I didn’t torture and animals or anything, but this week I didn’t live up to my own expectations either. This is a complicated issue. On the one hand I know that it’s normal—and perfectly acceptable—to not be totally motivated 100% of the time. There will be times when I just don’t have it in me to make the most of my time and trying to be good just doesn’t interest me. Part of being good has to involve letting myself relax once in a while. If I beat myself up every time I waste a few hours playing a pointless computer game, I’m just going to burn myself out, feel worse, and not ultimately make myself any better for it. There are two issues involved here. The first is that there is a difference between not making perfect use of my time and completely wasting whole days. Relaxing, enjoying the day to day, and setting aside some down time are all necessary parts (at least as far as I can figure) of living well. What can be difficult is figuring out where the line is between how much time I need to recharge and how much time I should be using more effectively. The second issue is that there’s a difference between telling myself that it’s ok to take some time off and actually being ok with it.
This was finals week. Last Friday I collected final papers, on Monday I gave the final exam, and by Thursday afternoon I had to have final grades in. This means that much of my time this past week has been spent with red pen in hand. There are some things that I like about grading: in particular, seeing how much the students have learned and figuring out who has earned what grade can be a rewarding and interesting experience. The actual process that is involved with figuring that out, however, can be tiresome. Reading version after version of the same basic answer, trying to differentiate between them and assign grades evenhandedly, trying to decipher poor handwriting and trying to make sense of faulty sentence structures all get old pretty quickly. Part of me wants to just get it done as quickly as possible, but part of me constantly wants to take a break.
There were things that I wanted to do this week other than submitting final grades. I wasn’t going to save the world or anything, but I intended to make dentist and eye doctor appointments, get the apartment cleaned up and do a little rearranging, get some work done on my dissertation, and so on. Instead, I dragged my feet to the point that I accomplished almost nothing other than finalizing grades. I would go strong with the grading in the morning, working for three or so hours until I started losing focus and needed a break. The problem is that these breaks didn’t want to end. For two hours I'd distract myself on the internet, all the while thinking about how I should really be getting back to work. Then, when I finally started grading again, I’d be itching for a break in another half hour.
Do I think that this makes me a bad person? No. But I know that if I were to stick to a better schedule, I’d end up being happier overall. Ideally, I would work for a while, take a small break, work some more, and so on, until I’d put in a good day’s work. In the evening I’d then be able to use my time as I pleased without feeling the weight of work in the back of my mind. Instead, I stretched out working each day from 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and enjoyed almost none of that time. This would leave me tired an unhappy, both because my time had been so unenjoyable, and because I had wasted a day so inefficiently.
This raises a curious question, that’s really more about psychology than philosophy: why do we sometimes do things that we know will make us less happy? When I’m taking a lunch break and delaying getting back to work, I could easily realize—if I stopped to think about it—that ending my break right away and working again would make me happier at the end of the day. Sometimes when this occurs to me I do just that, but other times I banish the thought and continue forward on my path to a miserable day.
The reason that this particular struggle is stressful for me is that I have so much open time ahead of me. I have a lot of writing to do, and a lot of time to do it in, and I am the only one holding myself accountable for that time. My own experience has taught me that the best way to get over this type of hurdle is to think about why I get held up and make rules ahead of time to keep myself moving forward. For example, here are some rules that I will do my best to stick to in the weeks to come. I plan to update them as needed:
1. If your break has lasted more than 30 minutes, but you haven’t written 1,000 words yet, start working again.
2. If it’s 3:00 or later, and you haven’t left the apartment yet, go for a walk.
3. If it’s 5:00 and you haven’t done anything from the ‘to do’ list other than writing, do something (however small).
4. If you’ve finished 2,000 words by 2:00, stop writing, but do 2 things from the ‘to do’ list.
Not the most exciting, but hopefully I can keep these in mind. If I do, I know that I will both get more done and be happier at the end of the day.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Giving
I’m sure that soon the blogging well will dry up, but at this point there are constantly several topics floating around in my head, and I always want to write about all of them. However, since I can’t actually write about all of them right now, I’m going to go with the influences of fortune and say a few things about this article that I recently came across in the New York Times.
First things first: what is this post actually about? It’s about the idea of giving money to charity. This is something that most Americans do every year—around 70% of us. Go ahead and guess what percent of the United States’ gross national income is given away in charitable donations every year. I’m serious, come up with a guess. Imagine all the people with all the incomes in the U.S., and think about all the people making all their donations to charities far and wide: the Red Cross, food pantries, churches, schools. Keep in mind that this includes people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who are giving billions. Ready for it? 2.2%. Now think about what 2.2% of your annual income is, and divide that by 12. How does that compare to what we spend on ourselves every month?
The lure placed at the opening of the article in the Times is that last year the Obamas gave 6% of their income. George and Laura Bush, on the other hand, gave away 18%. In The Life You Can Save, the book that I mentioned in my first post, Peter Singer lays out his own suggestion for what people might give annually in order to account for their ‘fair share’: give 1% of everything you earn up to $105,000. For everything between $105,000 and $148,000, give 5%. From there up to $383,000, give 10%. 15% from there to $600,000, and 20% on everything from $600,000 to $1.9 million. For every dollar earned from $1.9 million to $10.7 million, give 25%, and for everything over $10.7 million, give 33.33%.
How do Barack and Michelle measure up to this? If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion, they would have given over $1.2 million, compared to the $329,000 they actually gave. Of course the $5.5 million is pre-tax. They paid about a third of it in taxes, leaving $3.7 million. If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion for this amount, they still would have donated more than double the amount that they actually gave.
Most people reading this make nowhere near $5.5 million a year, so let’s pull the discussion back to something a little more everyday. The main question that I’ve been leaving unanswered so far is this: What is our fair share anyway? In other words: what are we measuring this against? Without getting into too many details, what’s notable is that half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. And before you starting pointing out that $2 can go pretty far in some places, let me clarify that this means that these people are living on less than what $2 a day would get you in the U.S. (in other words, the calculations for differences in economies and markets has already been done). People who live on this amount are literally dying from their impoverishment. Around 18 million people die every year from poverty-related causes such as malnutrition, lack of sanitation and lack of clean water. This includes 27,000 children under 5 every day. Most people don’t process statistics very well, so let me try to make this more specific: imagine a 4 year old child. This child is always hungry and usually ill. She is malnourished and doesn’t have adequate shelter. In the three seconds it takes you to read these sentences, she has died. Every three seconds, a child like this dies from poverty-related causes.
Certainly, if you make $5.5 million annually you can afford to help someone living on less than $800 a year. Even if you make significantly less than that, however, you can still afford to make an incredible impact on the lives of individuals. 3 billion people in poverty is an intimidating thing to think about, but $60 a month can help a family with dying children to be able to feed them and send them to school.
As usual, I’ve got a head full of ideas, and not enough space to write them all. Here are a few final thoughts:
1. If you’re currently giving less than Singer’s suggested donation amount (for most of you this is 1% of your annual income), consider making that your goal. This is 1 cent out of every dollar you spend, and it can literally save someone’s life.
2. If you’re currently giving to charity but you’d like to give more, set yourself a goal. Try adding 1% to the percent of your income that you donate each year (for example, if you gave 5% last year, make it 6% this year). If you’re ready for a more aggressive increase, then do it.
3. If you feel like you can barely make ends meet, commit to giving future earnings instead of present income. Rather than giving 1% of your annual income, make a commitment to donate 30% of all raises and bonuses in the years to come. You’ll still be making more money, but you’ll also be moving toward making the world a better place.
In general, Singer’s suggestions are fairly modest. Soon I plan to write about suggestions of my own in terms of giving, but for now let’s stick with what he proposes. My own personal challenge in my own quest to be good is to always try to improve. I don’t always succeed, but I stand by my goal.
One last note: If you’re thinking about giving but you don’t know where to start and you’re worried about your money actually making a difference, I’d suggest Oxfam.org. If you’re not great at budgeting or sticking to a plan, check the box to make your gift monthly so that it will happen automatically.
First things first: what is this post actually about? It’s about the idea of giving money to charity. This is something that most Americans do every year—around 70% of us. Go ahead and guess what percent of the United States’ gross national income is given away in charitable donations every year. I’m serious, come up with a guess. Imagine all the people with all the incomes in the U.S., and think about all the people making all their donations to charities far and wide: the Red Cross, food pantries, churches, schools. Keep in mind that this includes people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who are giving billions. Ready for it? 2.2%. Now think about what 2.2% of your annual income is, and divide that by 12. How does that compare to what we spend on ourselves every month?
The lure placed at the opening of the article in the Times is that last year the Obamas gave 6% of their income. George and Laura Bush, on the other hand, gave away 18%. In The Life You Can Save, the book that I mentioned in my first post, Peter Singer lays out his own suggestion for what people might give annually in order to account for their ‘fair share’: give 1% of everything you earn up to $105,000. For everything between $105,000 and $148,000, give 5%. From there up to $383,000, give 10%. 15% from there to $600,000, and 20% on everything from $600,000 to $1.9 million. For every dollar earned from $1.9 million to $10.7 million, give 25%, and for everything over $10.7 million, give 33.33%.
How do Barack and Michelle measure up to this? If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion, they would have given over $1.2 million, compared to the $329,000 they actually gave. Of course the $5.5 million is pre-tax. They paid about a third of it in taxes, leaving $3.7 million. If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion for this amount, they still would have donated more than double the amount that they actually gave.
Most people reading this make nowhere near $5.5 million a year, so let’s pull the discussion back to something a little more everyday. The main question that I’ve been leaving unanswered so far is this: What is our fair share anyway? In other words: what are we measuring this against? Without getting into too many details, what’s notable is that half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. And before you starting pointing out that $2 can go pretty far in some places, let me clarify that this means that these people are living on less than what $2 a day would get you in the U.S. (in other words, the calculations for differences in economies and markets has already been done). People who live on this amount are literally dying from their impoverishment. Around 18 million people die every year from poverty-related causes such as malnutrition, lack of sanitation and lack of clean water. This includes 27,000 children under 5 every day. Most people don’t process statistics very well, so let me try to make this more specific: imagine a 4 year old child. This child is always hungry and usually ill. She is malnourished and doesn’t have adequate shelter. In the three seconds it takes you to read these sentences, she has died. Every three seconds, a child like this dies from poverty-related causes.
Certainly, if you make $5.5 million annually you can afford to help someone living on less than $800 a year. Even if you make significantly less than that, however, you can still afford to make an incredible impact on the lives of individuals. 3 billion people in poverty is an intimidating thing to think about, but $60 a month can help a family with dying children to be able to feed them and send them to school.
As usual, I’ve got a head full of ideas, and not enough space to write them all. Here are a few final thoughts:
1. If you’re currently giving less than Singer’s suggested donation amount (for most of you this is 1% of your annual income), consider making that your goal. This is 1 cent out of every dollar you spend, and it can literally save someone’s life.
2. If you’re currently giving to charity but you’d like to give more, set yourself a goal. Try adding 1% to the percent of your income that you donate each year (for example, if you gave 5% last year, make it 6% this year). If you’re ready for a more aggressive increase, then do it.
3. If you feel like you can barely make ends meet, commit to giving future earnings instead of present income. Rather than giving 1% of your annual income, make a commitment to donate 30% of all raises and bonuses in the years to come. You’ll still be making more money, but you’ll also be moving toward making the world a better place.
In general, Singer’s suggestions are fairly modest. Soon I plan to write about suggestions of my own in terms of giving, but for now let’s stick with what he proposes. My own personal challenge in my own quest to be good is to always try to improve. I don’t always succeed, but I stand by my goal.
One last note: If you’re thinking about giving but you don’t know where to start and you’re worried about your money actually making a difference, I’d suggest Oxfam.org. If you’re not great at budgeting or sticking to a plan, check the box to make your gift monthly so that it will happen automatically.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)