This is a crosspost for Charitable Giving is a Life Hack by Connor Jennings, which was published on 24 July 2024.
I’m going to start this post with something that will break my boss’s heart. I hate work. I’ve always hated work. Productivity is Everest. Any academic success I had at school was motivated by a desire to finish as quickly as possible, so I could lean back on my chair, and look out the window. When completing a task, I feel the same sluggishness one feels when trying to run in a dream—my psyche is a thick sludge, and it wishes to rot away on the sofa playing Crash Bandicoot.
Me, after changing my bed sheets.
My early experience with the adult working world rhymed with my adolescence. I used to have a bad habit of switching jobs regularly, because I struggled with the increased productivity experience demands of you. I’m probably not alone when I say that most of my days were spent just trying to get through things so that I could go home and relax. I rarely went above the call of duty, and I always tried to cut corners where I could. In other words, I was a lazy dirtbag.
I say this, because despite that not so great aspect of myself, I’ve now managed to have some success at a fairly demanding job. How? How could a sleepy tortoise such as myself do that? Well, apart from being motivated by the usual fear of homelessness, donating some of my salary has played a big role.
I think what causes a lack of motivation is often a lack of purpose. The reason I don’t want to excel at some boring office job is because I’m hardly going to get rewarded for it. Even the promise of more money doesn’t move the needle, because it just promises more involvement and responsibility in a project I don’t care about. I never cared about stationary, cocktails, or my bosses’ bottom line, so my previous jobs were always devoid of meaning, and it felt like they wasted what precious little time I had on this Earth.
Now, the usual response to this kind of despair is to say you should find work doing something you do care about. That would be great advice if it was universally practical—I’d love it if I could find a job helping animals, writing, or playing Crash Bandicoot. The problem is those jobs are hard to come by, and it’s just not viable to expect everyone on Earth to achieve their dreams. In order to have a functioning society, someone has to build spreadsheets, grit the roads, and sit at reception. I don’t think most people hate their jobs, but I do think most of us will have to work in roles that we don’t find that meaningful.
This is quite sad, but I do think there is a solution—Charitable Giving. I started taking donating seriously a year and a half ago. At first, it was a drag. I had just been put on the biggest salary of my life up to that point (not a high bar lol), and I didn’t like the fact I had to live within smaller means. However, you get used to it, and the benefits of pledging away a portion of your salary become salient as time goes on. You find that by working to give, you’re able to transform an otherwise monotonous job into something that feels truly worthwhile.
The crisis of meaningless work is at it’s most intense when work is stressful. It’s when I’m working late, or have to deal with some seemingly unsolvable problem that I think “Why am I even doing this? This sucks! I should quit and find something else to do”. When there’s no greater goal that you’re suffering for, the suffering is magnified. However, if you work because you’re trying to do good, this issue is resolved. You no longer have that conversation with yourself, because now when you’re up late you’re thinking “Well, if I get a raise, I can help more people!”. It closes the despairing loop before it’s able to pick up speed.
Nietzsche once said “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”. I imagine when he wrote it, he had something more grandiose in mind than sitting at a desk all day writing emails. However, it’s worth saying that it is really hard to do that. It’s not comfortable to use so much brain power on things that you wouldn’t choose to do in your free time—and I don’t think we’re being babies for not loving every second of our work. We didn’t evolve to make powerpoint decks, so despite the fact it’s not as dramatic as fighting a war, it is still an unpleasant “how” that most of us must endure. However, there’s a very useful “why” available to anyone with an expendable income. We just need to make it a habit.
Love this notion… So many people are struggling to find a way to find meaning in a life where most of their job is unfulfilling. But by committing to effective giving, you can transform things that seem monotonous or pointless into the means to save lives, reduce suffering, etc.
I think that it is a perspective that I need to take to heart because one of the difficulties I have with my day job is that I would much rather be spending time with the org that I run. But by doing my day job, I support myself—it would be hard to do my nonprofit work without my own food and lodging- and can fund, to some extent, the nonprofit that I run.
Makes sense, Brad. Thanks for your efforts to contribute to a better world!