It’s my view that a major barrier to people realizing their most altruistic tendencies is a lack of confidence in what will help. We know there are problems in the world, but often they seem so vast or so challenging that we’re paralyzed, not out of a lack of desire to help, but by ignorance in the face of such seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
If you’ve felt this way, I have a wonderful thing for you to do: Keep your eyes open for those who seem to have found a way to move the needle on a problem you care about. And then, pile on.
Imagine you care about the plight of abandoned or unsheltered animals, but doing anything meaningful about it seems beyond your reach at the moment. You work full-time so you can’t volunteer at the shelter, but your income is stretched too thin across too many bills to meaningfully donate money, either. What can you do?
You can find those people who are volunteering at the animal shelter, and you can help them. They’re making some sacrifice in order to give their time, and you can’t. But you can make them a snack the night before, and drop it off in the morning before work, along with a note that says how much you appreciate their work. For people volunteering to solve a problem like that, a little gesture can mean the absolute world. It can mean the difference between whether they have the emotional resilience to volunteer again tomorrow or not. It can mean the energy they need to save one more animal this week.
Transferring the burden of helping off of the shoulders of the helpers is as meaningful as working on the problem directly. And it can often be done differently, allowing for people with different life circumstances to all contribute. Including you.
The Opportunity Machine 