kindness · two minutes · the vending machine
The Lyubomirsky lab asked students to do five kind acts a week for six weeks. Half did them on one day, half spread them out. Only the one-day group got happier. Three years later, Dunn, Aknin and Norton handed strangers $5 or $20 and told them to spend it on themselves or on someone else by evening; the ones who spent it on others were happier that night, regardless of amount. And in 2022 Kumar and Epley showed that people who perform small kindnesses consistently underestimate how much the recipient cares.
Doing something for someone shifts attention off yourself, gives you an immediate, concrete effect on the world, and connects you to a person. The underestimation finding matters: the act lands harder than you think, so you’re systematically under-motivated to do it.
The meta-analytic effect is small (0.28). The famous $20 experiment had 46 people and replicated only partly. The kindness study with the one-day finding never reported its sample size. What holds up across all of it: doing something for someone else beats doing the same thing for yourself, by a little, reliably.
A coin in the slot and tonight's act prints on a receipt with a line for who. You stamp it PAID when it's done. Honor system, because the studies were honor system too.
Try it in the city →from Attuned Work Design
Anything you type in the city stays on your phone. There is no account and no server that sees it. · About · Leave a light on for someone