I’ll try my best to express it, even if I feel it makes me look stupid:
Short version:
Trying to improve how activism is done, figuring out ways to maximise the positive impact activists and activism organisations can have to advance their cause and that can be reasonably taught.
Reasoning
Activism organisations that are composed by volunteers and that don’t hire professionals are limited in what they can learn about their craft. Typically, activists can figure out by trial and errors and by looking at others what seem to work or not, but only if there is a feedback one can correctly eyeball.
So there is no reason to believe that the efficiency of these activists and organisations can’t be improved.
An individual studying communication and organisation wouldn’t likely be able to improve the frontier of efficiency in marketing or professional organisations that deal in communication, but even bringing the efficiency of volunteers closer to the current efficiency of professionals would be a huge improvement, able to produce a lot of positive value for the world, if one choose the right organisations to boost.
Currently I’m focusing on the communication of main-stream causes that deal with x-risks related issues, the second step would be to use the strategies learned to boost non-mainstream causes that try to address stuff that’s even more relevant to x-risks (if anyone is involved in a similar attempt or cause already they are welcomed to contact me, I’d love a chance to talk about this and see if cooperation is possible).
First steps I should currently be doing
Essentially I think I should be developing a system in excel that would allow one to classify posts on social media according to their characteristics and that would allow to investigate at a statistical level what works and what not.
I’ve started but continuing slowly, because it’s hard, it’s something I’m really not familiar with and I have an unhealthy attitude of flinching away from anything that’s hard to do in a way that makes me feel stupid and out of my league.
The second thing I should be doing is an “inadequacy analysis” of the current processes in the organisation I’m in to see all the low hanging fruits one could pick to improve performance.
I so far failed to identify any fruit but two (the statistical analysis is one, the second one is how work is distributed to volunteers and seem an easier fix), because I’m likely overly worried of “shooting my foot off and falling flat on my face in a way that makes me look stupid” so I’m flinching off again.
I did managed to correct some other major procrastination problem and I’m not able to reliably get hours of work done for this project, but I have so far oriented this work in too many directions (like trying to study negotiation tactics for the future, rationality, persuasion strategy, and communication strategies on social medias, all at once) and so I couldn’t really focus enough of a significant effort in actually making progress with something.
Trying to fix the problem by creating habits and incentives that would orient me toward the most important things I should be doing, rather than the most “interesting” things I could be doing that is somehow related to the project.
I might also need to learn more efficient ways to study and practice stuff, so far I’m still studying as if to pass a written exam on it.
I’ll try my best to express it, even if I feel it makes me look stupid:
Short version:
Trying to improve how activism is done, figuring out ways to maximise the positive impact activists and activism organisations can have to advance their cause and that can be reasonably taught.
Reasoning
Activism organisations that are composed by volunteers and that don’t hire professionals are limited in what they can learn about their craft. Typically, activists can figure out by trial and errors and by looking at others what seem to work or not, but only if there is a feedback one can correctly eyeball.
So there is no reason to believe that the efficiency of these activists and organisations can’t be improved.
An individual studying communication and organisation wouldn’t likely be able to improve the frontier of efficiency in marketing or professional organisations that deal in communication, but even bringing the efficiency of volunteers closer to the current efficiency of professionals would be a huge improvement, able to produce a lot of positive value for the world, if one choose the right organisations to boost.
Currently I’m focusing on the communication of main-stream causes that deal with x-risks related issues, the second step would be to use the strategies learned to boost non-mainstream causes that try to address stuff that’s even more relevant to x-risks (if anyone is involved in a similar attempt or cause already they are welcomed to contact me, I’d love a chance to talk about this and see if cooperation is possible).
First steps I should currently be doing
Essentially I think I should be developing a system in excel that would allow one to classify posts on social media according to their characteristics and that would allow to investigate at a statistical level what works and what not.
I’ve started but continuing slowly, because it’s hard, it’s something I’m really not familiar with and I have an unhealthy attitude of flinching away from anything that’s hard to do in a way that makes me feel stupid and out of my league.
The second thing I should be doing is an “inadequacy analysis” of the current processes in the organisation I’m in to see all the low hanging fruits one could pick to improve performance.
I so far failed to identify any fruit but two (the statistical analysis is one, the second one is how work is distributed to volunteers and seem an easier fix), because I’m likely overly worried of “shooting my foot off and falling flat on my face in a way that makes me look stupid” so I’m flinching off again.
I did managed to correct some other major procrastination problem and I’m not able to reliably get hours of work done for this project, but I have so far oriented this work in too many directions (like trying to study negotiation tactics for the future, rationality, persuasion strategy, and communication strategies on social medias, all at once) and so I couldn’t really focus enough of a significant effort in actually making progress with something.
Trying to fix the problem by creating habits and incentives that would orient me toward the most important things I should be doing, rather than the most “interesting” things I could be doing that is somehow related to the project.
I might also need to learn more efficient ways to study and practice stuff, so far I’m still studying as if to pass a written exam on it.
Efficiency is everybody’s concern, IMAO. I hope you can share progress on this issue later on:)