This piece is cross-posted on my blog here.

Productivity is a hot topic in effective altruism. We’re all trying to effectively move toward our goals. Many of us have theories about what works to accomplish big goals. But are these intuitions right? Do they actually work?

One way to check is to ask successful people how they get things done and then work backward from there. You probably know the kind of person I’m talking about - people who just seem to get stuff done. Did you ever wonder how they manage to accomplish so much? What do they do differently?

Now here’s your chance to be a fly on the wall. I interviewed effective altruists about their productivity habits to give you an inside peek into how they accomplish cool things.

Each interview will highlight one EA, often someone with leadership experience or someone other EAs recommended as excellent in some particular area. You can take your own views on how much weight to put on each interviewee's experience.

Obviously, personal differences matter. You probably won’t want to copy any one person exactly, but comparing across the upcoming interviews can give you insight into patterns that might be worth trying. You can use these interviews to learn new tips, find experiments to try yourself, or just satisfy your curiosity.

To start off, I’m joined by Will MacAskill, Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford. Will helped start the effective altruism movement; he co-founded the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours. He also wrote Doing Good Better - Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference.

Today, Will shares his advice to copy successful people rather than try to figure it out from scratch, at least when you’re doing something new. According to Will, this method has helped him do everything from publishing a book to winning the Fulbright Scholarship.

You can read the full transcript below for more, including:

Why he’s skeptical of explicit modeling of costs and benefits when prioritizing
His Eat That Elephant routine
Why he doesn’t think it’s valuable to work ten-hour days
His biggest weird hack for producing output that once made him work 100 hours in one week
Why he founded Giving What We Can rather than following a traditional academic path
How

...

lynettebye

lynettebye's Posts

lynettebye's Comments