What is my contribution, honestly measured?

A guided 20 to 25 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Not a charity audit. Most contribution is unpaid, unrecorded and close to home. The usual finding is that people count it wrongly in both directions.

A woman in her thirties handing a bench machine over to a younger person in a community workshop

If you went abroad for six months, what would actually stop?

Name the people. Not the categories.

Contributing more is not always the answer. Already at capacity is a legitimate result here.

What you'll look at

01Who called you last, and what they wanted
02Something you did last month that only benefited somebody else
03Somebody who depends on you who would not use that word
04What would stop if you went abroad for six months

A note from Mark

The people I know who contribute most rarely describe it as contribution. They describe it as Tuesday.

Meanwhile the language around this subject has become inflated to the point of uselessness. Impact, giving back, making a difference. None of it names a person. If you cannot say who is better off and in what way, you are describing an intention.

I would also say something unfashionable. Doing your actual work properly is a contribution. Running a business that pays people on time is a contribution. Training somebody so they are more capable than you were at their age is one of the largest contributions there is. It almost never gets counted, because it does not look like charity.

Read my full view ↓

And where the honest answer is that you are already carrying more than you can hold, then the result of this exercise is to carry less, not to add a good deed to it.

What you'll get

This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.

01
Who actually benefits
02
At what cost to you
03
What you understate
04
One act, or none
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.

See everything included ↓

01What you came here with
02Who actually benefits
03How they benefit
04What it costs you
05What you overstate
06What you understate
07The rival reading
08What would fail without you
09What deserves protecting
10The credible alternative
11What, if anything, should change
12What remains unresolved
13Where this goes next

When you finish

Bring it back to your tree.

Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.

At the end, the conversation asks how Work and purpose feels for you right now, in your own words. It also asks what, if anything, would feel different. Nothing changes on your tree unless you say it changes.

The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.

Session
Date
The part of life this belongs to
How you described it
What would feel different
What we found
The alternative we tested
What deserves protecting
What should change, if anything
Next actions
What to notice or find out
What remains unresolved

Open My Tree

What now?

01 · Save it
A named list of who actually benefits, and how.
02 · Test it
Ask one person what they would say you do for them. The gap between their answer and yours is the whole finding.

See more ↓

Before you take anything else on

If the exercise found you are already at capacity, adding a commitment is not a virtue. Protecting what you already carry is the harder and more useful job.

One concrete act with a date attached is worth more than a resolution about the kind of contribution you intend to make.

What I would do

01
Name people, not categories. The community is not an answer, and neither is society.
02
Count the work as well as the extras. A job done properly that somebody else would do badly is a contribution.
03
Look at what it costs you before deciding whether to do more. Half the people asking this question are already at capacity.
04
Watch for the accidental contribution, the one that happens through your work rather than around it. It is usually the largest.
05
If the honest answer is that you are giving too much, that is the finding, and doing more is not the remedy.

Test it

01
Write the names. If you cannot fill three lines, the account you gave may have been about intention rather than contribution.
02
Take the person you describe as a burden and ask whether you would actually hand them over. That answer is information.
03
Add up the hours honestly for one week. Both the inflaters and the deflaters find that uncomfortable.

The alternative

The obvious conclusion is that you should contribute more, and the internet will always agree with it. Frequently it is wrong. Your contribution may already be substantial and invisible because it is domestic. It may be happening through your work rather than around it, which counts. It may be that the deliberate scheme you keep planning has never happened while four people have depended on you throughout. And occasionally the finding runs the other way: you are giving at a rate that is quietly costing you your health, and the useful conclusion is to give less rather than better.

Think about this

Who called you last, and what they wanted.
Something you did last month that only benefited somebody else.
Somebody who depends on you who would never use that word.
A skill somebody else has because of you.
What would actually stop if you went away for six months.

Take this to Ask Mark

You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.

This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.

Take this to Ask Mark →

Want to go further?

TRY · 10 MIN

Ripple Map

TAIU

The people who are actually better off because of how you live.

Try it →

Was this useful?

READ · ESSAY

Famine, Affluence and Morality

Peter Singer

The strongest version of the demanding case. Also the one most people have never actually read.

Give and Take

Adam Grant

Best for contributing in a way you can sustain.

Recommended by the TAIU community

What helped you?

If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.

We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.

Finished the exercise?

What did this uncover?

Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.

A man in his thirties who uses a wheelchair working at the counter of a cluttered community office

Next tool

What do I owe strangers?

If it found contribution close to home and nothing beyond it

Continue →What am I responsible for? →

Further thinking

Give and Take
Adam Grant
Spending money on others promotes happiness
Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton
The Generative Society
Dan McAdams and Ed de St Aubin

See the thinking ↓

Book

Give and Take

Adam Grant

Grant's finding that givers occupy both the top and the bottom of most performance distributions is the practical heart of this. What separates them is not generosity but whether the giving is bounded. If you have ever concluded that you should do more while quietly running out of road, read this before you add anything.

Article

Spending money on others promotes happiness

Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton

The effect depends far less on the amount than on whether the giving was chosen and whether you can see what it did. That is a useful design constraint. A small, specific, visible commitment does more for the person giving than a larger anonymous one, which is worth knowing before you set up something you will never think about again.

Book

The Generative Society

Dan McAdams and Ed de St Aubin

McAdams has spent a career on generativity, the concern for establishing and guiding the next generation. His work shows it is not confined to parents and not confined to later life, and that people who have it tend to tell a particular kind of story about themselves. Useful for locating contribution you already make and have never counted.