Otherish Choices: Chunking, Sprinkling, and the 100-Hour Rule of Volunteering
We discussed otherish behavior at the beginning of this chapter, and in both Conrey’s example and
that of the fund-raising callers, the distinction between selfless givers and otherish givers begins to
come into play. In these contexts, decisions about how, where, and how much to give clearly make a
difference when it comes to burning out or firing up. It might seem that by giving more, Conrey was
being selfless. But what she actually did was create an opportunity for giving that was also personally
rewarding, drawing energy from the visible impact of her contributions. To be more selfless, in this
case, would have meant giving even more at school, where endless help was needed, but where she
felt limited in her ability to make a difference. Instead, Conrey thought more about her own well-
being and found a way to improve it by giving in a new way.
That choice has real consequences for givers. In numerous studies, Carnegie Mellon psychologist
Vicki Helgeson has found that when people give continually without concern for their own well-
being, they’re at risk for poor mental and physical health. Yet when they give in a more otherish
fashion, demonstrating substantial concern for themselves as well as others, they no longer experience
health costs. In one study, people who maintained equilibrium between benefiting themselves and
others even achieved significant increases in happiness and life satisfaction over a six-month period.
To gain a deeper understanding of otherish and selfless givers, it’s worth looking more closely at
the decisions they make about when and how much to give. It turns out that Conrey’s giving helped her
avoid burnout not only due to the variety but also because of how she planned it.
Imagine that you’re going to perform five random acts of kindness this week. You’ll be doing
things like helping a friend with a project, writing a thank-you note to a former teacher, donating
blood, and visiting an elderly relative. You can choose one of two different ways to organize your
giving: chunking or sprinkling. If you’re a chunker, you’ll pack all five acts of giving into a single day
each week. If you’re a sprinkler, you’ll distribute your giving evenly across five different days, so
that you give a little bit each day. Which do you think would make you happier: chunking or
sprinkling?
In this study, led by the psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, people performed five random acts of
kindness every week for six weeks. They were randomly divided into two groups: half chunked their
giving into a single day each week, and the other half sprinkled it across all five days each week. At
the end of the six weeks, despite performing the same number of helping acts, only one group felt
significantly happier.
The chunkers achieved gains in happiness; the sprinklers didn’t. Happiness increased when
people performed all five giving acts in a single day, rather than doing one a day. Lyubomirsky and
colleagues speculate that “spreading them over the course of a week might have diminished their
salience and power or made them less distinguishable from participants’ habitual kind behavior.”
Like the participants who became happier, Conrey was a chunker. At Minds Matter, Conrey
packed her volunteering into one day a week, giving all five weekly hours of mentoring high school
students on Saturdays. By chunking her giving into weekly blocks, she was able to experience her
impact more vividly, leading her efforts to feel like “more than a drop in the bucket.”
Chunking giving is an otherish strategy. Instead of mentoring students after school, when she was
already exhausted, Conrey reserved it for the weekend, when her energy was recharged and it was