You can always do more

Shindler was a nazi himself and somehow he decided to do good and ended up freeing 1100 jews. He could have done more (as he realizes himself).

SCHINDLER
If I’d made more money… I threw away so much money, you have no idea. If I’d just…

STERN
There will be generations because of what you did.

SCHINDLER
I didn’t do enough.

STERN
You did so much.

“There will be generations because of what you did”. But Shindler felt it was not enough. I agree. How can you stop, how can you face those people and tell them “I had to buy an expensive car”, “I want to go on a vacation”?

Jeff Kaufman and his wife Julia have pledged 30% of their income and continue to however do ~50% for the last 8 years. Wow, but could they do more? Certainly. Consider how selfish Jeff is by saying the following, regarding the constraints for him to find a new job.

I want to stay in Boston: I really like it here. My relatives live here, my friends are here, I have roots in several different communities here. And the same with Julia.

I don’t want to work all the time. I want to spend time with my kids, and have time for music other things that matter to me. Something like 45hr/week would be good. –jk

45hrs per week? Man GTFO! In addition he chose to have 2 kids, a wife, a mortgage, and plays the banjo guitar at his local community. Man, he could be grinding to become better.

Julia Wise when she was an intern at the psychiatric hospital, “refused” to keep a patient company because she had to get to the bus.

when I was an intern at a psychiatric hospital, came while sitting and talking with a young patient before I left for the evening. When it was time to catch my bus home, I told him I had to leave. “You get to go home,” he said sadly, “but I don’t get to go home.” I felt awful for him, and later I asked my supervisor if I should have kept him company a little longer. “No,” my supervisor said, “Go home when it’s time to go home… –JW

Really! a bit more of your time, valikudha (hurts is it)? Why so selfish.

I went to an EA group in holland once and the guy who was running the show said he gave 10%, I was like (in my head) “bro common, you run an EA group, standards man”.

Clearly everyone could be doing more. But how much more?

How much more?

For me to do more (maxing out) in my life I could do the following:

  1. Increasing total earnings by “becoming great”
  2. Increasing percentage of donation to a very high value

Increasing earnings by “becoming great” is not going to be easy. We are talking about working for years on end without “burning out”. 10-12 hrs a day for the rest of your life. How long can you sustain this? (assuming I know what exactly to practice on and how to practice it).

I think of the last 2 months which was a really stressful and an anxious period of my life where I was applying for jobs (doing interviews, getting rejections) while working a full time job (as I picked up a new role and had to deliver what I promised). I probably did 11-12 hours on many weekdays and 4-8 hours on the weekends. THIS sort of lifestyle, is ok for 2 months, but after that I needed a break. I was so looking forward to being done with this shit. It was exhausting.

If I look at my past, grinding for weeks on end at “max capacity” has always crashed and I eventually slack, feel like shit and give in to days where I do absolutely didly squat. I am unable to sustain the motivation at such a high level for a few weeks together, let alone few years.

You also need to make other sacrifices. Working at “such a high level” (assuming we do) means optimizing your life by not wasting time doing things like meeting friends and spending an evening with them. In the past two months I reduced social interactions to a great extent (once in 2-3 weeks), but I don’t want to be like this. I clearly long for social interactions (once a week or so). Even in those times of hard grind, I sometimes couldn’t just do my work (like a robot) and went to my friends house to just chat or have a beer. Clearly it is “somewhat important” to me.

Bottomline: It’s going to be hard to sustain grinding for years on end.

Increasing the donation percentage to very high numbers is going to be hard to sustain as well. Think donating 50%.

I didn’t do the calculations but I am afraid this might mean optimizing my life to the point that I might have to live with others, or perhaps even having to make my own food and reduce outside eatings and celebrations. In any case,

What if this makes me feel really miserable? What if I loose my job in the US and can’t keep up with the 50% anymore?
What if the DS salaries fall for some reason in the future?
What if I am burned out, but I still need to continue pushing cause “vaaku kuduthutain velu” (meaning “I gave my word”).
What if I want to take a holiday? A breather after 2 months of intense grind? And what about the stress and sustaining it?

Is this going to be sustainable though? Am I going to be feel good to continue doing it at “such a high level” for years on end?

Understand you are not a robot and don’t hate yourself for not having the “Jeff Kaufman gene”? I want to be like the superstar, Jeff Kaufman, I want to max out and feel exhausted like when I do in some runs, but how long can you sustain maxing out day in and day out? I had to scale back on my running goals so that I can do it often rather than develop this hatred towards running and not do it at all.

There are people like Jeff Kaufman who are able to pull off a 50% donation (with ease I guess). Somehow they have the motivation. However am I like Jeff Kaufman? Do I have his motivation. Perhaps Jeff Kaufman is like a corner case? Look at your past perhaps.

Know your limits, master wayne.

I don’t want to set myself up for failure and feel like shit. And at the same time I would like to do a lot.

So what now?

So, how much could be good enough

I like the idea of sustainability over a long term than burning out and panicking. Doing less for longer, than doing max till I burnout. This doesn’t sound all that fancy. In fact it sounds lame. Grinding, on the other hand is hot; Doing small amounts for longer is not. But I am afraid the latter is sustainable.

When Julia asked her supervisor if she should have stayed back and kept the patient company, the supervisor said, “Go home when it’s time to go home. There will always be someone who wants you to stay. You can’t come in here and do a good job if you’re worn out from the day before.” Julia adds further,

To me, that’s an example of what one author on burnout calls “boundaried generosity.” I will give my best up until this point, and then I will stop. That’s what makes high-intensity, compassionate work sustainable.

Slate Star Codex seems to be saying something similar. Commit to 10% of earnings and that is it. No talk about increasing earnings, working, or whatever. Your moral duty to help other people is satisfied. You don’t need to volunteer, protest or donate anything else to any other cause if you don’t want to.

10% is sustainable I think. I can personally lead a great life not hold back on expenses (I think) and save a generous amount for the future, for future contingencies. It lifts off the pressure to go ham every single day, and perhaps eventually fail and feel like shit. I think 10% is achievable (I have done it in the past).

Slater Slate Codex seems to be saying something similar:

Do whatever you want as a job - banker, doctor, juggler etc.

Donate ten percent to the Against Malaria Foundation or any other highly-effective charity

Your moral duty to help other people is satisfied, i.e. you don’t need to volunteer, protest, or donate anything else to any other cause if you don’t want to

You are free to keep volunteering or whatever but you can do absolutely no other charitable work and it’s fine

Just don’t be an asshole to other people and continue to take care of your dependents

I think this should work from one thousand dollars until one million dollars, whereupon it will start making more sense to try and extract more bang for the buck through custom charity setups.

This is what I understood from Scott. —rando from reddit

Why exactly 10%?

(I mean I am not going to articulate it any better than the MAN himself.)

Why ten percent?

It’s ten percent because that’s the standard decreed by Giving What We Can and the effective altruist community. Why should we believe their standard? I think we should believe it because if we reject it in favor of “No, you are a bad person unless you give all of it,” then everyone will just sit around feeling very guilty and doing nothing. But if we very clearly say “You have discharged your moral duty if you give ten percent or more,” then many people will give ten percent or more. The most important thing is having a Schelling point, and ten percent is nice, round, divinely ordained, and – crucially – the Schelling point upon which we have already settled. It is an active Schelling point. If you give ten percent, you can have your name on a nice list and get access to a secret forum on the Giving What We Can site which is actually pretty boring.

It’s ten percent because definitions were made for Man, not Man for definitions, and if we define “good person” in a way such that everyone is sitting around miserable because they can’t reach an unobtainable standard, we are stupid definition-makers. If we are smart definition-makers, we will define it in whichever way which makes it the most effective tool to convince people to give at least that much.

Finally, it’s ten percent because if you believe in something like universalizability as a foundation for morality, a world in which everybody gives ten percent of their income to charity is a world where about seven trillion dollars go to charity a year. Solving global poverty forever is estimated to cost about $100 billion a year for the couple-decade length of the project. That’s about two percent of the money that would suddenly become available. If charity got seven trillion dollars a year, the first year would give us enough to solve global poverty, eliminate all treatable diseases, fund research into the untreatable ones for approximately the next forever, educate anybody who needs educating, feed anybody who needs feeding, fund an unparalleled renaissance in the arts, permamently save every rainforest in the world, and have enough left over to launch five or six different manned missions to Mars. That would be the first year. Goodness only knows what would happen in Year 2.

Why not do more?

I guess I can certainly do more, but we’ll have to evaluate if it is going to be sustainable. Let’s stick to 10% and lets’ take it from there.

Like Jeff Kaufman, I would like to commit to a percentage but try to do more.

We’ve pledged to donate 30% of our income, but we’ve been targeting 50%.

For far too long I have romanticized the idea of grinders. Grind being the only lifestyle that I respect. Being great and giving away as much as possible. But what about actually sustaining it over long times? I guess there are limits (motivation, injuries etc.). Limits that I refused to believe are going to affect me in the past. Limits that I assumed at some future point I would have figured out how to conquer. Limits I thought were my flaws.

And there is no need to feel like shit because you are only committing to 10%. EA is not about 1 person winning, it is about the entire community winning for billions and billions of years.

But, how can you tell a person in need to Fuck off?

It feels cruel to say to stop with 10%, or leave home at 5pm cause you have to catch the bus, or work 45 hrs a week only, or for Shindler only to save 1100 jews.

But Shindler, there are 1100 families. Think about their generations.

Think about doing something sustainable. Commit to something and stop feeling like shit. We are not robots, unfortunately. :)