How To Prioritize Every Hour.
Impact is about prioritizing, not agonizing over every hour
In this post, I’ve tried to argue that aiming for the minimum is dangerous. The greedy optimizer in you should not be allowed to evaluate every second of your life against a single metric, not only because you have more than one goal, but because it will move the target until you’re left with no slack, and then something unexpected will push you below the minimum amount of self-care you need to function.
At the start of the post, I said that if you notice yourself aiming for the minimum amount of self-care, that’s a sign that you should reorient and reprioritise. Why did I mention prioritizing, rather than just telling you to stop?
Well, one principle of effective altruism is to aim for the most good you can do. But what’s often lost amongst depressed altruists is another core principle: some good things you can do matter 100x or 1000x more than others.
If you’re doing impact-oriented research, then picking an important thesis topic matters far more than whether you finish writing it in four years or five. If you’re earning to give, negotiating your salary matters far more than whether you take an additional two weeks of holiday. If you’re building community, following up with promising people matters far more than whether you postpone an event until next month.
I’m not suggesting that it’s literally never the case that you should be trying to do more. But I truly believe the vast majority of people can gain far more impact by prioritizing better than by agonizing over every hour of their day. Quoting a journal entry from a few weeks after my breakdown:
Greedy maximizers are poor prioritizers who demand great noble efforts and then don’t adequately track outcomes. As much as possible is almost always the wrong approach.
I need to appreciate how I’ll falter if my needs aren’t met. If I don’t sleep, I can’t focus. If I don’t eat, I slow down. If I choose the wrong pace, I burn out. I need to protect myself or else I’ll lose. I’m the only tool I have to accomplish anything in the world.
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