Tl;DR: Fill out the one-question-form below to let us know if you’d be willing to try out a free Growth & Wellbeing platform for EAs.
Share Your Interest in RISEThe Gist
Over the past few months, we’ve been exploring an idea that’s received a lot of enthusiasm from EA community members, psychologists, coaches, and the community health team: creating a platform tailored to the unique mental health and personal growth challenges faced by EA-affiliated and similar individuals.
This project would provide interventions designed by EA-familiar psychologists and coaches, addressing challenges common to EAs, such as impostor syndrome, burnout, perfectionism, anxiety, and more. For example, many EAs have reported feelings of self-doubt or decision paralysis when navigating the complexity of global cause areas or the emotional toll of working on catastrophic risks. These plans can be further customized by users to fit their specific needs and circumstances.
Before fully committing, we’d love your input: Would you use a platform like this? Do you see value in having a dedicated tool to support psychological well-being and personal growth in the EA community?
Why This Matters
- Community Need: Internal surveys and community discussions (for instance: self-care, burnout) have surfaced common well-being challenges within the movement. Many community members report stress, self-doubt, and burnout difficulties. While these are common human struggles, the high-stakes nature of EA work and its unique contexts—like longtermism, existential-risk projects, or navigating uncertainty about career paths—can make them even more pronounced. Improving well-being and personal growth not only enhances individual quality of life but also strengthens the community’s overall effectiveness.
- Personalization Gap: Mainstream self-help many times fails because it doesn’t adapt well to the individual’s unique situation. This Project aims to bridge this gap by offering community-tailored practices (that individuals can customize even further using the platform).
Background
When we first started at VIVID, our work was guided by the Future Fund, which encouraged us to focus on supporting EA-affiliated individuals. However, after the Future Fund shut down and our funding was cut short, we had to shift our focus to other initiatives.
Since then, VIVID has grown significantly, collaborating on dozens of projects with institutions such as Stanford and Princeton, alongside governments and public health NGOs. Our work has supported diverse populations, including refugees, communities in conflict, parents, emergency teams, and more. Now, we’re eager to bring these insights back to the EA community and revisit this project.
VIVID’s mission is to shift the mental health and personal growth markets from passive content consumption into actionable practices. Our no-code* platform (=highly customizable by non-technical users) enables experts and NGOs to design and scale interventions effectively, making it easier to translate evidence-based strategies into meaningful outcomes.
* Platforms designed for extended customization by non-technical users.
What Is RISE?
(Temporary name: Resilience Initiative to Support EAs)
- Created with the community's psychologists, coaches and community health team: Using our flexible platform, EA psychologists, coaches, and workshop facilitators can create, share, and refine interventions that are easily adjustable and scalable.
- High-quality, actionable practices, curated for EAs: A content committee- including respected professionals in the EA and wellbeing space (for now it consists of Julia Wise, Ewelina Tur, and Tee Barnett)—will review content before it’s offered to the community. Further discussions are needed to finalize this process.
- Actionable practices over passive content: While VIVID can include psycho-education to read/watch, its focus is on actionable practices (such as breathing exercises, guided visualizations, journaling prompts, and interactive questionnaires, and many more).
- Free & customizable: The platform will be free for the EA community. You can pick up a ready-made plan, tweak it, or create your own from scratch.
- Ability to practice together: VIVID enables adding other people as accountability buddies (whether they’re professionals or other community members), as well as optionally providing them with edit permissions to help further personalizing practice plans.
Who Might Benefit & How?
- Community Members:
The project will provide tailored interventions designed for EAs, addressing common challenges as discussed above, to promote mental well-being and personal growth. - Mental Health Initiatives (Projects, Coaches, Therapists, Peer Support):
VIVID’s flexibility can help each of these efforts by digitizing advice, assigning actionable “homework” plans, getting anonymous data, and more. This approach easily integrates into workshops and support sessions. Peer-to-peer networks, like the EA Peer Support Facebook group, can also distribute interventions and support individuals in finding accountability buddies. - Local EA Groups & Community Builders:
Many local groups are holding workshops or group sessions focused on mental health and can use VIVID to provide interventions created in this project. - EA-Affiliated Organizations:
Managers can share targeted plans addressing workplace issues like perfectionism and procrastination, creating healthier, more productive teams, or improving company culture in relation to these topics.
Q&A
- “Why create an EA-specific tool? Aren’t general self-improvement apps enough?”
While generic tools exist, EAs often face particular challenges—such as existential anxiety, high-stakes career doubts, or impostor syndrome heightened by working on pressing global issues. Additionally, EAs prefer tools that are more evidence-based and favor a straightforward style of presenting material. By tailoring plans to these unique contexts, we can save time and energy, and help individuals more effectively integrate these tools into their EA-oriented lives. - “How do we know the content is high quality?”
In an ideal world, we’d rely solely on fully research-backed interventions. In reality, there aren’t enough rigorously tested solutions to cover every need and for every population. Under these assumptions, this project will rely as much as possible on science-based tools, but will also collaborate with experts to tailor those and to create additional tools. Over time, we’ll use anonymous feedback and effectiveness metrics to identify what works best. - “Will data or metrics be meaningful and privacy-preserving?”
VIVID collects usage and feedback data anonymously. Users can see aggregated effectiveness metrics, and plans can be compared over time (at the very least, plans dealing with similar topics). This feedback loop enables continuous improvement while protecting individual user privacy. In addition, the platform enables deleting your user and data at any time. - “Isn’t this just one more self-help resource?”
The platform’s core strength is exercise, and its adaptability. You can start with a plan tailored to a common EA struggle—like feeling incompetent among high-caliber peers—and then further customize it over time. The end result is a personalized growth journey that suits you, not just a one-size-fits-all solution.
If this vision resonates with you, please share your thoughts through this one-question form. Your input will help us refine the platform, shape the content, and ensure this initiative truly serves the EA community.
You can also leave your email in this form if you’d like to receive updates about this project.
It's a great concept, but there's a reason the EA Virtual Programs are live programs. I think something like this in a live program format would be much more successful in having a positive impact in the lives of EAs.
Thank you for sharing! I completely agree that live sessions have significant advantages. In fact, I see some of the RISE tools as an excellent way to complement and deepen live processes rather than replace them - the ability to tailor RISE to specific topics can also be used to tailor it specific programs and contexts.
On the other hand, many people prefer to practice at their own pace or reflect individually. Another important consideration is the limited capacity and higher cost of live programs, which digital tools can help address by making the content more accessible to a wider audience.