Balancing Ambitions and Mental Health

"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how much, and in what ways are we not there yet? And if we then extrapolate that to how much and in what ways am I not enough, that’s where we run into trouble." —Hannah Boettcher

What happens when your desire to do good starts to undermine your own wellbeing?

Over the years, we’ve heard from therapists, charity directors, researchers, psychologists, and career advisors — all wrestling with how to do good without falling apart. Today’s episode brings together insights from 16 past guests on the emotional and psychological costs of pursuing a high-impact career to improve the world — and how to best navigate the all-too-common guilt, burnout, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome along the way.

Check out the full transcript and links to learn more: https://80k.info/mh

If you’re dealing with your own mental health concerns, here are some resources that might help:

• If you’re feeling at risk, try this for the the UK: How to get help in a crisis, and this for the US: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
• The UK’s National Health Service publishes useful, evidence-based advice on treatments for most conditions.
• Mental Health Navigator is a service that simplifies finding and accessing mental health information and resources all over the world — built specifically for the effective altruism community
• We recommend this summary of treatments for depression, this summary of treatments for anxiety, and Mind Ease, an app created by Spencer Greenberg.
• We’d also recommend It’s Not Always Depression by Hilary Hendel.
• Some on our team have found Overcoming Perfectionism and Overcoming Low Self-Esteem very helpful.
• And there’s even more resources listed on these episode pages: Having a successful career with depression, anxiety, and imposter syndrome, Hannah Boettcher on the mental health challenges that come with trying to have a big impact, Tim LeBon on how altruistic perfectionism is self-defeating.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:01:32)
• 80,000 Hours’ former CEO Howie on what his anxiety and self-doubt feels like (00:03:47)
• Evolutionary psychiatrist Randy Nesse on what emotions are for (00:07:35)
• Therapist Hannah Boettcher on how striving for impact can affect our self-worth (00:13:45)
• Luisa Rodriguez on grieving the gap between who you are and who you wish you were (00:16:57)
• Charity director Cameron Meyer Shorb on managing work-related guilt and shame (00:24:01)
• Therapist Tim LeBon on aiming for excellence rather than perfection (00:29:18)
• Author Cal Newport on making time to be alone with our thoughts (00:36:03)
• 80,000 Hours career advisors Michelle Hutchinson and Habiba Islam on prioritising mental health over career impact (00:40:28)
• Charity founder Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on the ups and downs of founding an organisation (00:45:52)
• Our World in Data researcher Hannah Ritchie on feeling like an imposter as a generalist (00:51:28)
• Moral philosopher Will MacAskill on being proactive about mental health and preventing burnout (01:00:46)
• Grantmaker Ajeya Cotra on the psychological toll of big open-ended research questions (01:11:00)
• Researcher and grantmaker Christian Ruhl on how having a stutter affects him personally and professionally (01:19:30)
• Mercy For Animals’ CEO Leah Garcés on insisting on self-care when doing difficult work (01:32:39)
• 80,000 Hours’ former CEO Howie on balancing a job and mental illness (01:37:12)
• Therapist Hannah Boettcher on how self-compassion isn’t self-indulgence (01:40:39)
• Journalist Kelsey Piper on communicating about mental health in ways that resonate (01:43:32)
• Luisa's outro (01:46:10)

Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Content editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuire
Transcriptions and web: Katy Moore