours of EA-related video per week during that time: Maybe 4? Hours of EA-related audiobooks and podcasts per week: Maybe 10-15. Hours of all other EA-related learning per week: Maybe ~5-15?
So maybe ~1400 hours total. (What!? That sounds like a lot!) Or 520 hours if we donât count video and audio, since those didnât actually take time out of my day (see below).
Duration
I learned about EA around September 2018, and started actively trying to âget up to speedâ around October 2018. Itâs less clear what âend pointsâ to useâi.e., when was I now âup to speedâ?
Two possible âend pointsâ are when I wrote my first proper forum post and when I was offered an EA researcher job. Both of those things happened around the end of December 2019, suggesting this was a ~14 months process.
But maybe a better âend pointâ would be around August 2019. By around then, I was running an EA-based club at my school and organising and presenting at local EA events. And in September, I attended EAGxAustralia, and feltâto my surprise! - like I was unusually familiar with EA ideas, among the people there. So that suggests this was a ~10 month process.
Hours of video per week
I watched EAG, EAGx, and other EA-related videos only while on an exercise bike or while eating. So it didnât really cut into my schedule, except in that it meant I wasnât watching other things at that time (e.g., random history lectures, Netflix). Iâd guess this amounted to roughly 4 hours per week.
Hours of audio per week
I listen to audiobook and podcasts while commuting, doing housework, donating plasma, or doing other tasks that donât require much focus but also donât allow me to be on my laptop. This seems to amount to roughly 1-2.5 hours per day. As with the video, this doesnât really cut into my schedule except by displacing other audio things (and also by making me extra helpful with housework when Iâve got a really good book/âpodcast!).
(I also listen at 1.5-2x speed, but skip back often, so the 1-2.5 clock hours are probably ~1.5-3.5 content hours.)
Hours per week ignoring video and audio
During these 10-14 months, I was also teaching at 0.8 FTE and doing a Masters of Teaching (but with a lower course-load than I expect most Masters have, as it was integrated with my actual teaching). This was part of the Teach For Australia program, which people tend to find very busy and intense by itself. So I crammed my âEA studyâ into weekends, after-work hours, and (teacher) holidays, alongside the (limited and pretty easy) Masters coursework.
So it wasnât a huge number of hours per week, simply as I had few available. On the other hand, I think Iâm happy with workingâand tend to workâmore hours than is average. And I also just found learning EA-relevant things very interesting, so that didnât drain me at allâit was more like the carrot I dangled in front of myself to get myself to do my other, actual work more efficiently!
And the matter of hours per week is further complicated by the fact that (a) teachers get long holidays, but (b) I had a lot of Masters work and teacher prep work to do during holidays.
So Iâd pretty unconfidently guess I spent 5-15 hours per week on this, averaging out across that whole period (including both the work weeks and holiday weeks).
[My original answer ignored the video and audio time, since Iâd been trying to remember how much time I allocated to EA-related stuff, and the video and audio didnât really require allocating special time so I overlooked it.]
Thanks this is super helpfulâcontext is I wanted to get a rough sense of how doable this level of âgetting up to speedâ is for people.