brainstorming & helping others

A had a dilema in school. A classmate, not really a friend, asked him to be his teamate for a science project. The kid is one of the worst students in the class and A didn't particularly looked forward to working with him. But he felt maybe he should do it to help him...

So today I wanted to talk about how to determine how much of one's time and resources to devote to helping others, vs helping ourselves. I started the conversation asking for ideas. P suggested devoting 2/3 of one's money to helping others. A immediately jumped in saying that was way too much. I took advantage of this to talk about how to brainstorm. To my suprise, they knew what brainstorming was. But they didn't know one of its most important rules: all ideas should be considered. Don't put others' ideas down, instead, simply propose your own ideas.

After the "brainstorm 101" discussion there wasn't much time left for our original discussion. P said that Bill Gates gave away most of his money, hence his 2/3 suggestion. A explained that since Bill Gates is so reach, he can give a much higher percentage of his money away than most other people.

We'll have to revisit this conversation next week...