Hi, I’m Daniel.
I’m paving the way for people with great ideas for improving the world.
About me.
I’m an operations analyst at the Center on Long-Term Risk and a personal and executive coach, currently based in Switzerland. See my LinkedIn for my professional background.
I’m curious about everything and love to learn new things. I’m particularly interested in how to have peak energy and focus, get the most out of my time, and struggle more gracefully. I spend my downtime meditating, hiking, and enjoying dark chocolate.
Coaching.
I help people in the effective altruism community face difficult challenges and make their biggest contribution to the world while taking care of themselves.
Resources.
Occasionally I write about issues that I address with my clients and other topics that pique my interest.
Minimalist Productivity System
To be productive at work without struggling unnecessarily, you need to have a reliable way of organizing everything that’s part of “your world”, including tasks, deadlines, meetings, external dependencies, etc. This post outlines a minimalist approach to designing a productivity system that helps you do your best work. Introduction Getting Things Done, or GTD as…
Professional Development in Operations
In my previous role as COO at the Effective Altruism Foundation, I was seeking answers to the question of how to become an excellent business operator—both for myself, the people I managed, and others in my network. I condensed my best guess into a roadmap.
Goal Setting
I rely heavily on setting ambitious monthly goals for myself and the people I work with. This post provides guidance on how to set and evaluate goals. I recommend doing this on a monthly basis. Set aside 2-4 hours at the end of each month to go through the steps outlined below. Your manager should…
Brainstorming
Coming up with options is one of the critical steps in any decision-making process. Brainstorming is a useful tool to explore the options space. This post illustrates how to do it. People who have trouble coming up with good ideas, if they’re telling you the truth, will tell you they don’t have very many bad…
Life Principles
Cultivating a list of “life principles” can help you discover what you want and how you can align your actions with your values. It enables you to bring your unseen and unquestioned perspectives and ways of being into the open where you can critically examine and change them. I started working on my own list…
How to Give and Receive Feedback
Giving others feedback is critical to help them succeed. It’s also really difficult, both for the giver and the receiver. Here are some pointers on how to do well in both roles. How to give feedback Goal: Provide outside perspective and encourage effective future behaviour.Step 1: Permission. Ask the Receiver whether you can give them…
Coaching Learning Map
In this post, I’m sharing the learning map that I’m using to acquire a strong coaching skill set. After some deliberation, I decided to pursue the first year as a self-guided learning project instead of getting formal credentials. To set myself up for success, I wanted to get clear at the outset on my motivation…
Career Reflection Framework
In early 2019, I felt stuck in my career and took this as an opportunity to reflect on my situation and career prospects. Here, I’m sharing the framework that emerged from this period. I’ve removed personal content so you can directly apply it to your own career. The framework helps you work through a complex…
Issue Log
Mistakes are one of our best opportunities to learn and improve. Unfortunately, we’re conditioned to associate mistakes with failure instead of opportunity and to deny or turn away from them. This way, we end up staying the same and likely making the same mistakes over and over again. To start learning from mistakes requires a…
Energy Log
Managing and improving your energy levels is a crucial ingredient to becoming a top performer at work. Being able to show up energized and motivated every day is necessary to achieve big goals and enjoy the process. This post presents a tool to benchmark your current energy levels as the basis for improvement. Energy levels…
Self-care
Self-care is challenging yet essential for almost anything you care about. In this post, I’m going to address why I think that’s true, and offer a few strategies that you can implement to manage yourself more deliberately. If you’d prefer a more animated version of this post, you can find a recording of my talk…