Thanks for your question, seems like a good discussion to have here!
To give some background on my role: I work at 80,000 Hours as head of 1on1 (which means managing a team of 7 people working on a few different products) and I’m a grant manager for the EA Infrastructure Fund. Right now 80,000 Hours’ CEO has been seconded to EV, so I’m pitching in with some misc 80k things like running this year’s funding round.
I’ve definitely had times of feeling the problem you describe acutely. I think the drive to help people, and to do so as much as we can, can make it feel like all your time should go to it. And then being surrounded by likeminded people who are ambitiously trying to do good makes it feel like even if you’re switching off, others might need something from you.
Right now, I feel pretty good about where I’m at. I have pretty explicit ‘on’ and ‘off’ times. My ‘on’ times are on the long side. I definitely work more than 40 hours a week. But that works for me—I used to work long hours as a grad student too. I’ve had roles where I worked fewer hours not because there was less to do but because I found the work less enjoyable and so wanted to curtail my hours. Whereas now I feel energised to work longer hours. One thing that really helps me is having colleagues who understand the importance of people both working the hours they endorse, and knowing they can get away from everything while they’re not working.
A few general thoughts on this that you might find helpful:
I’ve actually found that in some ways working at an EA org allows for more switching off than when I was volunteering. As a student volunteer, it was hard to have designated times for doing EA things, and they felt more important than my studies. So I was less in the frame of mind of figuring out how to switch off from them. Whereas it’s more natural to need time properly away from your actual job.
I’ve generally found it easier to switch off from roles that are more junior in whatever organisation I’m in. That means working somewhere as an employee can work better than being a community builder, even though the latter sounds more flexible. The reason is that as a junior person in an organisation, there’s always someone else who can handle questions etc while you’re away, unlike if you’re the leader of your local group.
Having particular norms can also make a difference: for example 80k has a clear expectation that Signal rather than email/slack is used for urgent communications (and it’s only used for urgent communications), and also that everyone notes on the calendar and also on slack if they’re going on holiday. That means that while I’m away I don’t feel I need to check slack or email—I know that everyone knows I’m away and that they’ll signal me if there’s anything urgent.
I try to bear in mind when managing people the importance of work life balance, and also that that looks different for different people. I don’t expect them to work the same hours I do, and have directs who do a wide variety of hours. I aim to have a sense of which hours they work and their communication preferences. Eg some people are happy to get emails etc whenever I want to send them knowing they don’t have to look at them, others would prefer only getting messages during their working hours. With email it’s easy to schedule messages to go out at times people will be fine getting them, with slack I try to pay attention to when I send them. I try to keep a rough track of how much time off each of my directs is taking and whether that’s the amount they endorse, and if it isn’t to prompt them to book holiday.
Thank you, Michelle, for your detailed answer! It’s comforting to hear that you’ve felt this but currently feel good about where you’re at, gives me some hope!
Your general thoughts are extremely helpful, you’ve really hit the nail on the head:
I have wondered if this issue might be quite closely tied to the fact that I’m a student and most of everyone I’m working with is also a student. I’ve found it difficult sometimes to get buy-in on certain norms and think this would possibly be easier in a context where people are actually employed as opposed to volunteering and somewhat obliged to comply with norms set (or at least try them/work around them).
I’m quite keen to look for more junior roles within orgs going forward rather than a community building role. If you happen to see this (or if anyone sees this and has advice), do you have an opinion on how far this should make me update how suitable I think I am for management type roles? One of the reasons I pursued this role was to gain some experience in management-esque work, knowing that the EA community needs more talent in that area (at least, last time I checked). I’ve learned A Lot that I think I could take forward in future but I’m now wondering if management is something I should pursue long term (quite confident I won’t be pursuing this kind of thing in my next career step, I have some exploration left to do!). My uncertainty around how strong a signal this should send to me is related to me not really knowing how far my experience in a student group really maps onto the experience of someone employed full time doing management at an org (where my guess is that there would clearer ways to show your colleagues you’re not in work mode, such as being outside the workplace, assuming you’re not remote).
Thanks for your question, seems like a good discussion to have here!
To give some background on my role: I work at 80,000 Hours as head of 1on1 (which means managing a team of 7 people working on a few different products) and I’m a grant manager for the EA Infrastructure Fund. Right now 80,000 Hours’ CEO has been seconded to EV, so I’m pitching in with some misc 80k things like running this year’s funding round.
I’ve definitely had times of feeling the problem you describe acutely. I think the drive to help people, and to do so as much as we can, can make it feel like all your time should go to it. And then being surrounded by likeminded people who are ambitiously trying to do good makes it feel like even if you’re switching off, others might need something from you.
Right now, I feel pretty good about where I’m at. I have pretty explicit ‘on’ and ‘off’ times. My ‘on’ times are on the long side. I definitely work more than 40 hours a week. But that works for me—I used to work long hours as a grad student too. I’ve had roles where I worked fewer hours not because there was less to do but because I found the work less enjoyable and so wanted to curtail my hours. Whereas now I feel energised to work longer hours. One thing that really helps me is having colleagues who understand the importance of people both working the hours they endorse, and knowing they can get away from everything while they’re not working.
A few general thoughts on this that you might find helpful:
I’ve actually found that in some ways working at an EA org allows for more switching off than when I was volunteering. As a student volunteer, it was hard to have designated times for doing EA things, and they felt more important than my studies. So I was less in the frame of mind of figuring out how to switch off from them. Whereas it’s more natural to need time properly away from your actual job.
I’ve generally found it easier to switch off from roles that are more junior in whatever organisation I’m in. That means working somewhere as an employee can work better than being a community builder, even though the latter sounds more flexible. The reason is that as a junior person in an organisation, there’s always someone else who can handle questions etc while you’re away, unlike if you’re the leader of your local group.
Having particular norms can also make a difference: for example 80k has a clear expectation that Signal rather than email/slack is used for urgent communications (and it’s only used for urgent communications), and also that everyone notes on the calendar and also on slack if they’re going on holiday. That means that while I’m away I don’t feel I need to check slack or email—I know that everyone knows I’m away and that they’ll signal me if there’s anything urgent.
I try to bear in mind when managing people the importance of work life balance, and also that that looks different for different people. I don’t expect them to work the same hours I do, and have directs who do a wide variety of hours. I aim to have a sense of which hours they work and their communication preferences. Eg some people are happy to get emails etc whenever I want to send them knowing they don’t have to look at them, others would prefer only getting messages during their working hours. With email it’s easy to schedule messages to go out at times people will be fine getting them, with slack I try to pay attention to when I send them. I try to keep a rough track of how much time off each of my directs is taking and whether that’s the amount they endorse, and if it isn’t to prompt them to book holiday.
Thank you, Michelle, for your detailed answer! It’s comforting to hear that you’ve felt this but currently feel good about where you’re at, gives me some hope!
Your general thoughts are extremely helpful, you’ve really hit the nail on the head:
I have wondered if this issue might be quite closely tied to the fact that I’m a student and most of everyone I’m working with is also a student. I’ve found it difficult sometimes to get buy-in on certain norms and think this would possibly be easier in a context where people are actually employed as opposed to volunteering and somewhat obliged to comply with norms set (or at least try them/work around them).
I’m quite keen to look for more junior roles within orgs going forward rather than a community building role. If you happen to see this (or if anyone sees this and has advice), do you have an opinion on how far this should make me update how suitable I think I am for management type roles? One of the reasons I pursued this role was to gain some experience in management-esque work, knowing that the EA community needs more talent in that area (at least, last time I checked). I’ve learned A Lot that I think I could take forward in future but I’m now wondering if management is something I should pursue long term (quite confident I won’t be pursuing this kind of thing in my next career step, I have some exploration left to do!). My uncertainty around how strong a signal this should send to me is related to me not really knowing how far my experience in a student group really maps onto the experience of someone employed full time doing management at an org (where my guess is that there would clearer ways to show your colleagues you’re not in work mode, such as being outside the workplace, assuming you’re not remote).