Members of the Women’s Army Corps at work in operations section in 1943 (National Archive)

In college, a guidance counselor regularly lectured our cohort on the importance of being “impactful.” Impactful people are “doers”: they see a problem, need, or inefficiency, and through relentless grit and superior vision, they make change. Impactful people have their elevator pitch down. They have diverse interests and strengths while also being obsessively focused on their goal. They’re on the cutting edge, but they make it look effortless and obvious. Their impact might be really good (alleviating poverty or saving the rainforest), or it might be less good (crypto), but they know how to sell their project to investors or an alumni magazine.

This language of “change-making” and “impactfulness” rubbed me the wrong way at age twenty-two. Was “leaving my mark” on the world the best thing to aspire to? Would the nobility of my work be the only indication of its goodness? At thirty-three, it still rubs me the wrong way. Trouble is, I nevertheless find myself measuring my life by this standard. Even worse, when I tally things up, I find myself very wanting.   

It started in small ways. I became unable to focus on one activity because I was wondering if there were better uses of my time. Which task would have the greatest benefit, for me and for others? With a free afternoon, should I write an article, practice yoga, volunteer at a food pantry, go to a museum, or prepare meals for the week? Who would benefit from each activity and exactly how much? I performed a cost-benefit analysis of every last choice, and it gave me a weird kind of peace to believe that I had chosen rightly.

Of course, it wasn’t a real peace. My nonstop impact assessment coincided with the era of Sam Bankman-Fried and “effective altruism”—a philosophy I knew I disagreed with but recognized in myself anyway. Relying on this decision-making calculus only encouraged my analysis to grow bigger in scale, until I found myself asking questions that twenty-two-year-old me would have found embarrassing. Was I optimizing my life choices, creating as much good for as many people as possible? Would I leave a legacy and inspire others? The kinds of stories about people’s accomplishments that used to fascinate me—learning seven languages, swimming the English Channel, feeding the homeless, or building wells in Congo—instead caused me shame and envy. I should be doing something like that! I was living selfishly, and worse, unremarkably.

It started in small ways. I became unable to focus on one activity because I was wondering if there were better uses of my time.

I’ve come to realize that this lack of focus is a kind of despair. Theologically speaking, despair is the belief that one is beyond saving. Perhaps the constant doubt about what I should be doing with my time signaled that I thought I was only as good as my own usefulness. I had become a sort of hyper-consequentialist, valuing things only for their effects. But I could always think of something more useful or more important to be doing—and condemn myself for not being effective enough. Meghan Sullivan explained it well in Commonweal’s pages: if I see my worth as depending on how consequential I am in the word, I will “start to feel the heavy weight of nihilism, realizing at the end of the day, I don’t contribute very much to everything.” The result is despair, a sense of futility that makes any action, even good ones, seem useless.

In the days and weeks after I read Sullivan’s words, I started seeing that the last part is true: I really don’t contribute much to anything. That didn’t bring disappointment; instead, I felt free. I don’t contribute much to anything! What’s more, nothing I could achieve—no book I could write, no number of shifts at the food pantry I could take, no amount of sheet-pan chicken I could freeze—would ever be “enough.” None of it will save me.

Jesus talks about a branch having to bear fruit or else be cut off and thrown into the fire. That could lead a branch to think that it has to bear a lot of fruit to prove it’s not wasting space in the grove. But the branch doesn’t have to do it alone—can’t do it alone. Instead, the vine sustains it, anchors it in one place, and helps the branch produce exactly what it should.

For the most part, I have shaken myself out of consequentialism, but it will probably remain a temptation I have to work to resist. Despair is, after all, a mortal sin. The virtue that conquers despair is hope—“placing trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength,” as the Catechism says. Aiming for impact leads to restlessness and pride, but hope requires humility: knowing that one’s contribution is limited but will be plenty if it is rooted in a loving response to God’s call. Rather than frantic productivity for maximum impact, I am focusing on small contributions, done as well as I can and with as much care as I can give. That has given me, finally, a real peace.

Regina Munch is an associate editor at Commonweal.

Also by this author
Published in the February 2025 issue: View Contents

Most Recent

© 2025 Commonweal Magazine. All rights reserved. Design by Point Five. Site by Deck Fifty.