jessica_mccurdy🔸

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Mar 14, 2025, 1:08 AM

  12 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: Kairos is hiring a Head of Oper­a­tions/​Found­ing Generalist

  Agus is one of my favorite people I have ever worked with! Would recommend :)

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Feb 7, 2025, 10:56 PM

  21 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: jes­sica_mc­curdy’s Shortform

  Quick take on Burnout

  Note: I am obviously not an expert here nor do I have much first hand experience but I thought it could be useful for people I work with to know how I currently conceptualize burnout. I was then encouraged to post on the forum. This is based off around 4 cases of burnout that I have seen (at varying levels of proximity) and conversations with people who have seen significantly more.

  • Different Conceptions of Burnout

    • Basic conception that people often have: working too hard until energy is depleted.

    • Yes, working too hard can lead to exhaustion, but there’s a difference between exhaustion and burnout.

    • Exhaustion vs. Burnout

      • Exhaustion:

        • Result of working very hard/​ a lot of hours. Possibly including sleep deprivation or just brain fog.

        • Can often be resolved with a short break or vacation (eg: one week)

      • Burnout:

        • More pervasive and affects many areas of life/​work. While it shared many physical symptoms of exhaustion, it is deeper.

        • A short vacation isn’t sufficient to resolve it.

  • Core Feelings Tied to Burnout

    • Burnout is often tied to more core feelings like motivation, recognition, and feeling good about the work you’re doing. It is more tied to your feelings of motivation and value than pure sleep deprivation or lack of rest. If someone is unsure of the value of their work and isn’t super recognized, especially if they’re also working really hard, that can really get into your brain and feels like a recipe for burnout.

  • Importance of Motivation

    • This is why I stress the value of motivation so much

    • Nuance: we should distinguish motivation from being overly enthusiastic about programs.

      • Jessica take is that we should have set times for re-evaluating the value of programs. Having set evaluation times helps reduce constant worry about program value but still maintains our ability to have a critical eye toward making sure we are having a large impact.

    • To some extent motivation is a very moldable thing and if you want to try and get more motivated, you can (but it often includes help from others like your manager and team)

  • Quick note

    • This isn’t me advocating for exhaustion because it isn’t burnout. I think exhaustion can be very counterproductive and leads to future hours being less productive.

  My main thing here is that I don’t think our LFG /​ work hard culture is the recipe for burnout. I think being uncertain of the value of our programs, facing many internal structural changes, and not being on top of motivation can be. This is part of why I am excited about the M&E work we are doing, people doing tour of duties, and people tracking motivation/​actively valuing it.

  Jessica addition in Dec. 2024:

  • Getting sick more often than usual is an indicator to be aware of. This can lead to a spiral of “Get sick, get less done, get more stressed and feel like you are not doing good enough/​not feeling good about your work, that stress causing you to get more sick/​get sick again”
    
    
    (I will add for the forum that right now I am feeling really good about the value of our programs but its always good to be approaching programs critically to ensure you are having the most impact :) )

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Jan 29, 2025, 2:50 PM

  35 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: Meta Co­or­di­na­tion Fo­rum (2024) /​ Ta­lent Need Survey

  Very quickly: I feel like it’s useful to share that I did this survey and found it very hard, and a lot of other people did too. In particular, it did feel pretty rushed for such difficult questions that we didn’t necessarily have a fully informed pre-existing take on. OP does mention this, but I wanted to stress that for people reading this post.
  
  I still think it has a lot of useful information and is directionally very informative. I might get a chance to write up more thoughts here, but I am not sure I will be able to. I mostly wanted to give a quick additional flag :)

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Jan 3, 2025, 1:24 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Reflect­ing on Hive’s 2024: What Worked and What Didn’t in Our Com­mu­nity Build­ing Efforts

  Thanks for sharing this! The power of prompts and letting go of nice to haves have been things I’ve noticed in my work as well. Good luck with your future efforts here!

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Dec 20, 2024, 4:11 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: What apps or meth­ods have helped you bud­get so you know how much you can give?

  I have found rocket money to be quite helpful!

Rekindling the Fire: Prin­ci­ples-First EA Groups as a Path to Im­pact [Talk Tran­script]

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Nov 22, 2024, 10:07 PM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Luisa_Rodriguez’s comment on: How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

  Thank you! And thank you so much for your podcasts—like I mentioned in the post I found them really helpful and relatable and am grateful for you sharing so much!

  I’m on buproprion xl and generally they don’t recommend taking it at night because it can cause insomnia but I’m really lucky and have never really had problems with that. Instead, I just found waking up in the morning extremely difficult—I often woke up sad and just wanted to stay in bed and keep sleeping (even if I had slept a really long time). Due to the extended release, taking it at night means that peak effects are now happening in the mornings when I was most sad /​ low motivation before. So that was honestly just really great for me.

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Nov 22, 2024, 10:03 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jonas Hallgren’s comment on: How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

  This is super interesting! How do you do the experiments? Do you change one thing at a time and track?

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Nov 22, 2024, 10:02 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: huw’s comment on: How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

  Thanks! I actually also was using bearable for a while there and had a similar experience of “it’s hard to find out info because of confounders but this is generally useful for being mindful of my wellbeing”. I don’t use it any more but might look into it again :)

  I remember thinking it was super cool when I found it

How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

Up­dates on CEA’s Pilot Univer­sity Program

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Sep 20, 2024, 1:39 AM

  9 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: Five Years of An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Ca­reers: Our Jour­ney to im­pact, Les­sons Learned, and What’s Next

  Thank you for writing and sharing this! I’m excited about your work and also excited for other orgs to learn from it :)

  This is really impressive output for such a small team!

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Sep 5, 2024, 8:08 PM

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Sur­vey: How Do Elite Chi­nese Stu­dents Feel About the Risks of AI?

  Just wanted to drop in this study: Harvard Undergraduate Survey on Generative AI since it seems somewhat related/​interesting :)

Com­mu­nity build­ing in effec­tive al­tru­ism (panel dis­cus­sion)

Po­ten­tial Pit­falls in Univer­sity EA Com­mu­nity Build­ing

• jessica_mccurdy🔸May 4, 2024, 1:48 PM

  27 points

  14 ∶ 15

  on: My La­ment to EA

  Hey

  I am really sorry to hear about all of these negative experiences. I feel lucky to have gotten to work with you over the years and seen the positive impact you have had on others in the community and the exciting work you have moved into. I think the community will be losing a really lovely person. I admire both your courage in posting this and that you are prioritizing your well-being right now.

  I was sad to hear that our team contributed to your negative experiences though I definitely understand. When I first was introduced to the idea of focusing on top universities, I also felt quite uncomfortable with the implications. I knew so many brilliant people not from those top universities and knew many systemic disadvantages prevent people from attending them.

  That being said, I do still endorse this prioritization (though not an exclusive one!). In case it’s useful context, for you or others reading this post, I’ve written some reasons why I think this.
  
  When piloting new forms of support or being limited in the number of universities a small team can give higher touch support to, hard decisions have to be made about which universities get that support.

  I believe most of the people who go on to have incredibly impactful careers will come from outside those top universities. That is part of why we set up UGAP—to help provide support and opportunities to promising individuals and groups around the world who might not have the same access and advantages.

  However, top universities are the places with the highest concentrations of people who ultimately have a very large influence on the world. Partially that is because of the screening mechanisms of the university and but partially it is because of the built-in benefits and unfair advantages that students receive while they attend those universities. Given that this is the reality we’re working with, I believe we should do our best to leverage the existing system and opportunities at these universities to help get more people into high-impact careers. That often means focusing resources on those universities even though that can be demotivating to others.

  
  Again, just wanted to note that I appreciate you sharing this post and am sorry to hear about your experience. I am wishing you the best.

  What links here?

  • Arepo's comment on CEA will con­tinue to take a “prin­ci­ples-first” ap­proach to EA by Zachary Robinson🔸 (Sep 22, 2024, 7:26 AM; 11 points)

CEA seeks co-founder for AI safety group sup­port spin-off

[Ap­pli­ca­tions Open] CEA’s Or­ga­nizer Sup­port Pro­gram (OSP) & Univer­sity Group Or­ga­nizer Retreat

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Nov 1, 2023, 11:55 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Andreas P’s comment on: Why you should (maybe) ap­ply to the CEA Univer­sity Groups Team!

  Hi Andreas,
  
  This is a different and unrelated role (you can compare the role descriptions to see more differences)
  
  We are currently doing work trials for candidates for the group support contractor role.

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Oct 25, 2023, 1:55 AM

  24 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Isaac Dunn’s comment on: Why you should (maybe) ap­ply to the CEA Univer­sity Groups Team!

  Hi Isaac, this is a good question! I can elaborate more in the Q&A tomorrow but here are some thoughts:
  
  Ultimatley a lot depends on your personal fit and comparative advantage. I think people should do the things they excel at. While I do think you can have a more scalable impact on the groups team, the groups team would have very little to no impact without the organizers working on the ground!

  I can share some of the reasons that led me to prefer working at CEA over working on the ground:

  • I value having close management to help me think through my goals (both within my work and those related to more long-term professional development). I have had the benefit of working with some very experienced managers who have both taught me a lot and empowered me to grow myself through increasing levels of responsibility.

  • I really value learning from an established organization with efficient systems in place. It is pretty nice having most operational things handled and to have pre-existing support for things like budgeting, hiring, management, and performance reviews.

  • I really love the people at CEA. Don’t get me wrong, I also loved the people at my uni group but /​everyone/​ at CEA is so caring, competent, and hardworking. It is pretty hard to match that with just students (and especially when so many of the students are just volunteers or participants with lots of competing interests)

  • I personally prefer working with organizers who are already excited about EA and connecting them with the broader community and opportunities. I find it a lot harder to introduce people to EA.

  • I like to work on building scalable systems, managing people who are full-time, and doing lots of coordination across many geographies and groups of people.

  • Due to my personal circumstances, I prefer to not be tied to one specific location like a single university. Working with CEA gives me a lot more flexibility (and can help me have a more normal work-life balance)

  However, there are some good reasons why you might prefer to work on the ground:

  • I think the counterfactual impact story on the ground can be easier to see. Although we are able to make counterfactual connections for organizers, a lot of our impact happens through other people whose impact then also happens through others. Taking someone from not knowing anything about EA to transitioning into a high impact career is really fulfilling.

  • Working on a campus allows you to form deeper relationships with those you are working with and have more face-to-face time. Most of my work is remote and many of my coworkers work around the world let alone the organizers I work with. This works better for some people than others.

  • If you don’t want to be a part of a bigger organization and the bureaucratic costs that come with that. I don’t personally think these are that bad but we do have to be very careful about various legal and operational considerations. Sometimes things like budget approvals can feel like they are slowing you down.

  • Depending on your university, replaceability might be a larger consideration (ie: the difference in impact between you and the next best person on the groups team might be less than the difference in impact between the groups team and working with one uni if no one would replace you.)

  • Since you are working with so many people and making lots of commitments, it can be harder to rapidly shift directions.