There is a lot of discussion about what to DO in the context of EA. But for everything I do, there is something else that I don’t.
What have you decided NOT to do, because it has a (somewhat) lower priority than other things?
Things that I downprioritized:
some recreational activities: playing the guitar, cooking, baking cakes, reading novels.
I quit volunteering in an online education project. It was low time cost anyway.
meditating (would that increase productivity more than the time spent on it? I don’t really care about the other benefits.)
keep an EA blog, because there are already good ones. My comparative advantage would be to write in Dutch to a local public, but that’s a small group of people who can easily read English.
I can think of many things I no longer do but I’m not sure that’s a direct result of my EA involvement. I’m a busy person, so activities that offered a small benefit naturally gave way either to more productive things, or things that offered a bigger benefit.
I think I probably drink (and therefore spend less on) alcohol. I only watch a few selected TV shows and don’t re-watch old episodes. I spend less time at the gym but more outdoors cycling with my boyfriend (kills multiple birds with one stone).
I think as we age our priorities naturally shift and our activities naturally change. Nothing in my personal life has changed ONLY as a result of EA ideas.
Since 2000 I’ve abandoned TV, videogames, celebrity gossip, musical ability, knowledge about bands, politics, theater classes, dancing classes, handball, tennis, reading fiction, reading parts of Facebook, maintaining contact with groups X and Y of friends, newspapers, magazines and comics.Those were not easy choices, each comes with a cost, a sadness, and a feeling that something valuable has been lost. The richness of flavors of life got somewhat poorer.
How many EAs do you know definitely do not smoke? I’m often surprised at how long I can know someone in person without realizing they smoke. Even more so when they just occasionally smoke cigars (though this is not exactly what you were discussing)
There is a lot of discussion about what to DO in the context of EA. But for everything I do, there is something else that I don’t.
What have you decided NOT to do, because it has a (somewhat) lower priority than other things?
Things that I downprioritized:
some recreational activities: playing the guitar, cooking, baking cakes, reading novels.
I quit volunteering in an online education project. It was low time cost anyway.
meditating (would that increase productivity more than the time spent on it? I don’t really care about the other benefits.)
keep an EA blog, because there are already good ones. My comparative advantage would be to write in Dutch to a local public, but that’s a small group of people who can easily read English.
I can think of many things I no longer do but I’m not sure that’s a direct result of my EA involvement. I’m a busy person, so activities that offered a small benefit naturally gave way either to more productive things, or things that offered a bigger benefit.
I think I probably drink (and therefore spend less on) alcohol. I only watch a few selected TV shows and don’t re-watch old episodes. I spend less time at the gym but more outdoors cycling with my boyfriend (kills multiple birds with one stone).
I think as we age our priorities naturally shift and our activities naturally change. Nothing in my personal life has changed ONLY as a result of EA ideas.
Since 2000 I’ve abandoned TV, videogames, celebrity gossip, musical ability, knowledge about bands, politics, theater classes, dancing classes, handball, tennis, reading fiction, reading parts of Facebook, maintaining contact with groups X and Y of friends, newspapers, magazines and comics.Those were not easy choices, each comes with a cost, a sadness, and a feeling that something valuable has been lost. The richness of flavors of life got somewhat poorer.
This is a bit tangential but I don’t know if there’s a single EA that smokes cigarettes.
I don’t know if EA demographics fit smoking much—my sense is that we tend to be young and highly educated.
How many EAs do you know definitely do not smoke? I’m often surprised at how long I can know someone in person without realizing they smoke. Even more so when they just occasionally smoke cigars (though this is not exactly what you were discussing)
I know a couple.