Helping feels good. Anyone who has genuinely eased someone’s day knows the lift that follows. It is one of the most reliable sources of wellbeing we have. Which makes it reasonable to wonder why the world looks the way it does. If helping is so rewarding, why aren’t we doing more of it.

Part of the answer has to do with personalization, which I’ve written about elsewhere. But another part has to do with ease. In behavioral science, when you want more of a given behavior, you make it easier. The principle is simple, and yet we’ve never really applied it to helping. We haven’t built the pathways that allow people to act on the generosity they already have.

Seeing the Idea

There are three ways to make helping easier. The first is conceptual. People need a clear idea of this new kind of helping. We have names for volunteering, charity, and activism, but not for the kinds of small, tailored actions that match a person’s strengths and the needs they notice. When the idea has a shape—when people can think in terms of “a small personal project I can actually do”—the leap becomes smaller and the chances of trying it out increase.

So just as “adulting” and “Karens” have made recent concepts more visible, we can do the same with small, personalized impact projects. Pips, perhaps. I’ve tried MAACs in the past (for Massively Accessible Actions for Change, a mouthful to be sure), and I’ve been toying with “goodprints.” The name itself matters less than having one, and having it map onto a recognizable idea.

Lowering the Friction

The second way is practical. It’s not enough to have a concept; the process has to be as frictionless as possible. It’s not about saying, “Helping feels good when it’s personalized—so what do you want to do.” That may work for some people, but a few well-designed prompts can make it a lot easier for many. These could be interest mindmaps, or a simple log of daily highlights and lowlights to surface interests and concerns, paired with a straightforward way to break down the process into actionable steps.

The Role of Others

The third way is social. Most of us need someone else to nudge us to start and help us stay accountable once we begin. It is striking how a small invitation from another person can be the difference between intention and action. A friend, a colleague, a school, a workplace—any setting that encourages people to try a small project—can lower the remaining barriers.

How It Comes Together

For example, take someone who works as an accountant and ends up running a short financial-literacy session for local teenagers. The story becomes clearer when you move backwards through it. Her workplace offered a gentle prompt: an hour for employees to think about small projects they might try (social). During that time, she and a few colleagues worked through a simple set of prompts—what they know, what they care about, where they notice small needs (practical). And beneath all of it was the idea that a small personal project is a legitimate thing one can do (conceptual). Because the idea was familiar, the process was simple, and the invitation was there, the whole thing felt easier.

Ease is the combination of an idea, a path, and a nudge. When those conditions are present, people act. And because helping feels good to us and helps others by definition, this is a win-win. Most of the work is in removing what gets in the way. When the barriers are low, people tend to do what they already wanted to do.