The Nonlinear Library EA - Announcing UnfinishedImpact: Give your abandoned projects a second chance by Jeroen De Ryck
Mar 12, 2024
02:46
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing UnfinishedImpact: Give your abandoned projects a second chance, published by Jeroen De Ryck on March 12, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
What and why?
You probably have a folder or document somewhere on your PC with a bunch of abandoned projects or project ideas that never ended up seeing the light of day. You might have developed a grand vision for this project and imagined how it can save or improve so many people's lives.
Yet those ideas never materialized due to a lack of time, money, skills, network or the energy to push through. But you might have spent considerable resources on getting this project started and whilst it might not be worthwhile to continue to pursue this project, it seems like a waste to throw it all away.
Introducing Unfinished Impact: a website where you can share your potentially impactful abandoned projects for other people to take over. This way, the impact of your project can still be achieved and the resources you've spent on it do not go to waste.
How?
You can share a project simply by clicking the corresponding button on the home page. I recommend sharing as much relevant information as possible whilst submitting your project. You leave some form of contact information as you're submitting your project. People can then contact you if they want to take over your project. Whether or not you transfer the project to the interested person is up to you to decide. After submission, the project needs to be approved before it's shown publicly.
Suggestions to find someone to take over your project
You're thinking about sharing your project and you want it out of the way quickly, but you also want it to succeed. Here are some things you can do that might help your project find someone to take it over:
Give a clear and concise theory of change, and include references where you have them. Make sure no logical steps are missing. Also indicate gaps that you haven't been able to fill yourself, if they exist.
Describe what your goal and method are. The person taking over the project needs to understand the idea you have in your head well and why you want to do it that way.
Describe what you have already done for the project and what you think still needs to be done to have an MVP.
Explain why you are sharing the project. It might be because you lacked a certain skill or knowledge or were stuck on a problem you couldn't solve. Explain in detail what the problem was, so someone who's reading your project knows what skills they should have.
But I will finish this project someday! It's not abandoned, just archived!
Will you, tho? Have you made a plan and have you dedicated time to it in the near future? Did you work on it in the last year? If the answer to these questions is "no", then you most likely won't finish this project someday, and you might as well share it.
Feedback? Comment below!
Thanks to @Bob Jacobs for the valuable feedback on the website and this post
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org
What and why?
You probably have a folder or document somewhere on your PC with a bunch of abandoned projects or project ideas that never ended up seeing the light of day. You might have developed a grand vision for this project and imagined how it can save or improve so many people's lives.
Yet those ideas never materialized due to a lack of time, money, skills, network or the energy to push through. But you might have spent considerable resources on getting this project started and whilst it might not be worthwhile to continue to pursue this project, it seems like a waste to throw it all away.
Introducing Unfinished Impact: a website where you can share your potentially impactful abandoned projects for other people to take over. This way, the impact of your project can still be achieved and the resources you've spent on it do not go to waste.
How?
You can share a project simply by clicking the corresponding button on the home page. I recommend sharing as much relevant information as possible whilst submitting your project. You leave some form of contact information as you're submitting your project. People can then contact you if they want to take over your project. Whether or not you transfer the project to the interested person is up to you to decide. After submission, the project needs to be approved before it's shown publicly.
Suggestions to find someone to take over your project
You're thinking about sharing your project and you want it out of the way quickly, but you also want it to succeed. Here are some things you can do that might help your project find someone to take it over:
Give a clear and concise theory of change, and include references where you have them. Make sure no logical steps are missing. Also indicate gaps that you haven't been able to fill yourself, if they exist.
Describe what your goal and method are. The person taking over the project needs to understand the idea you have in your head well and why you want to do it that way.
Describe what you have already done for the project and what you think still needs to be done to have an MVP.
Explain why you are sharing the project. It might be because you lacked a certain skill or knowledge or were stuck on a problem you couldn't solve. Explain in detail what the problem was, so someone who's reading your project knows what skills they should have.
But I will finish this project someday! It's not abandoned, just archived!
Will you, tho? Have you made a plan and have you dedicated time to it in the near future? Did you work on it in the last year? If the answer to these questions is "no", then you most likely won't finish this project someday, and you might as well share it.
Feedback? Comment below!
Thanks to @Bob Jacobs for the valuable feedback on the website and this post
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org