The secret to finding some way to contribute to a better world is to look at where You and your Knowledge of the World overlap.
The You part is your personality and natural inclinations. Do you love Machines? People? Animals? Ideas? Boll weevils? Are you introverted or extroverted? These kinds of things describe what motivates you. If you find a way to contribute that taps into the kinds of things that you love, you’ll have more energy for doing it, and you’ll likely be better at it. Look at your hobbies and vocation for these kinds of things, but be open to discovering a few new interests you never knew you had.
The Knowledge of the World part is your experiences and hard-won knowledge about how our World works. This is where you can channel some of your frustrations and joys into ideas about how things should be. What can you think of that obviously isn’t working? What are the sources of your frustrations? On the other hand, what things are a joy? Are there places you love to be? Tools you love to use? If you can understand why you love them, you can apply the lessons to other things.
The overlap is where your frustration meets your interests and knowledge in such a way that you can see — literally see in your head — a glimpse of how to make it better. Most of the time, the things that don’t work are just frustrating and nothing more. You may not have a clue how to make it better, and that is fine. But every once in a while you have that “how can they be so stupid?” experience where it seems so obvious to you what is wrong.
Here’s the secret: not everyone sees the problem and solution as clearly as you do.
My experiences and interests are different than yours and I may not even see that there is a problem. If the problem was that obvious to everyone, it would probably be resolved by now.
Listen to those moments where your experience and frustrations overlap and you may find something that needs doing, as well as the person who needs to do it: you.
