including me. I love that work is giving me an outlet for philanthropic interests.”
If Sean were a purely selfless giver, he might sprinkle his energy across many different causes out
of a sense of duty and obligation, regardless of his own level of interest and enthusiasm for them.
Instead, he adopts an otherish approach, choosing to chunk his giving to focus on education, a cause
about which he’s passionate. “I get incredible personal satisfaction out of giving back to the
community in this way,” Sean says.
Psychologists Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan have demonstrated that giving has an energizing
effect only if it’s an enjoyable, meaningful choice rather than undertaken out of duty and obligation. In
one study, people reported their giving every day for two weeks, indicating whether they had helped
someone or done something for a good cause. On days when they gave, they rated why they gave. On
some days, people gave due to enjoyment and meaning—they thought it was important, cared about
the other person, and felt they might enjoy it. On other days, they gave out of duty and obligation—
they felt they had to and would feel like a bad person if they didn’t. Each day, they reported how
energized they felt.
Weinstein and Ryan measured changes in energy from day to day. Giving itself didn’t affect
energy: people weren’t substantially happier on days when they helped others than on days that they
didn’t. But the reasons for giving mattered immensely: on days that people helped others out of a
sense of enjoyment and purpose, they experienced significant gains in energy.* Giving for these
reasons conferred a greater sense of autonomy, mastery, and connection to others, and it boosted their
energy. When I studied firefighters and fund-raising callers, I found the same pattern: they were able
to work much harder and longer when they gave their energy and time due to a sense of enjoyment and
purpose, rather than duty and obligation.
For Conrey, this is a major difference between teaching at Overbrook and volunteering with
Minds Matter and TFA. In the Overbrook classroom, giving is an obligation. Her job requires her to
break up fights and maintain order, tasks that—although important—don’t align with the passion that
drew her into teaching. In her volunteer work, giving is an enjoyable choice: she loves helping high-
achieving underprivileged students and mentoring less experienced TFA teachers. This is another way
giving can be otherish: Conrey focused on benefiting students and teachers, but doing so in a way that
connects to her core values and fuels her enthusiasm. The energy carried over to her classroom,
helping her maintain her motivation.
But at Overbrook, Conrey couldn’t avoid the obligation to give to her students in ways that she
didn’t find naturally exciting or energizing. What did she do to stay energized despite the sense of
duty?
During one particularly stressful week, Conrey was struggling to get through to her students. “I
was feeling miserable, and the kids were being awful.” She approached a teacher named Sarah for
help. Sarah recommended an activity that was a hit in her classroom: they got to design their own
monsters that were on the loose in Philadelphia. They drew a picture of a monster, wrote a story
about it, and created a “wanted” ad so people would be on the lookout. It was exactly the inspiration
that Conrey needed. “Our ten-minute chat helped me get excited about the lesson. I had fun with the
kids, and it made me more invested in the curriculum I was teaching.”
Although Conrey’s decision to ask another teacher for help may not sound unusual, research
shows that it’s quite rare among selfless givers. Selfless givers “feel uncomfortable receiving
support,” write Helgeson and colleague Heidi Fritz. Selfless givers are determined to be in the helper
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