Physically speaking, we are constantly becoming new people. Our stomach lining replaces itself every five days. None of the skin cells we have now will be there in four weeks. We’ll have a completely new liver in a year or two. Even our bones will replace every cell in them after 7–10 years.
So with all this new material, why don’t we feel like new people? It’s probably because of the most stubborn part of who we are: our thoughts and ideas.
One of my favorite reads this year was an old book called Self-Renewal by John W. Gardner. Published in 1964, it’s something of a mix between social commentary and philosophy, and surprisingly relevant still. The core idea is that a healthy person, and a healthy society, is constantly going through a process of self-renewal.
New Year’s is a potent time for self-renewal, and yet for some reason we mostly use it to just make resolutions about eating better or exercising more. There’s nothing wrong with those or other aspirations, but perhaps they don’t stick because we keep thinking and believing the same things.
As you consider the coming year, maybe give time to how you can improve your thinking in 2021. After all, there’s no truth we believe that can’t be refined. There’s no thought about others that can’t use more grace. There’s no idea about ourselves that can’t be improved.
We still all have so much to learn. And improving the way we think is a way that we improve ourselves.
What thoughts and ideas do you have that you can improve?
Seeing Good at Work
Every kid needs good teachers. After pioneering the Teach for America program in the United States, Wendy Kopp founded Teach for All. Since 2007, they’ve built a global network of partners who recruit young professionals to teach in underserved schools in their home countries.
The approach works especially well because kids and communities are all unique, so local perspectives and solutions are much more likely to get better outcomes. For example, placing top university graduates in Chile into underserved schools improved math and reading scores, as well as the kids’ self-esteem and self-efficacy.
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I would love to hear from you what good work you’ve set out as a goal for 2021. If you’re willing to share, please tell me all about it.
When I was in law school, I took Corporate and Partnerships Tax. It surprised me by becoming a favorite class, in large part thanks to the professor.
Prof. Neeleman wielded a superhuman understanding of the tax code, the kind that you couldn’t stump with even the most obscure question. He’d respond not only with the answer, but would cite the Treasury Regulation section just as easily as you can say your phone number.
He was also incredibly kind.
Near the end of the semester, my study group went to Prof. Neeleman’s office to ask some questions we had for the final exam. He welcomed all six of us warmly. But before we could ask our first question, he took an ornate basket from a shelf and started to pass it around. Inside were some very expensive chocolates that he wanted to share. They were a gift from a student in thanks for some tax advice he’d give . (Based on the chocolates, it had clearly been valuable advice.)
As we all thanked him, he said it was nothing then made an off-hand comment, one that I doubt he even remembers saying. But it overflowed with so much wisdom that I have never forgotten it.
“You share what you love.”
This is a truth as universal to the human experience as you’ll ever find. Prof. Neeleman loved chocolate, so he shared it with us. But that same rule applies to whatever we love most.
Love baseball most? You delight in taking someone to a game. Love cooking most? It’s not the same if you’re the only one to eat it. The list goes on. If you love it, you share it.
And like most truth, it’s a damning one, too. Love yourself the most? Then you’re all you ever want to talk about.
The only things that come from the heart are the things that were there to begin with. It’s our job to make sure that whatever we put in our hearts is worth sharing.
What’s something you love that you can you share with someone else this week?
Seeing Good at Work
Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, one of the most effective ways to improve the circumstances of the very poor is to simply give them money. Research into direct cash transfers regularly shows that families spend the money on things that improve health, education, and future income. They don’t increase spending on tobacco, alcohol, or other temptation goods.
GiveDirectly is one of the top charities in the world making direct cash transfers. They have given over $300 million to more than 600,000 people in the developing world. Moreover, they come recommended by top charity evaluators for their transparency, good governance, and impact.
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I don’t have anything to ask of you this week. I hope you all enjoy a safe and lovely holiday season.
For the past few days I’ve been editing a podcast interview I did with Prof. Andrea Veltman, who teaches philosophy at James Madison University. Her book, Meaningful Work, is a philosophical treatment of work. Thorough and thought-provoking, it was one of my favorite reads this year.
What work means to us is changing rapidly, perhaps faster than ever in history. While we still need work to make a living, more people than ever can pursue work as a calling. Instead of salary, the future of work will be measured by things like meaning, virtue, and impact.
We’re already most of the way there. For example, one study found that a staggering 9 in 10 employees surveyed would accept lower pay if they had work with more meaning. There’s also an impression that this desire for meaning is especially pronounced for younger workers, but research shows that older workers may be more cause-oriented than younger people at the start of their careers.
What’s behind this momentum? Perhaps it’s that we see better than ever what our work means to the world around us. Connectivity gives us context and reasons to contemplate our place in a human family with abundant needs. Is there any wonder that we’d want our work—where we spend the bulk of our waking hours—to do some good?
A job doesn’t sprout purpose overnight, though. If you are hunting for more meaning at work, here are three ways to start:
Help the people you work with. Few people in the world will have the same opportunities that you have to help the people around you.
Build things, even if it’s beyond your job description. Don’t just clock in every day. Look for transcendent work, the kind that improves things long after you’ve left.
Master a problem. Something at work vexes people. Understand it better than anyone else so you can help fix it.
If you make meaning at work a practice instead of a mere desire, more opportunities will find you. Before long, you’ll be blazing the trail for others, too.
What can you do this week to add impact to your work?
Finding Good at Work
If you’re ready to dive into finding work with impact, I strongly recommend 80,000 Hours, a program at the Centre for Effective Altruism in Oxford, England. The idea in the name is that you have 80,000 hours of work in your life. Their goal is to help you make that time as impactful as you can.
I recommend starting with their Key Ideas. I also enjoyed their book, which you can get in digital form for free.
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I’m always interested in good ideas for topics to address or organizations to highlight. If you have something to share, please send me a message.
When it comes to helping, we automatically think of solutions. Is there anything more basic to helping than that? Right now, the person that helps me is the one who can get me to stop grinding my teeth at night, or that can make me crave junk food less, or that can fix email (a tortuous system we impose on each other).
In other words, we think of helping as making problems go away.
But look at the bias that underlies this kind of thinking. Problems aren’t to be understood, just eliminated. What is the point, after all, of deeply understanding something that’s meant to go away? That goal, disposing of problems, gives us a bias for solutions. Thinking about solutions just makes sense, and feels a lot more exciting to boot.
Have you ever owned a Swiss Army knife? Those little devices are brimming with solutions. There’s a doodad for just about any situation. The one I own (purchased in my 20’s) has the typical pair of knife blades and a can opener. But it also has a Phillips-head screwdriver, three different flathead screwdrivers, a pair of scissors, a pair of pliers, a serrated saw, a file, a hook, a ballpoint pen, a corkscrew, tweezers (now missing), a watch (long dead), a magnifying glass, two other tools defying description, and a fish scaler.
I bought my Swiss Army knife not simply because it might be useful. I remember at the time feeling like I would use it to conquer the world.
But if you own one, you know the thorny truth about a Swiss Army knife: it’s mostly just a big empty promise in an awkward little tool. I, for example, have never once scaled a fish, let alone scaled one with my Swiss Army knife. Perhaps the most delightful absurdity is the tiny three-inch ruler etched into the side of my fish scaler, handy for measuring the three-inch-or-smaller fish I may someday catch. (Yes, I know I can measure the fish in sections. But c’mon.)
So why the appeal? Why do people buy Swiss Army knives? It’s because we love solutions. We love them so much, we’re willing to overlook their weaknesses, and how inapt they can be for any given problem. For any given problem, there is always a better solution than a Swiss Army knife.
The truth is that if I was serious about scaling fish, I would take much more seriously the problem of fish scales. I would learn how they work, what makes them hard to remove, what differences there are between different kinds of fish, and why the scales need to be removed anyway. If I was serious about scaling a fish, these are things I should know before I even thought of what kind of tool would do the job.
Unfortunately, when we encounter problems our minds turn first to the solutions we have on hand; let’s call that Swiss-Army-Knife thinking. We do this rather than understanding the problem first, knowing it well enough to discover the tools we really need.
Here are a few examples of Swiss-Army-Knife thinking:
Taking a group of teenagers to build a school in a developing country, where plenty of experienced builders could easily be hired. (For less than the cost of the trip!)
Grounding your child for yelling at you without understanding why they were yelling.
Developing a phone support script to more conveniently manage staff, not to better solve customers’ technical problems.
In each of these examples, the solution is more enticing than actually understanding the problem. And so the solution—every time—falls short to everyone’s disappointment.
When you encounter new problems this week, resist the urge to reach for anything resembling a Swiss Army knife. Instead, take some time to ask questions and understand the problem first. Then figure out the right tool for the job.
Seeing Good at Work
One of the best organizations for providing access to clean water is also one that looks deeply at problems. Water for People has thus far provided clean water to more than 3.6 million people, an amazing feat. But even more impressive, Water for People only works on water programs that can be owned and maintained by local organizations so that they never again need outside assistance. This is critical, as many parts of the world are littered with broken-down water equipment that was installed then forgotten by aid groups.
Water for People also actively measures their impact, and provides constant up-to-date access to their data through the Everyone Forever tracker. (“Everyone Forever” is their mission when it comes to clean water.) They estimate that a $10 donation results on $107.45 in benefits to the communities they serve.
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This week, I’d like to tell you about University Impact, a nonprofit that provides paid internships and fellowships to students who then conduct due diligence for seed-stage impact investments and provide consulting services for impact startups. (I’m on the board and investment committee for UI.)
We’ve recently launched a new product for donors that use Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), something we call the Triple DAF. A DAF managed by UI not only offers competitive management terms, but also brings three big advantages:
You can use your DAF to both donate and invest in startups with high social impact.
You get customized recommendations for your donor priorities, highlighting some of the most innovative solutions out there.
Your support helps train students in the best practices of impact assessment and investment due diligence.
If you are interested in connecting or would like to move a DAF to University Impact, please reach out to me or visit: www.uitripledaf.org.
