3 Tips to Simplify Your Community Work

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THINK SMALL

You don’t have to fix everything to make a difference in the world. Walk a neighbor’s dog. Donate food to a local shelter. Invite a new family on the block over for a potluck. Small acts of service can pull us out of our own complicated lives and leave us feeling more spacious inside. “When we shift our focus off ourselves,” Becker writes, “we live lives of greater meaning and greater contribution.” Don’t underestimate the impact of small gestures, either. You may never know if that friendly greeting offered to a stranger on the sidewalk makes a big dif­ference in their lives, but it might. And either way, being kind will probably make you feel better.

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CHOOSE ONE OR TWO WORTHY CAUSES

There’s a lot to be concerned about in the world at large, and it can be difficult to know where to direct your attention. While each call for donations or volunteer hours may be worthy of your money and energy, there is only so much any one of us can do. In his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Burkeman suggests focusing your energy on one or two causes. Volunteering at your local food pantry or donating to a refugee fund doesn’t mean you don’t care about deforestation, he points out. It just means “you understand that to make a difference, you must focus your finite capacity for care.”

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MANAGE YOUR NEWS CONSUMPTION

You can stay informed without endless doomscrolling, Newport explains in his book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. He suggests identifying a few reliable news sites and using an app to save noteworthy articles for later. Select these articles during the week and read through them on a Saturday, he suggests. Do it over a cup of tea or at your favorite coffee shop. Giving yourself time in a pleasant environment can help you absorb and reflect on the information.