Chief of staff Langsikt, a policy think tank based in Oslo. Formerly CoS at Forethought and ED of EA Norway.
I sometimes write about ops and management at saidtwice.substack.com.
eirinešø
Karma: 506
Iām similar in some aspects: There are some things I find so boring or difficult to do that I need external accountability to do them.
In these cases, however, I wouldnāt use the stakeholder to hold me accountable, but rather a colleague, friend, or other mechanism.
In fact, there are some instances where you want to be ambitious and say youāll do more than you think you do, e.g. when setting goals for yourself. However, I think that can backfire if you do it with a stakeholder.
Does that make sense?
So great that youāve revamped the site!!
Two heads up:
The feedback link in this post doesnāt work.
This url thatās linked to in the resources also doesnāt work.
Using physical kanban boards.
I learned about kanban boards at EA NTNU during my undergrad, and it greatly improved my productivity in my studies. Itās a physical task management system using a board (or just a wall) and post-its. It involves writing down all your tasks for the day on post-its (one task per post-it) and then moving each post-it between three different columns:
To-do ā this is a backlog of tasks where you place all your post-its at the start of the day, ideally prioritised by importance.
Doing ā this is whatever task youāre doing and it should at most have space for two post-its, ideally one.
Done ā for all the tasks youāve completed.
It helps me a lot to have to write down each task on a post-it, and then physically move each post-it between the three categories. I used to use a kanban all the time, but I now only use it when I have generally lower productivity. I highly recommend using it religiously at first, however. As a general rule, I think itās best to become well-versed in a system or productivity tool before straying from it or substantially adapting it.
Co-working with others.
This works so well that I sometimes donāt want to do it because I know it will work.
Doing online pomodors (25 min working, 5 min break) is basically how I got through the pandemic without a huge hit to my productivity. Back then, I benefitted from co-working the whole day. Now, itās only counterfactually beneficial for a few hours each day or week, so I only do it a few times.
Peer-mentoring and coaching calls.
Iām not sure if this has made me work harder, but itās definitely helped me work better. There are two types of mentoring calls Iāve tried and found helpful:
Coaching calls with someone more experienced. These have been really useful for learning about best practices and getting external input from someone who has experience with the types of issues Iām experiencing at work. For example, I first learned about situational leadership in one of these coaching calls, and that greatly changed how I did management and helped me improve at managing up.
Peer-mentoring calls with someone in a similar position. For the last 4-5 years, Iāve had biweekly or monthly peer-mentoring calls with the same person. Theyāve been really helpful in discussing object-level issues in my job and sense-checking how Iām approaching different projects at work. A big part of these calls is setting goals for how we want to develop professionally, and holding each other accountable to those.
Frequently asking for feedback.
I realised a while back that if I donāt know whether Iām doing a good or poor job, it increases the number of tasks I find ughy and how much I procrastinate.
To help with this, Iāve included a prompt in our weekly meeting templates at work to give each other feedback or āhalf-baked thoughtsā at every meeting. We have performance reviews every 6 months, and Iāll very often feel a boost in motivation and productivity after those. I also have a document bookmarked in my browser called āFeeling down?ā with a checklist for what to do when Iām feeling particularly low mood, and asking for positive feedback is on that list.
Regular productivity check-ins.
The past 1-2 years Iāve had a 30-minute productivity check-in with the same person every week. These have increased my productivity on average, and because of them I very rarely have more than half an unproductive week.
Sometimes, the thing that helps most is just writing down what Iām thinking about, and figuring out a solution myself by writing. Other times, itās the other person asking questions like āHow important is it?ā and āWhat would you tell someone else in your position to do?ā.
Frequently change and adapt the methods I use to be productive.
How productive I am changes substantially throughout the day, but also throughout the month. I think of myself as three colleagues: āMorning Eirinā who is decisive and internally motivated, āAfternoon Eirinā who needs a lot of productivity tools to stay on task, and āEvening Eirinā who enjoys deep work. They all need different tools, systems, and sources of motivation.
Iāll also reliably have some days each month when I feel negative about everything and will have low motivation, self-discipline, and self-confidence. Iāve gotten better at realising when Iām in that mood, which makes it easier to work with it rather than against it. During those days, I need more time to reflect, and will for example do more walking meetings with myself. Change of scenery will have a larger effect on me, and so Iāll for example go to a cafe for a couple of hours to do the most important but boring tasks (usually emails). I also need more words of encouragement, and will look at comments in a complement channel we have on Slack or other positive feedback Iāve received.
I did consider calling it āfour coping mechanisms if youāre lonely at workā š
Thanks for letting us know! Iāll make an edit to the post.
I used to work at EA Norway, which is a fee-paying membership society, and thought it might be useful to share more on how our funding worked. This is just meant as an example, and not as an argument for or against membership societies. (Hereās a longer comment explaining how we organise things at EA Norway.)
I canāt speak to EA Norwayās current situation, as I no longer have any position at EA Norway (other than being a paying member). However, I can say what it was like in 2018-2021 when I was Executive Director (ED). The total income from the membership fee roughly covered the cost of the general assembly. Most of our funding came from a community building grant from the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). However, the board made sure to fundraise enough from private donors for my salary. The two main reasons for this was to I) diversify our funding, and II) enable us to make longer term plans than CEAs grant periods.
When the board gave approval to accept the community building grant from CEA, we discussed that if at any point we did not want to follow CEAs guidelines and success metrics, we would pay back the remainder of the grant. This was definitely easier for us to say and truly mean when we had covered the EDās salary from other sources, as it meant that if we were to return the funding, we would still have at least one employee. We never ended up disagreeing so much with CEA that we wanted to return the funds, though we were definitely very vocal about any disagreements we had with the groups team at CEA and did push for some changes.
This is a tangent, but I thought Iād say a bit more about how weāve done things at EA Norway, as some people might not know. This is not meant as an argument in any direction.
Every year, we have a general assembly for members of EA Norway. To be a member, you need to have paid the yearly membership fee (either to EA Norway or one of the approved student groups). The total income from the membership fee covers roughly the costs of organising the general assembly. The importance of the membership fee is mainly that itās a bar of entry to the organisation, makes it clear if youāre a member or not, and itās nice and symbolic that the fees can cover the general assembly. However, I think the crucial thing about how weāre organised at EA Norway isnāt that members pay a fee, but that the general assembly is the supreme body of the organisation.
During the general assembly, the attending members vote on an election committee, board members, and community representatives. During the general assembly, the members can also bring forward and vote on changes to the statutes and resolutions. Resolutions are basically requests members have for the board, that theyāre asking the board to look into or comment on until the next general assembly. The general assembly also need to approve an annual report of activities and a financial report.
The election committee is responsible for finding candidates for the different positions, and nominate candidates to the board ahead of the next general assembly.
The board is responsible for setting a strategy for the organisation and assessing the Executive Director. Historically, the board has set 3-year strategies for the org, including objectives and metrics for those objectives. The Executive Director is tasked with carrying out that strategy and need to regularly report on the progress of the metrics to the board. Redacted meeting minutes from each board meeting are made available to the members in an online community folder.
Community representatives are available to members who want to raise small or big issues that they feel like they canāt raise elsewhere. They canāt have any other position at the organisation. Per the statutes, the community representatives are to be involved as early as possible in any internal conflict, breach of statutes or ethical guidelines, and other matters that might be harmful for the members or EA Norway.
Really love this, and definitely think youāre on to somethingāthanks for posting! Iād also add that if there are certain things that you donāt enjoy or find aversive, you should consider looking for co-organisers who find the those things fun and rewarding. Like with startups, you should generally be two instead of one. And for a lot of people, itās also more fun to do things together than alone.
Iām grateful youāve asked this question, as Iāve been really curious about this myself and have considered asking the same question. I know I should be careful when comparing myself with others, but I only have experience from one organisation where I have also been in charge of deciding number of hours we should work and how to track it. It feels nice to know that what Iāve been doing isnāt totally off.
Hereās what we do at our ~3 year old organisation with 3-4 employees: We use Toggl for tracking hours we actually work and a separate spreadsheet to track number of hours weāre at work. We estimate that 6 hours on Toggl is about 7.5 hours at work. The extra 1.5 hours are breaks, usually consisting of many 5 min breaks and one 30 min break (we donāt count lunch).
I usually track 6-7 hours of actual work in a regular day ( I work 5 days a week). Some weeks I track 4-5 hours most days, and then 8-10 hours some days. I try to regulate my hours so that each week is more or less the same. In weeks where I work a lot over 6 hours per day, I schedule a day off in the coming week.
I donāt have that much time for deep work. Maybe 1-4 hours per week. In my current role, not that much of my work requires deep work, though I should probably be doing 3-5 hours of this per week.
Thanks for sharing, this is great! I found it particularly useful to read how many hours you spend on each activity and the objectives and key results youāve planned for 2020.
I was a bit surprised that youāve used a quarter (250/ā932 hours) of your time on personally learning directly related to EA. How much do you think the hours you spent on learning have contributed to the positive outcomes of EA Toronto? You wrote āFinally, without independent learning, another wild guess seems to say that the other two thirds of EATOās strategy updates and insights would not existā. Does this mean that you partly focused on learning about strategy and evaluation?
Also super cool that you directed around 42,000 CAD to MF!!
Thanks for your feedback! We have ended up going for a 4-7 day camp for people with 1-2 years of experience. Iāve noted down your ideas for a future iteration of the camp.
And thanks for your offer! Youāve been very helpful so far, and it would be great to discuss more at a later time.
Thanks for explaining! I wasnāt familiar with the term, but I feel like I know understand better what it entails and the different ways it could look like.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment! Weāve noted down all your points, and found especially the one about signalling fit and thoughts on the role of national/ālocal groups very interesting and valuable.
Thank you for your comments! Youāve particularly made us think about the length of camp for the first group. Weāre now leaning towards something between 5-10 days. Your comment about potential risks is also greatly appreciated, and we will think carefully about how much we will make public moving forward.
Iāve often thought of Marisa as an inspiring example of someone who is so clearly driven by helping others. In the little I saw of her, that drive shined through everything she did and said.
Iām grateful for having met her.