or Maximizing Good Within Your Personal Constraints

Note: The specific numbers and examples below are approximations meant to illustrate the framework. Your actual calculations will vary based on your situation, values, and cause area. The goal isn't precision—it's to start thinking explicitly about impact per unit of sacrifice rather than assuming certain actions are inherently virtuous.

You're at an EA meetup. Two people are discussing their impact:

Alice: "I went vegan, buy only secondhand, bike everywhere, and donate 5% of my nonprofit salary to animal charities."

Bob: "I work in finance, eat whatever, and donate 40% of my income to animal charities."

Who gets more social approval? Alice. Who prevents more animal suffering? Bob—by orders of magnitude.

Alice's choices improve welfare for hundreds of animal-years annually through diet change and her $2,500 donation. Bob's $80,000 donation improves tens of thousands of animal-years through corporate campaigns. Yet Alice is [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) or Maximizing Good Within Your Personal Constraints

(01:31) The Personal Constraint Framework

(02:26) Return on Sacrifice (RoS): The Core Metric

(03:05) Case Studies: Where Good Intentions Go Wrong

(03:10) Career: The Counterfactual Question

(04:32) Environmental Action: Personal vs. Systemic

(05:13) Information and Influence

(05:45) Truth vs. Reach

(06:17) The Uncomfortable Truth About Offsets

(07:43) When Personal Practice Actually Matters

(08:22) Your Personal Impact Portfolio

(09:38) The Reallocation Exercise

(10:40) Addressing the Predictable Objections

(11:41) The Call to Action

(12:10) The Bottom Line

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First published:
September 10th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/u9WzAcyZkBhgWAew5/your-sacrifice-portfolio-is-probably-terrible

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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