I went to the program, was quite impressed with what I saw there, and decided to work at charity entrepreneurship.
Before attending the program, as career paths, I was considering academia, earning to give, direct work in the global poverty space, and a few other more offbeat options. After the program, I’d estimate that I’ve significantly increased the expected value of my own career (perhaps by 3x-12x or more) in terms of impact by attending the program, thanks to
1) the direct impact of CE itself and associated organizations. I can say that in terms of what I’ve directly witnessed, there’s a formidable level of productive work occurring at this organization. My own level of raw productivity has risen quite a bit by being in proximity and picking up good habits. I’m pretty convinced that this productivity translates into impact, (although on that count, you can evaluate the key assumptions and claims yourself by looking at the cost effectiveness models and historical track record).
2) practical meta-skills I’ve picked up regarding how to think about personal impact. Not only did I change my mind and update on quite a few important considerations, but there were also quite a few things that I didn’t even realize were considerations before attending the program. I think my decision making going forward will be better now.
3) connections and network to other effective altruists, and general knowledge about the effective altruism movement. Prior to attending the program my engagement with the community was on a rather abstract level. Now, if I wanted to harness the EA community to accomplish a concrete action in the global poverty or animal space, I’d know roughly what to do and who to talk to and how to get started.
4) the career capital from program related activities.
Also, I had a good time. If you enjoy skill building and like interacting with other effective altruists, the program is quite fun.
Spend some time brainstorming and compare multiple alternative courses of action and potential hurdles to those actions before embarking on it, consider using a spreadsheet to augment your working memory when you evaluate actions by various criteria, get a sense of expected value per time on a given task so you can decide how long it’s worth to spend on it, enforce this via time capping / time boxing and if you are working much longer on a given task much than you estimated then re-evaluate what you are doing, time track which task you spend your working hours on to become more aware of time in general. Personally I don’t think I fully appreciated how valuable time was and how much i was sometimes wasting unintentionally before tracking it (although I could see some people finding this stressful)
Of course this is all sort of easier said than done haha. I think to some degree watching other people actually doing things which one is supposed to do helps enforce the habit.
I went to the program, was quite impressed with what I saw there, and decided to work at charity entrepreneurship.
Before attending the program, as career paths, I was considering academia, earning to give, direct work in the global poverty space, and a few other more offbeat options. After the program, I’d estimate that I’ve significantly increased the expected value of my own career (perhaps by 3x-12x or more) in terms of impact by attending the program, thanks to
1) the direct impact of CE itself and associated organizations. I can say that in terms of what I’ve directly witnessed, there’s a formidable level of productive work occurring at this organization. My own level of raw productivity has risen quite a bit by being in proximity and picking up good habits. I’m pretty convinced that this productivity translates into impact, (although on that count, you can evaluate the key assumptions and claims yourself by looking at the cost effectiveness models and historical track record).
2) practical meta-skills I’ve picked up regarding how to think about personal impact. Not only did I change my mind and update on quite a few important considerations, but there were also quite a few things that I didn’t even realize were considerations before attending the program. I think my decision making going forward will be better now.
3) connections and network to other effective altruists, and general knowledge about the effective altruism movement. Prior to attending the program my engagement with the community was on a rather abstract level. Now, if I wanted to harness the EA community to accomplish a concrete action in the global poverty or animal space, I’d know roughly what to do and who to talk to and how to get started.
4) the career capital from program related activities.
Also, I had a good time. If you enjoy skill building and like interacting with other effective altruists, the program is quite fun.
Happy to answer any questions.
I’d be interested to hear about any of the productive habits you picked up while you were “in proximity”!
Spend some time brainstorming and compare multiple alternative courses of action and potential hurdles to those actions before embarking on it, consider using a spreadsheet to augment your working memory when you evaluate actions by various criteria, get a sense of expected value per time on a given task so you can decide how long it’s worth to spend on it, enforce this via time capping / time boxing and if you are working much longer on a given task much than you estimated then re-evaluate what you are doing, time track which task you spend your working hours on to become more aware of time in general. Personally I don’t think I fully appreciated how valuable time was and how much i was sometimes wasting unintentionally before tracking it (although I could see some people finding this stressful)
Of course this is all sort of easier said than done haha. I think to some degree watching other people actually doing things which one is supposed to do helps enforce the habit.