EA Health Institute/Chief Wellness Officer
Empowering Exceptional People, Effective Altruism, Community Building
Optimizing physical and mental health can improve cognitive performance and decrease burnout. We need EAs/longtermists to have the health resilience to weather the storm—physical fitness, sleep, nutrition, mental health. An institution could be created to assist EA aligned organizations and individuals. Using best practices from high performance workplace health, both personal and organizational, and innovative new ideas, a wellness team could help EAs have sustainable and productive careers. This could be done through consulting, coaching, preparation of educational materials or retreats. From a community growth perspective, EA becomes more attractive to some when one doesn’t have to sacrifice health for deeply meaningful work.
(Disclosure -I’m a physician/physician wellness SME—helping with this could be a good personal fit)
Thank you. I appreciate thought leaders stepping up in this crisis, which points to the resilience of this movement. My husband was the happiest I’ve seen him in days when he found that you had written a new post.
I want to highlight a small section “ Be kind to yourself, ask what a friend would tell you, when you judge how much hardship it would be to repay; because I’m worried I know too many people who are going to be way too harsh about that.”
This is a technique in psychology called Mindful Self-Compassion, which I have studied and found very useful personally and with my patients (I’m a physician, not a psychologist). The three elements are self-kindness (vs self-judgement), recognizing our common humanity (vs isolation) and mindfulness (vs over-identification). See self-compassion.org for more
Be gentle with yourselves EAs.