I've just started a blog about EA-org-style management, together with Brenton of 80k. You can subscribe on Substack if you like.

Here's the most recent post!

I think often people treat “development” as an add-on that's quite different from their work.

I think it's better to have the development and the work deeply integrated.

The failure mode

This is how I used to approach dev goals:

• Pick a goal that's kinda related to your job, but not very. A common one when I worked at CEA was “learn more about AI safety”.
• Have a fairly ambitious plan for how you’re going to do this, e.g. read a set of blog posts and produce notes.
• One third of the way into the quarter, realize that a lot of other things are genuinely more important than your dev goal, and focus on those instead.
• Feel kind of sheepish at the end of the quarter.

Luckily, I think there's a better way.

Pick dev goals that are part of your job

If you’re setting a development goal for the next quarter, you should pick some skill or task that you’re anyway going to be using a lot in the quarter. [...]

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Outline:

(00:30) The failure mode

(01:10) Pick dev goals that are part of your job

(02:30) ... then do your job unreasonably well

(04:05) After the dev goal

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First published:

Source:

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.