I didn’t imply anywhere that working and being a productive member of society isn’t important. Of course that’s still important, but you’re not changing the world working at your job. If you didn’t exist, someone else would be doing that job and would likely do about the same work as you did. People have to work to keep the economy functioning and that won’t change any time soon. But what everyone has in their power to control is how they treat other people, and the difference in someone’s lifetime effect on the world being a hateful, selfish, cruel person and a loving, generous, empathetic person is massive. It’s a lot more massive than if someone else did the job you’re doing.

To put it in economic terms: say you tried extra hard at work and increased your productivity by 10% over your lifetime by working 50 hours instead of 40 hours per week. Great, that’s 10% more work than you would’ve done over 50 years. It took 26,000 hours to do all of that extra work, 26,000 hours of productive work put into the economy.

Now say that instead of working an extra 10 hours, you volunteered in an after-school program for at-risk kids, taught them life skills, helped them with homework, and provided them with a responsible adult role model to emulate. Say you also did this for 10 hours a week for 50 years. Say that you spent 100 hours total per kid. That’s 260 kids who have a much better chance of succeeding academically, getting a good job, avoiding prison, raising a family, teaching their kids the same life skills and being that same role model, etc. 260 adults who are much more likely to be contributing to the economy instead of being a burden on government resources. Even if you only saved one of those kids from going to prison, that’s a huge amount of money that would be saved. It takes the full annual tax revenue of half a dozen working citizens just to incarcerate one person for a year.

Now which do you think has made the bigger impact, that 10% increase in your work productivity, or spending 100 hours each with 260 kids (or 200 hours each with 130 kids, or 1000 hours each with 26 kids) who go on to be much more likely to have productive careers of their own, and to raise children who also have productive careers, and so on? It’s simple interest vs. compounding interest, linear growth vs geometric growth.

I don’t just mean helping someone change a tire, I’m talking about being a positive force in other people’s lives, whether that’s taking advantage of chance encounters to help someone who needs it, making a concerted effort to help through a volunteer program, or just being kind to someone who needs some kindness in their life. You never know what effect your actions will have.