EA - Impact obsession: Feeling like you never do enough good by David Althaus

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Impact obsession: Feeling like you never do enough good, published by David Althaus on August 23, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryImpact obsession is a potentially unhelpful way of relating to doing good which we've observed among effective altruists, including ourselves. (More)What do we mean by impact obsession?One can distinguish unhealthy and healthy forms of impact obsession. (More)Common characteristics include an overwhelming desire for doing the most good one can do, basing one's self-worth on one's own impact, judging it by increasingly demanding standards ("impact treadmill"), overexerting oneself, neglecting or subjugating non-altruistic interests, and anxiety about having no or negative impact. (More)Is impact obsession good or bad?Many aspects of impact obsession are reasonable and even desirable. (More)Others can have detrimental consequences like depression, anxiety, guilt, exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment. (More)What to do about (unhealthy) impact obsession?Besides useful standard (mental) health advice, potentially helpful strategies involve, for example: reflecting on our relationship with and motives for having impact, integrating conflicting desires, shifting from avoidance to approach motivation, cultivating additional sources of meaning and self-worth, reducing resistance and non-acceptance, leaning into absurdity when being overwhelmed, and learning skills (e.g., exposure therapy, positive reframing, self-compassion) for managing common negative thoughts & emotions accompanying impact obsession. (More)IntroductionWe've noticed that many EAs, including ourselves, sometimes relate to effective altruism and impact in an unhealthy way. In this post, we describe this phenomenon, which we call 'impact obsession'. While its specifics vary from person to person, certain common patterns emerge (as others have also pointed out). Here's a (first-person) description of how this can feel, based on our own experiences and that of others we've spoken to:By far my most important goal in life is to do as much good as I can. I connect with the logic of EA on a visceral level: seeing a human or animal suffering inevitably reminds me of just how much awfulness exists in this world, how much brighter the future could be, and that what ultimately matters is helping as many sentient beings as best I can. I feel a lot of responsibility because I might be able to make a big difference to the lives of others. Heck, the stakes might literally be astronomical once you consider how your actions might affect the long-term trajectory of Earth-originating life. This is why maximizing positive impact is so important to me.Exactly how to go about doing the most good is a very difficult question and requires lots of strategizing and experimentation. Picking the right project in the right career path in the right cause area could easily mean having orders of magnitude more impact than if I'd settle on the first decent option. So getting this type of prioritization right is extremely important to me. I therefore spend a lot of time and emotional energy on questions like "is this cause area really the most important one?", "is this project really the best one I can do?", "is there some creative out-of-the-box idea that I'm missing and which would allow me to have way more impact?", or "am I falling prey to some cognitive bias or undue social influence which leads me down the wrong path?"Unfortunately, the world is extremely complicated, cluelessness is often a huge problem, and many smart people - most of them way smarter than myself! - disagree about what to do. So trying to figure out what I should be doing can feel overwhelming and often fills me with despair.My self-esteem and my happiness are greatly influenced by how much impact I think I'm...