I don’t know much about being hired by organisations, but I know a lot about starting them.
This answer assumes that you’re very ambitious, and want to do something big and world-changing. Your odds are much better if your aims are more modest. It’s also just my opinion as a guy whose started a few organisations. I’ve been wrong before, and I will be wrong again. ---- I’m going to tell you some negative stuff, and then suggest a path to getting what you want anyway.
On paper, you aren’t suitable to start a charity. Most charities fail (+80%). On the balance of the evidence presented, it’s more likely you’d be among the 80%:
Being a charity founder usually takes a heroic amount of work over a decade, maybe 60Hpw on average for ~48 weeks per year for ~5-10 years. This will be hard to do with ME.
Social anxiety is debilitating to a startup founder because it involves being rejected 19 times for every one time someone says yes. You’ll have to manage teams, fire under-perfomers, explain to funders why your plan fails and why they should fund you again anyway. A great founder will nonetheless make mistakes that will cost people their jobs, waste months of their time, hurt their collaborators and beneficiaries
Given the lack of relevant experience, it’s going to take you longer to get started. You lack the resumé you’d need to get hired or get funding to do the work you’re interested in in EA right now.
The good news is that most successful founders seemed to have some crippling flaws that’d make them a bad fit. They find a way around it. It’s possible that you could to:
You could find people to supplement your lack of energy if you can successfully outsource or delegate the more draining parts of the work
Social anxiety is treatable, even curable, given sufficient effort (2Hs weekly for ~12 weeks).
Free treatments exist for EAs. Rethink Wellbeing offers free counselling for Effective Altruists, in a group setting. I would be surprised if they didn’t offer bespoke support for social anxiety. Overcome, my charity, also offers it but one-to-one (caveat: it’s not as bespoke to EAs).
If you can get a project off the ground and make good progress people will stop giving a shit about your lack of qualifications. I’d suggest working on the project linked on your medium article, create a Minimum Viable Product, and writing up the results on the forum or wherever your most likely collaborators / funders hang out.
The above is likely quite helpful for getting a relevant job too. Field-relevant accomplishments will help you get an interview. Being less socially anxious will help you come across better. Having strong systems of outsourcing / delegation would make it more credible to employers that your ME isn’t going to undermine your performance.
So my big ambitions mostly hinge on my hope that my health conditions go into remission. I continue to improve after removing the medication I mentioned, and I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually get to where I was before it.
Although where I was before was still not well enough to undertake a full running of a non-profit. Constant generalized anxiety, mild brain fog, moderate social anxiety. As for that, I’m cautiously optimistic that a ketogenic diet or carnivore diet will take me all the way to “normal”. I’ve spent a lot of time searching the web for things like “keto cured my social anxiety” or “keto cured my brain fog” and I’ve seen a heck of a lot of people say they are pretty much fixed of chronic, treatment-resistant problems, after simply cutting out carbs.
I’m not so confident that “Social anxiety is treatable, even curable” with behavioral treatments for everyone. For me, it feels very tied to my ME/CFS, which is increasingly being accepted to not at all be amenable to psychological treatments. No behavioral change has ever changed my anxiety in the slightest. Not talk therapy, not exposure therapy, not meditation. Whenever the ME is worse, say, during a crash from overexertion, the social anxiety, and generalized anxiety are also worse.
I’d compare it to someone who is in severe withdrawal from opiates, going through horrible anxiety. Even if maybe some behavioral technique could ease it a little bit, I don’t think any practice, or any amount of effort, apart from direct alteration of brain chemicals, such as through drugs, will cure that person’s anxiety for the time they are in withdrawal.
Similar to the plea of the ME/CFS community to the medical community to stop believing it is a psychological disorder that can be treated by CBT, I think my social anxiety and anxiety fit into the same category. Not saying everyone’s does, and I’m sure lots of people do get helped. But for me, I think it’s more like the guy withdrawing from opiates and unrelated to behavior/thought.
I would not be opposed to trying the programs you offered if I had more energy, but given my very low expectation of them working for me, it’s not worth the effort while I’m this fatigued.
Overcome is very cool, and thank you for making that. One thing I would suggest is put specific details on the website. I was searching for where the science behind the program was, and couldn’t find anything. I’d recommend adding what the credentials of the people training others in the techniques are, what the exact practices are, and link to research papers showing those practices work.
But anyway, thank you for your feedback, I’ll keep it in mind!
I don’t know much about being hired by organisations, but I know a lot about starting them.
This answer assumes that you’re very ambitious, and want to do something big and world-changing. Your odds are much better if your aims are more modest. It’s also just my opinion as a guy whose started a few organisations. I’ve been wrong before, and I will be wrong again.
----
I’m going to tell you some negative stuff, and then suggest a path to getting what you want anyway.
On paper, you aren’t suitable to start a charity. Most charities fail (+80%). On the balance of the evidence presented, it’s more likely you’d be among the 80%:
Being a charity founder usually takes a heroic amount of work over a decade, maybe 60Hpw on average for ~48 weeks per year for ~5-10 years. This will be hard to do with ME.
Social anxiety is debilitating to a startup founder because it involves being rejected 19 times for every one time someone says yes. You’ll have to manage teams, fire under-perfomers, explain to funders why your plan fails and why they should fund you again anyway. A great founder will nonetheless make mistakes that will cost people their jobs, waste months of their time, hurt their collaborators and beneficiaries
Given the lack of relevant experience, it’s going to take you longer to get started. You lack the resumé you’d need to get hired or get funding to do the work you’re interested in in EA right now.
The good news is that most successful founders seemed to have some crippling flaws that’d make them a bad fit. They find a way around it. It’s possible that you could to:
You could find people to supplement your lack of energy if you can successfully outsource or delegate the more draining parts of the work
Social anxiety is treatable, even curable, given sufficient effort (2Hs weekly for ~12 weeks).
Free treatments exist for EAs. Rethink Wellbeing offers free counselling for Effective Altruists, in a group setting. I would be surprised if they didn’t offer bespoke support for social anxiety. Overcome, my charity, also offers it but one-to-one (caveat: it’s not as bespoke to EAs).
If you can get a project off the ground and make good progress people will stop giving a shit about your lack of qualifications. I’d suggest working on the project linked on your medium article, create a Minimum Viable Product, and writing up the results on the forum or wherever your most likely collaborators / funders hang out.
The above is likely quite helpful for getting a relevant job too. Field-relevant accomplishments will help you get an interview. Being less socially anxious will help you come across better. Having strong systems of outsourcing / delegation would make it more credible to employers that your ME isn’t going to undermine your performance.
I hope this is helpful.
Thank you for sharing your insights.
So my big ambitions mostly hinge on my hope that my health conditions go into remission. I continue to improve after removing the medication I mentioned, and I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually get to where I was before it.
Although where I was before was still not well enough to undertake a full running of a non-profit. Constant generalized anxiety, mild brain fog, moderate social anxiety. As for that, I’m cautiously optimistic that a ketogenic diet or carnivore diet will take me all the way to “normal”. I’ve spent a lot of time searching the web for things like “keto cured my social anxiety” or “keto cured my brain fog” and I’ve seen a heck of a lot of people say they are pretty much fixed of chronic, treatment-resistant problems, after simply cutting out carbs.
I’m not so confident that “Social anxiety is treatable, even curable” with behavioral treatments for everyone. For me, it feels very tied to my ME/CFS, which is increasingly being accepted to not at all be amenable to psychological treatments. No behavioral change has ever changed my anxiety in the slightest. Not talk therapy, not exposure therapy, not meditation. Whenever the ME is worse, say, during a crash from overexertion, the social anxiety, and generalized anxiety are also worse.
I’d compare it to someone who is in severe withdrawal from opiates, going through horrible anxiety. Even if maybe some behavioral technique could ease it a little bit, I don’t think any practice, or any amount of effort, apart from direct alteration of brain chemicals, such as through drugs, will cure that person’s anxiety for the time they are in withdrawal.
Similar to the plea of the ME/CFS community to the medical community to stop believing it is a psychological disorder that can be treated by CBT, I think my social anxiety and anxiety fit into the same category. Not saying everyone’s does, and I’m sure lots of people do get helped. But for me, I think it’s more like the guy withdrawing from opiates and unrelated to behavior/thought.
I would not be opposed to trying the programs you offered if I had more energy, but given my very low expectation of them working for me, it’s not worth the effort while I’m this fatigued.
Overcome is very cool, and thank you for making that. One thing I would suggest is put specific details on the website. I was searching for where the science behind the program was, and couldn’t find anything. I’d recommend adding what the credentials of the people training others in the techniques are, what the exact practices are, and link to research papers showing those practices work.
But anyway, thank you for your feedback, I’ll keep it in mind!