I burnt out at EAG. Let's talk about it.

Thank you for writing up the messy reality! This isn't just a problem for young EAs - the combination of Sunday night afterparty and a retreat starting the next day usually results in Monday morning tears on my part.

Really brave of you to write all this, sounds like a really hard situation you're dealing with well. I want to say that to the extent this feels like a crux for "being cut out for community building", I wouldn't take what I've read here as particularly strong evidence at all, and also that I'd suggest this isn't a good time to make any big judgments about what kind of person you are. 

If you haven't already, I recommend this podcast about someone who hit a wall, didn't want to admit defeat, and had a lot more trouble pulling himself out than you did this time: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/depression-anxiety-imposter-syndrome/

In particular, I'd highlight the advice of having an email pre-written that pulls you out of a commitment, so that it's easier to send it if you ever find yourself in a situation like that again. (Similar advice is to have prewritten emails to friends who can support you if a downward spiral is starting).

Really glad you're ok, sending a bunch of care.

I've attended a few EA conferences already, and I also experienced a sort of burnout this time around! On Sunday night, I had a bad bout of hyperventilation/anxiety and called myself a cab to the ER*. By the time I was there I couldn't move a muscle in my body. But while actually at the conference, I had a terrific time meeting everyone. I think I just didn't notice how beat up my body was from the lack of sleep in the previous week because I felt an especially big pressure to make the most use of my time.

For me, there was a lot of added pressure this time because of nervousness around AI timelines shrinking,  doing a lot of recent reevaluation on the best way to spend my time and work efforts, and feeling guilty about the possible counterfactual impacts of missing even one meeting. After all, experienced safety researchers were giving me their very valuable time, and to miss one connection could lead to big down-the-line differences. I'm also from a relatively disadvantaged financial background and EA was fully funding my travel. If I didn't get a lot out of it, I'd be "wasting their money", or so it felt. 

Each time I attended a conference, I was putting more and more effort into meeting more people and getting more out of it. Attending the conference in Prague, I'm going to let myself take it easy, cancel meetings if I feel exhausted, manage my energy levels, etc.

I had a similar experience. I couldn't afford both nights in a hotel, so I slept on the Megabus on Friday night and chose to stay in a hotel for Saturday night as my most important meetings were Sunday morning and I wanted to be fresh.

Obviously didn't sleep on the bus because it keeps stopping and the chairs are designed not to be slept in - not helped by the fact the bus was apparently being driven by Colin McRae. So I had worked all day Friday, been awake all night (but safe and warm!) on the bus, and then had an entire day of conference on the Saturday. Well, I crashed at about 4pm, went to the hotel and fell asleep on the bed, and slept through my alarm the next day - missing all 3 of my important meetings :D 

Needless to say I had myself a bit of a moment, before applying self-forgiveness in plentiful measure. I called my girlfriend, had a whinge and a laugh about it, felt better.

It's okay to get overwhelmed sometimes, and it happens to all of us. The community is very friendly and accommodating I've found. Try not to feel obligated to push too hard, either!

Eli_Nathan @ 2022-04-28T16:41 (+11)

Hi Luke — sorry to hear about all of this! I work on the EA Global team and I can confirm that we definitely definitely don't want you sleeping on the bus! Please apply for more travel/accommodation funding next time if it'd be useful, it definitely won't affect your chances and we won't reject you for thinking you're taking advantage of us!

For folks who need it, funding is also available up-front (rather than having to wait to be reimbursed), with an option to return extra money should you have any leftover.

Luke Chambers @ 2022-04-28T17:57 (+1)

Lesson learned, thank you :)

Charles He @ 2022-04-28T15:01 (+3)

Conditional on you already receiving reimbursement of costs and approval to EAG, I'm 80% sure that some marginal increases over your limit, like an extra hotel within reasonable tube distance (even at last minute London prices) would be approved without issue.

Also, I will just flat out say that if someone has a situation like this in the future, where payment for a hotel would be this key, please contact me. There are things that will reimburse this. 

By the way, note that I currently request and receive reimbursement of travel costs to conferences. Also, I intend to push my luck over the approved limit for at least one event in the future (it seems like I undershot my estimates, things have gotten pricier, and there's valuable peripheral events before/after the conference that increases stay time).

Luke Chambers @ 2022-04-28T15:27 (+7)

That's a really important point to know, actually. I'm glad you told me that. I was always scared if I went over the limit, it might get revoked or I might get rejected in future if I was 'taking the mick'. It's good to know it's not as strict. I tend to ask for lower amounts because if I get rejected, it's catastrophic, so I'd rather suffer more and raise my odds than risk it. 

I got £500 approved to go to Oxford and London split between them (£300 and £200), but in future I might ask for more.

It's becoming clear in this thread that a lot of the problem with this is that people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds just have no experience and no fallback with how reimbursement systems work so err on the side of caution rather than not, in addition to trying to keep costs low in any way they can in order to both get accepted and also show they're not taking advantage.  Maybe if EA had a special hardship fund or whatever where they could talk with an EDI representative, people would feel more confident applying for specific amounts given their circumstances? Just a spitball.

Charles He @ 2022-04-28T16:17 (+2)

trying to keep costs low in any way they can in order to both get accepted

Note that the recent docs on EAG travel (that at least covers through EAGx Prague, but may not cover beyond that) suggest that requesting cover for travel does not negatively affect your chances of acceptance.

(Note that this doesn't necessarily give a person cover in the situation of ex-post going over budget, or cover reputational effects—but you should be able to push through any issues by being good and impactful).

 

It's becoming clear in this thread that a lot of the problem with this is that people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds just have no experience and no fallback with how reimbursement systems work 

Another perspective is that for many people, like myself, we can take that 20% chance of no reimbursement (in other careers/institutions, if not EA), and by doing this, we can get comfortable and "learn the system". 

On the other hand, you can't, with just five pounds in your bank account. 

So you put yourself in a tough situation, and then blow past three meetings. So there's three people who might think you are less promising, because of your own hardship. 

It is costly to be poor.

Not everyone knows the feeling of fear, social stigma. I am furious at this situation you had to experience.

 

Disclaimer: I believe the things I said in this thread, but I detest giving an impression of "virtue" or clout and I am also uncertain about the value or system effects of any action here from EA. So I add that: I don't really know the answer or fully agree with everything you wrote in your blog. From my personal perspective, there seems to be many constituencies in EA who need satisfying already. I don't want to add necessarily more noise, such as making CEA, who are already up to their eyeballs in work and other considerations, think about this issue in an unnatural way. I am very privileged.

Charles He @ 2022-04-28T15:07 (+2)

Also, a guess is that the so called PR or other purported adverse issues related to EA spending might currently affect travel reimbursement and larger event admissions. 

I have no real idea, but it's not crazy that this is related to why your emails need to bounce through a few more people before approval. (We don't actually need to know any details or need a response from CEA).

These recent issues are a bit of a turbulence. But it seems good to be against rumors, fear mongering and people spending a lot of time on posts that seem inflammatory and where the evidence/solutions/system effects haven't been considered—this sentiment can have huge indirect effects.

Thanks for sharing, appreciate it! Sounds intense, good that you canceled the retreat and glad to hear that you're fine now.

I wonder why that EA retreat had to start Monday morning after EAG. I wouldn't be surprised if other people who attended both events had similar problems. Most people cannot just keep conferencing non-stop, and a break of one or two days between conferences/retreats seems really important to me, both to recover and to process all the new input.

Thank you so much for posting this! I really appreciate it when EAs talk about their mental health and emotional wellbeing struggles. What we are doing is super intense and a lot of us go through stuff like this. I missed most of my Sunday conference plans because of my mental health, and I think this was a good decision since I organized one of the afterparties and I wouldn't have made it through that if I hadn't rested. I've been pretty tired this whole week.  

I've had lots of situations where, like you, I felt bad enough that I needed to cancel my plans, but, because I felt so emotionally distressed, cancelling those plans felt like the worst thing in the world. Over the years I've become better at realising that lots of the time, missing things is either completely fine, or (at most) an inconvenience to others. 

Take care of yourself and get lots of rest! I hope you feel better soon.

Hi, just wanted to drop in to say:

• You had an experience that you describe as burn-out less than a week ago – it's totally ok not to be fine yet! It's good you feel better but take the time you need to recover properly. 
• I don't know how old you are but it is also ok to feel overwhelmed by EA later when you no longer feel like describing yourself as "just a kid". Doing your best to make the world a better place is hard for a person of any age.
• The experience you had does not necessarily mean you would not be cut out for community building. You've now learned more of your boundaries and you might be more able to recognize red flags earlier in the future.

Good luck and I hope you learn something valuable about yourself from the ADHD assessment!
 

Thanks a lot for this post and sorry to hear you’ve burnt out. I had something similar at my first EAG and my solution for this conference was to space meetings out over 4 days and also not go to any after parties or dinners + have short days (like finishing at 3-4 if you have back to back meetings). This EAG was much better, and I think I’ll have even fewer meetings next time as my voice took a bit of a battering 🤣 I think there is a lot of pressure to have meetings as I thought: “what if they wouldn’t want to meet online later”. In hindsight, if they don’t want to meet online later, maybe you shouldn’t be meeting at all. I definitely think that the organisers can do more to prevent attendee burnout, maybe more recommendations on how to spend your time and definitely scheduling a retreat after EAG with no break doesn’t seem very wise to me. The org I work for is planning a 3 day break between the retreat and EAG which sounds about right to me, I shall literally do nothing those 3 days 😂 Also thanks for your last paragraph RE pressure, very relevant to all of us EAs I think!

I found completing a bunch of one-on-ones to be surprisingly tiring as well. In my last one-on-one, I literally just lay down on the floor as we chatted, I was that tired. This didn't happen at previous conferences when I spent most of my time roaming the corridors having free-wheeling conversations.

I'm sorry you had this experience. I'm glad you're doing better, were able to put names to some of what happened, and shared it here.

I did not have the exact same experience, but I did have a week of retreats pre-EAG. By Monday, I was too tired to maintain a conversation with my travel partner and I have spent most of the week catching up on sleep and feeling uncharacteristically antisocial.

Two actionable ideas:

1. Although it makes sense logistically to pair EAG(x)s with retreats and other events, spacing them out might be better. At a minimum, we should implement Manuel's idea of a break of one or two days in between, but I worry that even with that people will want to maximize time together and still fill those days. This might be especially true if we keep having a "conference season" — there were just three large conferences back to back!
2. Explicitly encouraging people to use Swapcard (or another more functional app lol) year-round might take some of the pressure off for irl 1-1s. Many people delete the app once the conference is over, but it can serve as a longer-term EA networking platform and take some of the pressure off to maximize connections over the course of three days.

Thanks for writing this. I didn't attend this EAG, but I came out of the previous one completely exhausted. Every day of the conference I ended up in pain and barely able to move. Maybe it's because of not knowing my limits well enough, maybe it's because of accessibility issues^[1].

But also maybe there's a culture that encourages us to stretch beyond our limits? I guess we can see if many people experience this and of there are, start looking for a general problem.

Something like this has happened to me too.

One bit of advice I haven’t seen here yet: Consider making it an extremely high priority to work out vigorously daily or every other day, even while at a conference. A short HIIT (high intensity interval training) can do wonders for stabilizing one’s energy and increasing one’s tolerance to stress.

At one conference, a group of us met up to work out together in the morning. That was lovely! It encouraged some of us to go to bed at a reasonable time the night before too, which was an added bonus.

If you invite others to workout with you, you’ll get multiple benefits — the workout itself, productive social time, helping others who might not have gotten a workout in otherwise, and additional community-building cred.

I also agree that we all need to cancel sometimes! However, I find I also have to hold myself accountable for cancelling only very very rarely, lest I slip into a pattern of overcommitting, burning out, and then canceling on people. EAs are very kind about mental health, but that kind of pattern would still cost me opportunities. I have to try really hard to focus on prevention instead.

Hi Alastair — sorry to hear you had such a rough experience! I work on the EA Global team and posts like these are super helpful to us as well as the wider EA community (helping folks manage expectations, helping people who have burnt out feel like they aren’t alone, etc.). I think EA Globals have a lot going on (including afterparties) and many attendees definitely feel like they are under a lot of pressure, which can be a lot. Glad to hear you’re doing better now — and definitely keen to hear any feedback you or anyone else might have for the organizing team (feedback forms were sent out to all attendees)!