My realizations about how to treat Burnout, while at CFAR:
2. Learning to set and negotiate for your boundaries / keeping work and life separate
When I arrived at CFAR, I wanted to blur the lines between work and life a lot. I wanted to be “working” in a fluid way—such that I was integrating “rationality” and thoughts about rationality into my everyday life, into every action, into my identity. And this meant I showed up at the office on weekends (because I tried to treat weekdays and weekends as the same). I did lots of my “best work” late at night, either at the office or in late meetings. At workshops, I was “on” for most of the time, in the role of “mentor” or “ops” or “instructor” or whatever, and I just tried to hold “optimize the workshop experience for the participants” (as is the motto / flag of CFAR workshops).
CFAR affords its employees lots of freedom in a way—there’s no one tracking hours, there’s no specific time you’re supposed to come in. So that’s one of the things listed above as a plus, for Burnout. But… at the same time, this level of autonomy means individual employees can just choose to dissolve themselves into their work, such that their life basically blends into work. And they don’t hold these domains separate anymore. (This seems more of a risk for the type of EA who cares a lot about their job.)
Eventually, I figured out this was a bad way to go. I started setting boundaries more. When I did ops at the last couple workshops, I chose to only be “on” for a certain number of hours a day (8-10), and I was “off” for the rest of the hours, letting other people “cover shifts.” I told my bosses, “Hey, I don’t want to do X or Y anymore. I want other people to handle those.” And then I got that.
I eventually realized, at least for ops work, I needed to “optimize MY workshop experience” first, and participants’ experience second. And that optimizing for MY experience would /lead/ to optimizing the workshop—it was a win-win.
I realized that I was running a marathon and not a sprint, even during workshops (which are often treated like ‘sprints’). And I would need to pace myself during workshops, even though they’re a time when lots of concentrated effort is called for. So when I ran operations for the last workshop, I tried to ensure my volunteers were not working more than 8-9 hours a day, and that their shifts were regular (so no one was having to get up at 7AM one day and then stay up late the next). And also, that if they found themselves starting to feel sick or tired, I’d encourage more breaks and naps. And in ways, I let parts of operations become a little worse or not as brilliant or awesome. But the participants didn’t really notice, and the feedback on ops was positive.
As for regular work, I started setting more boundaries there too.
Basically, I started noticing some aspects of work felt ughy / aversive, and instead of trying to “debug myself” and then “find a solution,” I was more willing to just be like, “actually, nah, fuck that. I don’t want to.”
Whereas before, I might have thought being a good rationalist was about solving all my bugs through internal work or changing the environment or some other radical thing… I eventually realized, “actually no, I’m just gonna say ‘no’ and ‘give up’ on some things instead of trying to make it work.” And I think this is a healthier policy in the long run.
My realizations about how to treat Burnout, while at CFAR:
2. Learning to set and negotiate for your boundaries / keeping work and life separate
When I arrived at CFAR, I wanted to blur the lines between work and life a lot. I wanted to be “working” in a fluid way—such that I was integrating “rationality” and thoughts about rationality into my everyday life, into every action, into my identity. And this meant I showed up at the office on weekends (because I tried to treat weekdays and weekends as the same). I did lots of my “best work” late at night, either at the office or in late meetings. At workshops, I was “on” for most of the time, in the role of “mentor” or “ops” or “instructor” or whatever, and I just tried to hold “optimize the workshop experience for the participants” (as is the motto / flag of CFAR workshops).
CFAR affords its employees lots of freedom in a way—there’s no one tracking hours, there’s no specific time you’re supposed to come in. So that’s one of the things listed above as a plus, for Burnout. But… at the same time, this level of autonomy means individual employees can just choose to dissolve themselves into their work, such that their life basically blends into work. And they don’t hold these domains separate anymore. (This seems more of a risk for the type of EA who cares a lot about their job.)
Eventually, I figured out this was a bad way to go. I started setting boundaries more. When I did ops at the last couple workshops, I chose to only be “on” for a certain number of hours a day (8-10), and I was “off” for the rest of the hours, letting other people “cover shifts.” I told my bosses, “Hey, I don’t want to do X or Y anymore. I want other people to handle those.” And then I got that.
I eventually realized, at least for ops work, I needed to “optimize MY workshop experience” first, and participants’ experience second. And that optimizing for MY experience would /lead/ to optimizing the workshop—it was a win-win.
I realized that I was running a marathon and not a sprint, even during workshops (which are often treated like ‘sprints’). And I would need to pace myself during workshops, even though they’re a time when lots of concentrated effort is called for. So when I ran operations for the last workshop, I tried to ensure my volunteers were not working more than 8-9 hours a day, and that their shifts were regular (so no one was having to get up at 7AM one day and then stay up late the next). And also, that if they found themselves starting to feel sick or tired, I’d encourage more breaks and naps. And in ways, I let parts of operations become a little worse or not as brilliant or awesome. But the participants didn’t really notice, and the feedback on ops was positive.
As for regular work, I started setting more boundaries there too.
Basically, I started noticing some aspects of work felt ughy / aversive, and instead of trying to “debug myself” and then “find a solution,” I was more willing to just be like, “actually, nah, fuck that. I don’t want to.”
Whereas before, I might have thought being a good rationalist was about solving all my bugs through internal work or changing the environment or some other radical thing… I eventually realized, “actually no, I’m just gonna say ‘no’ and ‘give up’ on some things instead of trying to make it work.” And I think this is a healthier policy in the long run.