It’s easy to subscribe to updates from most EA-aligned charities, and that makes for a motivating way to “procrastinate”. (In cases where the charity is a grantmaker like Open Phil, I might also click through to the websites of charities/projects they’ve funded and explore that work.)
I find an excuse to watch Life in a Day, my favorite EA-aligned movie, every few years.
I look for EA-related elements in creative work I enjoy, and save them to folders that I occasionally leaf through. (These tend to come from manga, though I’ve also saved screenshots from TV shows, passages from books, etc.)
I work with a small foundation that makes much bigger donations than I do, focused on global health. One way I’ve tried to help them “feel” their impact is by reframing their work — instead of “you made cash grants to 1000 people”, it’s “every day for the last year, three times per day, you gave someone one of the best days of their life. If you could meet them, they’d shake your hand or hug you, and they might be crying from happiness. If you checked back in on them a few weeks or months later, they’d have a new roof or a motorcycle or better food, and they’d still be very happy to see you.”
There’s no shame in telling stories like this to yourself (even writing them down!) These are the details that actually make up reality; the numbers and pictures we can see online are mere substitutes. If you take action to make reality better, you deserve to experience as realistic a version of that change as you can manage.
Scattered ideas:
It’s easy to subscribe to updates from most EA-aligned charities, and that makes for a motivating way to “procrastinate”. (In cases where the charity is a grantmaker like Open Phil, I might also click through to the websites of charities/projects they’ve funded and explore that work.)
I find an excuse to watch Life in a Day, my favorite EA-aligned movie, every few years.
I look for EA-related elements in creative work I enjoy, and save them to folders that I occasionally leaf through. (These tend to come from manga, though I’ve also saved screenshots from TV shows, passages from books, etc.)
I work with a small foundation that makes much bigger donations than I do, focused on global health. One way I’ve tried to help them “feel” their impact is by reframing their work — instead of “you made cash grants to 1000 people”, it’s “every day for the last year, three times per day, you gave someone one of the best days of their life. If you could meet them, they’d shake your hand or hug you, and they might be crying from happiness. If you checked back in on them a few weeks or months later, they’d have a new roof or a motorcycle or better food, and they’d still be very happy to see you.”
There’s no shame in telling stories like this to yourself (even writing them down!) These are the details that actually make up reality; the numbers and pictures we can see online are mere substitutes. If you take action to make reality better, you deserve to experience as realistic a version of that change as you can manage.