On feeling behind

I feel behind every day. So does most of my team. This is by design. This is how to use that feeling effectively, without burning out.

Powerful and dangerous AI will be here soon. This is terrifying and crazy and exciting. It makes me want to work harder and faster and do more.

I feel behind where I want to be. I don’t feel like I’m “on top” of this situation. There’s so much to do.

The whole world is behind. Nobody is prepared. Our institutions aren’t ready. The AI companies aren’t ready. Society isn’t ready.

BlueDot as an org is behind. We’re trying to build the workforce that protects humanity. Humanity is not yet protected.

Most people at BlueDot feel behind.

We will always feel behind.

Why BlueDot runs hot

Feeling behind can be a productive force for efficiency, focus and motivation. It creates a pressure to ship faster, to achieve more, to make harder tradeoffs.

I’ve designed BlueDot to lean into “feeling behind”. Every course runs every month. We evaluate grants and disburse money fast. Our internal meeting cadences push us to set ambitious daily goals and to hit them.

When people work trial with BlueDot, they remark on our incessant velocity. People are shocked to learn that we’re only 7 people, training >1,000 people per month. We punch way above our weight because we’ve built a super talented, agentic, hard-working team, and everyone moves fast.

We do not wait around.

How this goes wrong

We can see all the stuff that needs to get done, if only we had more time. If only we were a bigger team. If only we were better.

I often feel bad about feeling behind. I feel I need to run faster and work more hours to get back to “where I should be”. But I know I’m already working at 110% speed, so I don’t see a way to do this.

I convince myself to do a heroic effort, to work until 4am, to do whatever it takes to get this thing done. To meet the crazy expectations I have for myself.

I will never meet those expectations.

After many weeks, months and years of heroic efforts, we become mentally and physically exhausted. Our judgment and problem-solving skills degrade, and our productivity collapses.

But feeling behind is not evidence that you’re fucking up. There is no amount of running faster that will ever get rid of this feeling.

Good kinds of pain

Doing exercise hurts, but it’s a good pain. You feel good about pushing your body, seeing what you’re capable of. No pain, no gain.

Feeling behind can become a good pain. It’s a sign that you’re being stretched and pushed to achieve more. Pushing yourself to get more done is the BlueDot equivalent of a workout.

But for it to be good pain, you need to know how hard to push. If you’re running a marathon, and you run the first half too fast, you will collapse before the end. Good pacing is essential.

It’s also important to recognise that this feeling is normal when trying to solve a hard, important problem. It’s a feature, not a bug. During a marathon, the pain in your legs is evidence that you’re pushing yourself, not that you’re a failure. The pain from being behind is likewise evidence that you’re in a leveraged position to do lots of good, and have the opportunity to push yourself hard to create impact.

Feeling behind is a signal that you’re doing important things, and you have a lot to contribute.

How to use the feeling

Prioritisation.

The whole game is prioritisation.

You can’t magic up more hours in the day. Time passes at the same rate for you as it does for everybody else.

When you feel behind, ask yourself: “What is the single most important thing for me to do right now? And what can I NOT do? What can I delete, cancel, postpone, or punt to my someday list?”

There will always be fires. There will always be great things you could do, that you’ve decided to not do. If you could pause time, you could do everything. But the seconds keep ticking by, and you need to make a hard decision.

Taking care of yourself

The single most important thing to prioritise is what I call your “fundamentals”. Get enough sleep, eat healthy food, do regular exercise, and spend time with friends and loved ones.

You should have a high bar for allowing work to encroach upon your fundamentals. It might be fine for a short while, but you’ll eat into your energy reserves. Tread carefully.

If you feel that things are becoming too much, say it out loud. Tell another member of the team. Tell your manager in a 1-1. Share it in Slack. Wherever you feel comfortable doing so. We can help each other evaluate the opportunities ahead of us, prioritise the most important ones, and deprioritise everything else.

Closing thoughts

I love that BlueDot is a fast-paced, intense team, full of people who are dedicated to building the workforce that protects humanity. But we’re not doing a 1-week sprint. We’re in a multi-year marathon.

I need us to work hard for years, and I’d like for us to have fun doing so!

We can only achieve this if we notice we feel behind, and recognise it as a signal that we need to prioritise. It’s not a signal that we need to work even harder and longer.

You’re only a single human being, but you’re also doing some of the most important work in the world, living through the most transformative time in the universe.

Use your time wisely.