I couldn't have said this better myself! Coaching provides huge value towards career and impact growth, and I would love to see more EAs investing in themselves.
A brief and clear case for coaching - thanks for this, Dave! :) However, for someone who isn't already convinced of this, the claim will likely come across as overstated and under-argued and I think it's reasonable to disagree with such a strong claim. So I'm providing a couple of additional links which support the claim by providing different and more rigorous perspectives: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DwiJBvnjxjptQePSs/coaching-reduce-struggle-and-develop-talent
This post is based on a talk I gave at the EA Unconference and EAG Virtual.
Your career trajectory
From today, your overall impact can follow a number of different trajectories. Here are a few possibilities:
Small changes today can lead to huge differences 20/30/40 years from now. It’s a bit like investing in an index fund or planting a tree—the best time to do it was 20 years ago; The second-best time is today.
Eric Schmidt—Google’s first CEO—said
[A coach] can give you perspective. The one thing that people are never good at is seeing themselves as others see them. A coach really, really helps.
Common themes
These issues are very common in EAs; You are not alone.
procrastination
indecision
hyper-optimization
existential dread
excessive guilt
inner critic
A good coach will talk through these issues (and others!), offer alternate perspectives, and help you develop your own tools and processes to manage them.
Invest in yourself so that you may then invest in others
I’ve also seen EAs struggling in their own life but feel like they need to power through because others have it worse and feel obligated to help. They might even believe doing the work will alleviate their struggle.
The EA movement believes that everyone’s well-being matters equally. That includes yours. As the safety videos say, always put on your own oxygen mask or life preserver first before helping others. If you were hit by a bus and are recovering in the ICU, no one would expect you to do anything but recuperate. Mental or emotional recovery is no different.
Hospice nurse Bronnie Ware noted that the most common regret of dying people is I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. With the help of a coach, you can start living a life true to yourself.
It’s cheaper and easier than you think
Coaching is super-inexpensive to try. Nearly every coach within EA (and many outside) will offer the first session for free. Coaching schools are always looking for guest clients, which can be either a single session or could potentially be a longer-term engagement. Some coaches also provide discounts for EAs, package deals, or a sliding scale for lower-income clients (such as students or nonprofit workers). Some employers also provide coaching (or coaching subsidies) as a benefit. You can also apply for a grant from an EA fund.
Given the huge potential upside, I believe it’s a no-brainer. (But I admit that as a coach, I am biased. 🙂)
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
I used AI to fix transcription errors, rerrarange the ideas, and suggest tweaks to the title and some sentences.
Three of the most exciting projects to come out of EA in recent years are, in a vague sense, CEA spinouts:
* Kairos is directly a spinout of CEA and now handles most support for university AI safety groups. Basically everyone I've found who knows them is really excited about what they do
* NEST is an opinionated ideas-fi...
I couldn't have said this better myself! Coaching provides huge value towards career and impact growth, and I would love to see more EAs investing in themselves.