In Seth Godin’s new book “The Practice – Shipping Creative Work” he has a section called Generous with 45 short chapters. Seth has long written and spoken about doing generous work. There is something about “generous” which demands some study and attention. You can be generous with your time and money and you can generously listen and try to understand what someone needs.

If you want to make a change in the world and I hope everyone does you first need to be generous. What problem do you want to solve? What changes are you trying to make? It seems to me very few great things are done where someone asks for payment in advance. This is being generous. If you are looking to change the world you might find the best way to accomplish this is to share an idea with someone else. It does put you in a position of vulnerability. The person might take the idea and run off with it. But keeping the idea to yourself might be selfish.

Make something to help improve someone or something. Then generously share it. You will get paid but there is risk.