Self-care: balancing sacrifice and renewal | Daniel Kestenholz

03/16/21 • 24 min

Daniel talks about why self-care is challenging yet essential for almost anything you care about, and how you can manage your resources more deliberately.

Quote from Daniel’s bio: “In my coaching practice, I help people in the effective altruism community face difficult challenges and make their biggest contribution to the world while taking care of themselves. I love to enter someone’s world and help them do what they’re capable of. It’s one of the most fulfilling things for me. Besides, coaching also pushes me into my own learning zone very consistently. I’ve grown just as much as my clients did throughout 300+ coaching sessions so far. Click here to access my coaching page. As the COO at the Center for Emerging Risk Research (CERR), I work to improve the quality of life of future generations as comprehensively as possible. CERR is a charitable investment fund and grantmaker that promotes research and the implementation of solutions to avoid technological risks. I’m curious about almost everything and love to learn new things. I’m particularly interested in how to have peak energy and focus, get the most out of my time, and struggle more gracefully. I spend my downtime meditating, hiking, and enjoying dark chocolate.

This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Daniel talks about why self-care is challenging yet essential for almost anything you care about, and how you can manage your resources more deliberately.

This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.

Previous Episode

Artificial Intelligence Career Stories | Evan Hubinger and Caroline Jeanmaire

In this episode, Evan and Caroline share personal stories about their careers surrounding artificial intelligence.

Evan Hubinger was an AI safety research intern at OpenAI before joining MIRI. His current work is aimed at solving inner alignment for iterated amplification. Evan was an author on “Risks from Learned Optimization in Advanced Machine Learning Systems,” was previously a MIRI intern, designed the functional programming language Coconut, and has done software engineering work at Google, Yelp, and Ripple. Evan studied math and computer science at Harvey Mudd College.

Caroline Jeanmaire leads CHAI’s partnership and external relations strategy, focusing on building a research community around AI safety and relationships with key stakeholders. She also researches models of international coordination to ensure the safety and reliability of AI systems. Before working at CHAI, she was an AI Policy Researcher and Project Manager at The Future Society, a think-tank incubated at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She notably supported the organization of the first and second Global Governance of AI Forums at the World Government Summit in Dubai, with over 200 attendees. In the 2019 edition, she managed the Geopolitics of AI and International Panel on AI research committees. Caroline is experienced in multi-party coordination and negotiation. She was a Youth Delegate to the United Nations for two years with the French delegation. She participated in numerous climate negotiations and technical intersessions (including COP21, COP22, COP23 and COP24). Caroline has a dual master’s degree in International Relations from Peking University and Sciences Po Paris and a bachelor’s degree in political sciences from Sciences Po Paris. She also studied at Tufts University and at the Graduate Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Caroline speaks English, French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk on the Centre for Effective Altruism YouTube Channel.

Next Episode

Naïve effective altruism and the danger of neglecting psychology | Stefan Schubert

Stefan discusses the importance of considering our own and others’ emotions and psychological limits when practising effective altruism.

Stephan Schubert is a researcher at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab, University of Oxford, working in the intersection of moral psychology and philosophy. He focuses on psychological questions of relevance to effective altruism, such as why our altruistic actions are often ineffective, and why we don’t invest more in safe-guarding our common future. He was previously a researcher at the Centre for Effective Altruism, and a postdoc in philosophy at the London School of Economics.

This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.