Boost your Mental Health to Grow your Impact – Announcing our Summer Program

Amber, thank you for this thoughtful, vulnerable, and beautifully articulated comment. I think that both you and Jason are right on target. 

I’m the Mental Health Program Manager at Rethink Wellbeing, and I’d like to offer my perspective on framing the program as a way to increase productivity. My thoughts are my own, not an official RW statement, but I have given my colleagues a chance to review this message before sending it.

I agree that basing one’s self-worth on one’s productivity can be a recipe for poor mental health (and rarely is effective at increasing productivity!). I’m grateful for your sake that you were able to shift your own perspective and increase the balance and meaning in your life. I still have a long way to go in my own personal development here! 

Despite agreeing with you, there are several reasons why RW highlights productivity in some of our marketing materials.

• Many members of the EA community who struggle with mental health problems are very motivated to increase their productivity (see, e.g., the EA mental health survey results, under “Topics people struggle with or would like to improve the most”), so emphasizing this as a possible benefit might encourage people to take care of themselves. 
• Sometimes members of the EA community don’t feel like they “deserve” to engage in self-care for their own sake. If we note the possible benefit to others, it might alleviate some guilt about investing time in one’s own well-being. 
• I believe that everyone in the world deserves access to a program like this one (or whatever tools for mental well-being are appropriate for them). But resources are limited. People in the EA community are no more or less deserving than others, but as Jason notes, we can justify prioritizing support to this community if there’s a multiplier effect because it allows them to do more good. Taking into account the productivity / impact increase is important for making strategic decisions when calculating the potential impact of such an intervention; plus, EA funders will want to see that RW is keeping its eye on productivity as an outcome metric. 

With all that said, because we agree that obsessing about impact is often harmful, we aren’t planning to emphasize productivity as a goal throughout the program. We are measuring it as one outcome, since it is a meaningful part of flourishing, even if just one; we also may briefly invite people to reflect on the effects of mental health on productivity if that is an effective source of motivation for them. But during the core of the program, we want to give people a chance to work on exactly this: the dysfunctional relationship they may have with productivity and impact, such as believing one needs to be productive, or close to perfect to be worthy.^[1]

Talking about productivity is a way of getting people in the door by addressing a common core concern for EA community members. However, our model is that helping people increase their well-being, including developing a well-rounded life and engaging in self-care, should have a side effect of increasing their capacity to do good for others … without needing to focus on it or put any pressure on people. Rather, we hope to alleviate pressure. And participation in the program does not “obligate” people to do any particular EA work or change the world.

I expect that the team will continue to reflect on how to walk this tightrope in our marketing. It’s tough to get it right, because the messaging lands different ways with different people, so feedback like yours is incredibly valuable. Thank you.

1. ^{^}

   This won't be the only focus of the program; participants will be able to tailor it and apply the techniques they're learning to a variety of personal challenges. But we expect perfectionism, high standards, low self-esteem, and work-life balance to emerge as major themes. 

One tension in meta spending is that it always needs to be squared with the principle of impartiality. Why is a valuable benefit being offered to EAs only, not to those with the greatest ability to benefit in the general population? 

The most common justification is that investing in EAs ultimately yields more object-level impact, making the benefit to the individual EA only an incidental benefit. For this rationale, I might add a couple of italicized modifications to one of your statements to get: As a general matter, EAs' individual wellbeing is only a proper subject of special community spending ^[1] inasmuch as it contributes to their impact and productivity. That's uncomfortable to say, and I think care must be taken to avoid sending the message that one's wellbeing only has instrumental value.

At the same time, I think it's critical to clearly link the justification for individual-benefitting meta activities to impartial ends.^[2] Too many charitable endeavors have slowly turned away from their original focus into devoting a bunch of energy providing benefits for insiders. In my view, it's important to keep far away from that pathway. EA has chosen to heavily embrace meta pathways to impact, which poses heightened dangers of treading down the path of insider capture, and so warrants particular care in clearly identifying how programs that individually benefit insiders are nevertheless impartial.

1. ^{^}

   By "special community spending," I mean to exclude things like employee health insurance, which at least in the US is a form of compensation for services rendered.

2. ^{^}

   There could be other impartiality-approved rationales for a program benefitting individuals, such as a need to address a harm caused by certain types of EA-related actions/actors, or a harm incurred "in the line of EA duty" (broadly construed). Mental health issues stemming from worries about impact could be seen as the latter.

Changed this. Thank you!

Possibly, hopefully!

Fixed :-)