Find some overarching theme to the ideas you are most excited about. Make your ideas into a roadmap towards whatever the ultimate achievement of the overarching theme would be. Then take the smallest possible step along that road. And then the next.
Forget about “high expected-value projects”. Think about what you want to be able to do long-term. Pick projects that allow you to gather the experience and aquire the skills to do this. You motivation shouldn’t be “if this project were completed it would be really cool”—it should be “everytime I work on this I gain skills/knowledge/connections/… that will lead to me being able to long-term complete many such projects”.
In the long run, I want to do my research but live a low stress and financially comfortable lifestyle. The traditional academic path won’t achieve that because I will end up doing my research but leading a high-stress and financially fraught lifestyle. There are three possible solutions to the problem, in rough order of preference
A Pick a research agenda that is lucrative, so that I can supplement my income with lucrative consulting gigs and have a strong exit option
B Learn to code and get a data science job, then do my research as a hobby
C Get a government job related to my field (intelligence or aid)
Path A seems like the best one for both personal and EA reasons. Right now I split my time between writing on foreign investment and cabinet formation. But only the foreign investment work might pay the bills, the cabinet work ends with me in the brutal academia rat race. However, the foreign investment research might or might not succeed depending on contextual factors like competition, my ability to build a brand and the value of academic prestige in the field. So I should first try and figure out if the investment-academia path is satisfying.
I want to find out if that works over the next 6 months or so while in my academic program.
If the returns are too small and the competition too stressful, I should pivot toward a programming career. It’s a well-payed 40-hour industry, and I can do my research as a hobby for 8 hours a week. That sounds like a lovely life too. So if I pick that, I would deemphasize my research and focus on coding skills for interviews and building career capital there.
I’m satisfied with that plan. The next question is, how do I stick to it? More on this later.
Find some overarching theme to the ideas you are most excited about. Make your ideas into a roadmap towards whatever the ultimate achievement of the overarching theme would be. Then take the smallest possible step along that road. And then the next.
Forget about “high expected-value projects”. Think about what you want to be able to do long-term. Pick projects that allow you to gather the experience and aquire the skills to do this. You motivation shouldn’t be “if this project were completed it would be really cool”—it should be “everytime I work on this I gain skills/knowledge/connections/… that will lead to me being able to long-term complete many such projects”.
Okay, let’s do that backwards planning exercise.
In the long run, I want to do my research but live a low stress and financially comfortable lifestyle. The traditional academic path won’t achieve that because I will end up doing my research but leading a high-stress and financially fraught lifestyle. There are three possible solutions to the problem, in rough order of preference A Pick a research agenda that is lucrative, so that I can supplement my income with lucrative consulting gigs and have a strong exit option B Learn to code and get a data science job, then do my research as a hobby C Get a government job related to my field (intelligence or aid)
Path A seems like the best one for both personal and EA reasons. Right now I split my time between writing on foreign investment and cabinet formation. But only the foreign investment work might pay the bills, the cabinet work ends with me in the brutal academia rat race. However, the foreign investment research might or might not succeed depending on contextual factors like competition, my ability to build a brand and the value of academic prestige in the field. So I should first try and figure out if the investment-academia path is satisfying.
I want to find out if that works over the next 6 months or so while in my academic program.
If the returns are too small and the competition too stressful, I should pivot toward a programming career. It’s a well-payed 40-hour industry, and I can do my research as a hobby for 8 hours a week. That sounds like a lovely life too. So if I pick that, I would deemphasize my research and focus on coding skills for interviews and building career capital there.
I’m satisfied with that plan. The next question is, how do I stick to it? More on this later.