Note: My answer isn’t about the highest-impact thing you could do. I also don’t face (EA-related) guilt/anxiety about downtime because I repeatedly remind myself that I need not to burnout.
I reserve an hour each night as ‘transition time’ between work and downtime, with half of that hour being dedicated either to therapy (which is important in sustaining myself so I can solve important problems) or reading tabs (so I can prioritize them and not waste ‘work time’).
The latter might be more relevant here. I use Notion to clip tabs, such as Forum posts, that seem interesting and categorize + prioritize new tabs at the end of the night. Then I start going down my reading list until I reach the end of my allotted transition time. This both saves precious non-dead time and seems like a productive, EA-related use of dead time (in that I often learn more about EA during this time).
Note: My answer isn’t about the highest-impact thing you could do. I also don’t face (EA-related) guilt/anxiety about downtime because I repeatedly remind myself that I need not to burnout.
I reserve an hour each night as ‘transition time’ between work and downtime, with half of that hour being dedicated either to therapy (which is important in sustaining myself so I can solve important problems) or reading tabs (so I can prioritize them and not waste ‘work time’).
The latter might be more relevant here. I use Notion to clip tabs, such as Forum posts, that seem interesting and categorize + prioritize new tabs at the end of the night. Then I start going down my reading list until I reach the end of my allotted transition time. This both saves precious non-dead time and seems like a productive, EA-related use of dead time (in that I often learn more about EA during this time).
Something I haven’t tried but might be interesting is to volunteer to complete tasks you find interesting/relaxing/fun for EA orgs (e.g. graphic design or copyediting). You can find opportunities on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1392613437498240/), Impact CoLabs (https://www.impactcolabs.com/) and EA Work Club (https://www.eawork.club/)
Spreadsheet for categorizing opportunities: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tJtJ6lpIjE7Dv5hUo_HCXb8mNGYvDgiQSQYvNfJGJyU/edit#gid=1264761950