Practice effective altruism by using your resources (money, career, personal decisions) to do as much good as possible, making decisions based on reason, evidence, and clear analysis to maximize positive impact.
Research and donate to super effective charities, as they can be orders of magnitude (100 to 1000 times) more impactful than typical charities in saving or improving lives per dollar.
When donating, split your contribution between a charity you personally love (giving with your heart) and a highly effective charity recommended by experts (giving with your head) to maximize both personal satisfaction and overall impact.
Utilize platforms like Giving Multiplier (givingmultiplier.org/happinesslab) to facilitate split donations, allowing you to support both a personally chosen charity and an expert-recommended effective charity, often with matching funds to amplify your gift.
Choose a career that makes good use of your talents and skills to do a lot of good, balancing personal fulfillment with the potential for high impact. Resources like 80,000 Hours can help in this decision-making process.
Be aware of cognitive biases like ‘scope neglect’ and the ‘identifiable victim effect’ when considering charitable giving. Instead of fighting these biases, find ways to work with them to scale up your pro-social feelings and align them with the scope of actual need.
Actively work to expand your ‘moral circle’ beyond local groups to include more people globally, applying your cooperative social-emotional capacities more broadly to address widespread needs.
Critically compare your personal spending habits (e.g., on non-essential items) against the potential to use those resources to help others in significant need, as highlighted by Peter Singer’s argument.
Consider contributing a portion of your donation, particularly the part directed to highly effective charities, to a matching fund. This ‘pay it forward’ model helps provide matching funds for other donors, amplifying collective impact.
Engage in acts of generosity and give to others, especially through unexpected nice gestures, as this can provide a significant boost to your own well-being and make you feel more connected to people.
When encouraging others to donate, present options that allow them to balance personal preferences with high-impact giving (e.g., offering a 50/50 split), rather than solely pushing for purely rational, high-impact choices.
Regardless of whether you give with your head or your heart, with money or with time, the important thing is to make an effort to help others, as this act itself is valuable.