I like this post, a lot, thanks Richard! I think you are addressing two things −
1. The first is something called “burnout”—in which you feel absolutely depleted and exhausted from your work. EAers are more prone to this, because you feel a lot of weight on your shoulders when you work on something that its success or failure could impact peoples lives. Even more prone are EAers that are activists, working on projects that do not enjoy common support—and even the opposite. I can share from my personal experience I had as an Animal Rights activist—people mocked us, degraded our work, etc. (and we were the friendliest ever). It tripled the burnout. I agree that creating content around how to manage (or even avoid) burnout is fantastic for the EA community. I think such work is described as “Meta-EA”. You gave me a great idea, to write a post about how to manage/avoid burnout! I will publish it in the forum in the upcoming weeks.
2. Improving the general MH (Mental Health) of EAers (regardless of Burnout) - this is also a “Meta-EA” topic. As someone who is studying Clinical Psychology I thought about it myself, just volunteering (in the future, when I’m licensed and all that) making myself available without any pay for EAers in my local community of EA Israel who are struggling, and could contact me for some initial consultancy. (It needs to be very, very well defined how exactly to do this—you don’t want to do more harm than good, but it’s possible).
I’m guessing you’ve probably seen this already if you’re interested in burnout for EAs but this is a good article on the topic published a few years ago on the Forum (though I’m sure a new article could add additional value!)
I like this post, a lot, thanks Richard!
I think you are addressing two things −
1. The first is something called “burnout”—in which you feel absolutely depleted and exhausted from your work. EAers are more prone to this, because you feel a lot of weight on your shoulders when you work on something that its success or failure could impact peoples lives. Even more prone are EAers that are activists, working on projects that do not enjoy common support—and even the opposite. I can share from my personal experience I had as an Animal Rights activist—people mocked us, degraded our work, etc. (and we were the friendliest ever). It tripled the burnout. I agree that creating content around how to manage (or even avoid) burnout is fantastic for the EA community. I think such work is described as “Meta-EA”. You gave me a great idea, to write a post about how to manage/avoid burnout! I will publish it in the forum in the upcoming weeks.
2. Improving the general MH (Mental Health) of EAers (regardless of Burnout) - this is also a “Meta-EA” topic. As someone who is studying Clinical Psychology I thought about it myself, just volunteering (in the future, when I’m licensed and all that) making myself available without any pay for EAers in my local community of EA Israel who are struggling, and could contact me for some initial consultancy. (It needs to be very, very well defined how exactly to do this—you don’t want to do more harm than good, but it’s possible).
I’m guessing you’ve probably seen this already if you’re interested in burnout for EAs but this is a good article on the topic published a few years ago on the Forum (though I’m sure a new article could add additional value!)