Be otherish, not selfless

Help others in ways that also serve your own goals and interests.

Why it works

Grant distinguishes selfless givers (who sacrifice their interests entirely) from otherish ones (who care about others but also protect their own interests). Selfless givers burn out and end up at the bottom of performance distributions. Otherish givers align their generosity with their own strengths and interests, which makes giving sustainable and often generates personal skill development as a byproduct.

How to do it

1. List the types of help you genuinely enjoy giving — mentoring, connecting, problem-solving, reviewing.
2. Focus most of your giving on those domains; decline or delegate requests outside them.
3. When evaluating a helping opportunity, ask: “Does this align with something I care about or want to build?”
4. Be transparent that you have interests too — it doesn’t undermine generosity, it makes it sustainable.

Evidence

Grant found that givers who set giving constraints and focused on intrinsically motivating help performed better and burned out less than those who gave indiscriminately. (observational)

Distinguishing “otherish” from “selfless” is a conceptual distinction; the empirical data is survey-based and cannot fully isolate this variable from personality and context.

Sources

• Grant (2013), Give and Take

Common mistake

Treating all requests equally and saying yes to everything, which depletes time and leads to resentment rather than genuine generosity.