I’m doing a PhD and currently spending around 3-7 h/week on EA-related stuff (reading forum/blog posts, attending local meetings, moderating in the Virtual Programs…). Since what I learn while doing this may have an impact on my career, it could be regarded as “informal” training time rather than as entertainment/leisure time. However, it does come at the expense of my time spent in “formal” training/work (i.e., PhD) and it’s a dilemma.
Even though my supervisor gives me complete freedom in that regard and doesn’t really check how much I work or how much progress I’ve made, it still feels for me as if I hadn’t worked enough. It may partly come from the fact that I cannot add anything related to that in my CV, as it’s mostly consuming content passively. So, on a career level, it’ll make it hard to justify to future potential employers why I took longer for my PhD (which might be especially tricky if I want to stay in academia), but also personally, because not being able to track more formally this investment of time and the learning progress I make, feels as if I weren’t really doing it.
I don’t see much room for change (besides keeping my PhD hours fixed full-time and engaging in EA in my free time, which may be too many hours of intellectual work and I may feel too tired/not have enough time, or reducing my time spent on EA-related stuff, which, of course, I don’t want), so I’m interested in how you approach a similar situation in your life (practically or mentally) (edit: or to read your advice if you have some) :)
How are you feeling about your research and life more generally? Important to consider this because it's easy for us to find all sorts of clever ways to procrastinate ;)
An idea: track your time. My system is just to make a note on a piece of paper whenever I change to do/think about something different.
I found this both confronting + comforting:
(1) we have more time than we think
(2) time perception is shaped by novelty of our experiences
(3) inefficiency can go on for a long time when we are on autopilot
(4) often time is not going where we think it is going*
(5) often it's possible to batch stuff and spend time in refreshing ways
(6) it makes us mindful of time
(7) it creates micro-friction for distractions.
*For example I thought I was spending > 30 min a day on particular tasks around the house. Turned out I was spending about 5-10 min on those tasks.