Thanks for sharing. I’m sorry to hear about the difficult times too. I had some serious burnout a couple of years ago too. Like Peter said, I think that certain personalities are likely to be more attracted to EA ideas and it helps when we share these experiences with each other and be mindful about this.
My preferred framing of EA is ‘doing good better’ for this reason. I also really like how Charlie Bresler frames it as doing your personal best and how Hayden Wilkinson’s talk about doing less good for good reason shows this mathematically.
Sustainability is super important if you’re going to have an impact over the longterm.
Often the best way to maximise is to satisfice most decisions and focus on leverage (e.g. 80:20 rule).
When people speak with me about ambitious donation targets I applaud their commitment, ambition and desire to help others and then have a chat about sustainability and thinking about what they can imagine still doing in 20 years time (and feeling great about it). Many GWWC members have told me that they like the 10% pledge for the reason that they can just satisfice and pick a number that’s meaningful/significant but sustainable (and then many give more later in life once it’s clearer what they need etc). It’s often much better than being stuck in indecision and giving nothing or feeling compelled to give too much too soon.
Being healthy and happy gives you a nice strong foundation to go out and make the world better.
Personally, I’ve found practices like mindfulness, journaling, and scheduling in leisure time helpful. Also, I’ve just softened a bit with age and realised that I’m not invincible, that I’m a human who has limits and needs to take care of the basics and build from there.
Thanks for this! Broadly agree on the importance of sustainability. I also want to push back on generally framing this movement as just “doing good better.” If we agree with Tessa that “some good things you can do matter 100x or 1000x more than others,” then I’d worry that just “doing good better” makes it too easy for people to have just 1/100th or 1/1000th of the positive impact they could have (since they can easily be satisfied with doing the less important things better, or with doing the important things just somewhat better). And that seems like a major waste of potential.
(Even in the context of donations, it seems very suggestive that ~85% of this movement’s funding comes from two sources that are very big on optimizing. I’d hate to have missed out on them.)
(More broadly, if most impact comes from hitting small targets, then it seems like we’ll have a hard time getting this impact without optimizing. So I’m much more optimistic about “optimize with self-care heuristics” than about “satisfice.”)
Broadly agree, just making the distinction between individuals optimising for personal impact across the different parts of their lives is different to organisations optimising for impact specifically by evaluating philanthropic opportunities.
That being said, they both benefit from thinking about sustainability (don’t pull funding instantly when an exit grant would be more impactful; don’t spend all your philanthropic capital on the first best option; don’t run your employees into the ground to get more hours of evaluation out of them until they quit from burnout).
Thanks for sharing. I’m sorry to hear about the difficult times too. I had some serious burnout a couple of years ago too. Like Peter said, I think that certain personalities are likely to be more attracted to EA ideas and it helps when we share these experiences with each other and be mindful about this.
My preferred framing of EA is ‘doing good better’ for this reason. I also really like how Charlie Bresler frames it as doing your personal best and how Hayden Wilkinson’s talk about doing less good for good reason shows this mathematically.
Sustainability is super important if you’re going to have an impact over the longterm.
Often the best way to maximise is to satisfice most decisions and focus on leverage (e.g. 80:20 rule).
When people speak with me about ambitious donation targets I applaud their commitment, ambition and desire to help others and then have a chat about sustainability and thinking about what they can imagine still doing in 20 years time (and feeling great about it). Many GWWC members have told me that they like the 10% pledge for the reason that they can just satisfice and pick a number that’s meaningful/significant but sustainable (and then many give more later in life once it’s clearer what they need etc). It’s often much better than being stuck in indecision and giving nothing or feeling compelled to give too much too soon.
Being healthy and happy gives you a nice strong foundation to go out and make the world better.
Personally, I’ve found practices like mindfulness, journaling, and scheduling in leisure time helpful. Also, I’ve just softened a bit with age and realised that I’m not invincible, that I’m a human who has limits and needs to take care of the basics and build from there.
Thanks for this! Broadly agree on the importance of sustainability. I also want to push back on generally framing this movement as just “doing good better.” If we agree with Tessa that “some good things you can do matter 100x or 1000x more than others,” then I’d worry that just “doing good better” makes it too easy for people to have just 1/100th or 1/1000th of the positive impact they could have (since they can easily be satisfied with doing the less important things better, or with doing the important things just somewhat better). And that seems like a major waste of potential.
(Even in the context of donations, it seems very suggestive that ~85% of this movement’s funding comes from two sources that are very big on optimizing. I’d hate to have missed out on them.)
(More broadly, if most impact comes from hitting small targets, then it seems like we’ll have a hard time getting this impact without optimizing. So I’m much more optimistic about “optimize with self-care heuristics” than about “satisfice.”)
Broadly agree, just making the distinction between individuals optimising for personal impact across the different parts of their lives is different to organisations optimising for impact specifically by evaluating philanthropic opportunities.
That being said, they both benefit from thinking about sustainability (don’t pull funding instantly when an exit grant would be more impactful; don’t spend all your philanthropic capital on the first best option; don’t run your employees into the ground to get more hours of evaluation out of them until they quit from burnout).