Pentathlon: join a wholesome team competition with other EAs/​Rationalists

Summary:

The Pentathlon is an online 2-week-long “friendly competition” where you score points individually and as a team on five categories: Most Important Work (minutes), Health, Sleep, Nutrition, and Planning. Pentathlon helps participants improve their daily habits and make a lot of progress on one specific project, in an encouraging and warm environment (where you’ll definitely root for your team!). The Pentathlon runs from Saturday, October 15, to Saturday, October 30. Last time, there were over 40 EA participants. Sign up soon!

How to sign up

Sign up with a team of <15 participants ($300)

Sign up with a team of 15+ participants (custom pricing)

Sign up an individual and get matched with other EAs ($80)

Details:

Targets

Attendees set their own daily targets in five areas: Most Important Work (minutes), Exercise, Sleep, Nutrition, and Planning for 14 days.

Some of the reasons why people enjoy the Pentathlon include the following:

  • To improve or step up their daily habits, notably by implementing better systems

  • To make a lot of progress on one specific project

  • To make new professional and personal connections

  • To find other people to cowork with on a regular basis

  • To contribute to their team/​group house/​EA group’s spirit and motivation with a common short project.

Two options to join:

  • Create or Join an existing team: Teams from EA organizations and local groups in past Pentathlons have included CEA, Momentum, the Good Food Institute, Charity Entrepreneurship, Oxford Trajan House, GovAI, EA national groups, EA Houses, and more.

  • Join as an individual: If you join as an individual, the Ultraworking team and I will work to make teams based on cause areas, geography and timezone, and overall Pentathlon participation “intensity” (from relatively chill to very intense).

EA organizations have a good track record: last time, EA teams were on the second and third march of the podium. Before this, an EA organization reached first place.

Where it will happen: on the app of Ultraworking, Headquarters and Slack (a shared Slack with all EA teams). There is an intro event on Zoom (which is really important to meet your team and define the vibe).

Reasons not to join:

There is a bit of admin to deal with. The setup time for the app and overall competition (if you don’t have it already) is around 35 min. You need to self-report your score ~daily.

There is really a sense of a team, and you’ll want to be an active part of it, with your one Slack channel. Ideally, you’re part of a vibrant team with one daily (or a bit less frequent) check-in, but you can also define the intensity of this with your team.

Optionally, you can also participate in the wider EA Slack Pentathlon, sharing funny memes or lifehacks.

More details are here.

If you have any questions that aren’t answered by this document, your point of contact is Xavier at Ultraworking—see his email address on the linked document.

Crossposted from EA Forum (22 points, 10 comments)