I co-organise the EA group at a strategy consulting firm. We routinely work 55-70 hour weeks, so it’s rare for someone to have the spare time and mental space to consistently read long articles. Sadly, as long articles are the norm within EA, this means it’s harder for people to engage with EA ideas—even though several former consultants (and other people working busy jobs) are now working on things that seem high-impact.
Sometimes, you need length for depth or breadth. But I think often information can be summarised in a way that is still useful and makes it much more accessible. And sometimes, I’ve noticed that writings will be unnecessarily long, e.g. incorporating material that could be footnotes into the main flow.
I would love there to be a web page collating EA materials for busy people: materials that are short, captivating, clear, ideally actionable in some way, and likely to make someone think.
So let’s get started! Here’s what I know about so far:
Newsletters
Summaries / distillations
Articles & videos
Much of the EA Handbook
Podcasts
Shorter 80,000 Hours podcasts
I would be very grateful for more suggestions to add to this list!
The Nonlinear Library podcast reads upvoted posts on the EA Forum, Lesswrong, and Alignment forum with an AI voice (that’s not bad): Listen to more EA content with The Nonlinear Library
(As a decently busy person) I’ve found that it’s not so much how concise the material is I’m consuming rather than the medium through which I consume that predicts whether I will finish/engage with it or not.
For me I’m more of an audio-visual type and have ditched most (70%) written material for audio (e.g. podcasts, audiobooks) because the time I can use to learn (unless it’s my professional development time that my employer offers me) directly competes with other things that I need/want to do during the week: exercise, clean the house, go for a walk, etc. I’ve found that after finally embracing that fact I’ve been learning much more than I used to.
In terms of actively learning (rather than passively consuming) I’ve found that chatting with others about the material I consume, whether it’s a casual meeting with colleagues or having or other avenues for discussion is a great way to learn that doesn’t require much additional time for me.
Adding more that I’ve found or been told about:
- ‘How to (actually) change the world’ course (5-10 min videos): https://www.effectivealtruism.org/virtual-programs/how-to-actually-change-the-world
- Potentially some content from here: https://library.globalchallengesproject.org/
- AI Safety Fundamentals audio: https://preview.type3.audio/playlists/agi-safety-fundamentals-alignment
- More newsletters:
1. Global Development & Effective Altruism
2. Monthly Overload of Effective Altruism
3. Impactful Animal Advocacy Community Newsletter