Why you could be contributing

Mixing research (academy), technical work (work) and contribution (outreach and community work) makes a lot of sense to me, I believe being holistic brings more purpose to life. I am not talking hobbies, those should be done because you feel like it (I think), not something planned out (otherwise it has become a project then).

There are a couple reasons I think you should consider putting time and effort into extra things (that are not "just" hobbies). Some of those reasons are more "career" thought of and others are more aligned with "moral values" so to speak.

The "useful" reasons, for those more interested in getting return out of things:

  1. Career-wise, if you want to become the one hunt for hiring and not the one hunting for jobs, becoming more proactive, literally being a protagonist (not in the coach bullshit sense of it, but actually taking initiative on whatever you want to do), by building a platform you not only show where you wanna go. But, you also filter down where your energy goes so you can focus on where you wanna go and what you wanna build.
  2. It helps build portfolio and shows you can speak to people (soft skills are the hardest to find, anyone can read a book on coding).
  3. You expand your knowledge areas by putting yourself up to the challenge of dealing with new things without waiting for your job or whatever to face them.
  4. Helps you develop a brand.

The "heart" reasons, for those searching for purpose (guess which one motivates me the most :) ):

  1. Individual, local, efforts come faster than government initiative to wherever you are. The farther from big urban areas the more true this is (based on data from my head). Meaning that by contributing to wherever you are, however you can, you are actually helping people there to have a better life. Doesn't matter if through education or through solving community issues with tech, it's not that hard to make an impact on people's lives just by giving a bit of your time and knowledge. This might sound a bit anarchist (because it is), but the point here is to bring to ourselves the responsibility for the change we want to see out there (cliche as fuck I know, but I mean it).
  2. I was lucky as fuck in life, some other friends and colleagues I grew up with were not so much. Pretending luck is not a thing and trying to defend the so called "meritocracy" is either machiavellian or innocent (usually the first). Being aware of that makes it so that I could not feel that I don't a responsibility to give back and try to help other people have some luck also.