It’s been great that people I respect like the project, but the most important thing about it becoming popular is that I now get paid to do it. People sometimes say if you get paid to do something you previously did for fun, it kind of ruins it for you because it becomes work. That hasn’t been my experience, probably because (1) I don’t stress about view counts or anything anymore, and (2) I work on it a few hours each M-Th, but it’s not my entire professional life (much less my whole identity).
The main thing that has changed as the project has become bigger is that it’s more ambitious than it was at the outset. Mostly you can see that in the length of the articles, but also a bit in the work I put into the site infrastructure. I still write what I think is interesting, though other stuff I’m working on at the Institute for Progress and now at Open Philanthropy has some influence on what I think is interesting.
Probably the hardest part is knowing how much cool stuff is out there that I don’t have time to get to!
It’s been great that people I respect like the project, but the most important thing about it becoming popular is that I now get paid to do it. People sometimes say if you get paid to do something you previously did for fun, it kind of ruins it for you because it becomes work. That hasn’t been my experience, probably because (1) I don’t stress about view counts or anything anymore, and (2) I work on it a few hours each M-Th, but it’s not my entire professional life (much less my whole identity).
The main thing that has changed as the project has become bigger is that it’s more ambitious than it was at the outset. Mostly you can see that in the length of the articles, but also a bit in the work I put into the site infrastructure. I still write what I think is interesting, though other stuff I’m working on at the Institute for Progress and now at Open Philanthropy has some influence on what I think is interesting.
Probably the hardest part is knowing how much cool stuff is out there that I don’t have time to get to!