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This is: Impact Report for Effective Altruism Coaching, published by lynettebye on the AI Alignment Forum.
This report summarizes the impact evaluation for EA Coaching’s first year and a half from its founding in October 2017 until May 2019. It’s supplemented by a longer document that includes the appendixes and footnotes.
Executive Summary
What Does EA Coaching Do?
EA Coaching helps people working on the most pressing problems get more done. As of May 2019, I have had 800+ sessions with 100+ clients.
I work with professionals who already accomplish a lot -- consultants, professors, software engineers, managers, researchers -- to pinpoint their bottlenecks and help them solve the biggest problems holding them back from accomplishing more. Together, we clarify their goals, implement more effective strategies, and increase focused work time on their top priorities. Coaching typically consists of four to twelve 50-minute calls.
Key Takeaways
Most of my work is with clients who are likely to contribute to top cause areas, since marginal improvements in productivity for this group may have a disproportionately large impact on the world. Half of my current clients are at FHI, Open Phil, CEA, MIRI, DeepMind, the Forethought Foundation, and ACE.
I expect productivity coaching to have an impact by improving prioritization and increasing focused work. Clients report an average of 16 extra productive hours a month, and it’s not uncommon for them to claim the coaching doubled their output via prioritization changes.
Clients think coaching is useful, as evidenced by client surveys, impact case studies, and revealed preferences. These metrics support the conclusion that the coaching is valuable as implemented, and not just in theory. However, it seems likely these metrics imprecisely correlate with objective output, the ultimate goal, due to biases in self-report and uncertainty about counterfactual impact.
I built a rough model quantifying the impact for a cost-benefit comparison, which suggests that the benefit from coaching is about twice the opportunity cost.
My calculations indicate clients reported 20% more benefit on average per session in the first half of 2019 compared to 2018 (see Appendix B), and I think there’s still significant room for improvement.
Why Lynette?
I’ve been involved in Effective Altruism since 2014; I interned at GiveWell, started the Careers Chair role for Harvard College Effective Altruism, and started an EA Fellowship with Penn Effective Altruism.
After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in psychology, I researched self-control under Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania.
I’m also trained in Person-Centered Therapy (non-directional, non-judgmental active listening) with the peer counseling group Room 13, and I’m a mentor for the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR).
I wanted to do more direct work after leaving the Duckworth Lab, and 80,000 Hours suggested I try coaching to help EAs level up. So I used my knowledge of psychology and counseling to start EA Coaching.
Confidentiality
Unfortunately, many details can’t be shared publicly due to confidentiality. If you’re considering donating, I can share more details if you email lynettebye at gmail.com.
Who Do I Work With?
I work with people I think can contribute toward important cause areas, primarily those identified on 80,000 Hours’ global problems page. Most of my expected impact comes from working with this group, since marginal improvements in their productivity may have a disproportionately large impact on the world.
Half of my current clients (a third of all clients I’ve worked with) are at FHI, Open Phil, CEA, MIRI, DeepMind, the Forethought Foundation, and ACE.
Approximately half of my current clients are working on X-risk areas, primarily artificial intelligence safety and ...
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