Sam Anschell's Quick takes

If you put a substantial amount of time into something, I think it’s worth considering whether there’s an easy way to summarize what you learned or repurpose your work for the EA Forum. 

I find that repurposing existing work is quick to write up because I already know what I want to say. I recently wrote a summary of what I learned applying to policy schools, and I linked to the essays I used to apply. The process of writing this up took me about three hours, and I think the post would have saved me about five hours had I read it before applying. And I’m just one reader! 

I get the sense that there are a lot of Forum readers who don’t vote or comment on posts, but still get value from what they read. Benefits from Forum posts are diffuse, and I think authors can find it difficult to internalize the full social value of their writing. I also expect that the residual value of certain posts (e.g., those with timeless, original, practical advice) may be underrated. I’ve been sending this post (and its previous iteration) to friends for years, and I’m pretty confident that next year it will still be my favorite piece of writing encouraging perseverance in pursuit of impactful work.

I find it handy to be able to send a bunch of people a link, rather than having the same conversation multiple times. For example:

• I’ve sent the “writing about my job” posts I’ve written to a couple hundred jobseekers who’ve reached out about an informational call. I think this helped make the time we spent on the phone much more productive.
   
• I sent an information-dense post I wrote about high-value ways to help loved ones with their finances to a few hundred people in my life. If one person takes action to augment a family member’s finances due to the post, the post will have been worth writing. 
   

Finally, it feels really cool to have a collection of your writing out in the world! EA is a pretty tight-knit professional community, and putting your writing out there can be a great way to build a reputation.^[1] 

1. ^{^}

   I feel unabashedly proud when someone I meet asks “wait, are you the guy from the sportsbetting post?”