3 Simple But Effective Ways to Express Kindness Daily

Kindness is not a soft skill, it is a practice.

In a world of shorthand, emojis, and people’s necks craned downward looking into their handheld nightmare rectangles, I often find myself swimming as a thoughtful (or at least mindful) person in a sea of thoughtlessness.

Perhaps it’s how I was raised (great parents) or because of my vocation (nonprofit philanthropy), though I am always overly aware of myself and my actions, as they relate to other humans.

I push my cart out of the way at the grocery store; I use pleasant e-mail salutations; I hold doors open for other people; I use my turn signals; I listen (rather than simply waiting for a conversational pause to interject).

I practice kindness as much as I can — and it really is practice, you never quite become an expert. But recently I had a last-straw moment. It wasn’t a big thing, but for some reason, it tipped the scale.

Someone e-mailed me an unnecessarily short, curt note, answering only one of the three questions I had asked — don’t you hate that? — and their e-mail signature read…

“Sent from my iPhone, pardon my brevity.”

I lost it. I read this at a red light and had to pull my car over to compose myself. Texan drivers, take note. As a kindness practitioner, this particular, commonplace example of 21st-century behavior really got my goat. This person issued no greeting (“Hi Evan”), failed to respond to my actual need, and clicked send without feigning any sort of acknowledgment (“Thanks” or “Appreciate it”).

I make it my business (at work and elsewhere) to do all those things because I feel I must. I believe in the dying art of decency. And make no mistake, I struggle with it. Every. Single. Day.

People have it in them to be amazing, though they can also behave horribly, and they often do not make it easy to be kind. Nevertheless, we persist, and after this unkind e-mail, I had something of a personal epiphany.

Our Personal Kindness Endowments

In nonprofits, we have these philanthropic investment funds called endowments, which are created to sustain an organization by way of financial security.

These are funds from which an organization pulls an average earning from interest each year (~5% during good times) to cover a particular cost — typically a program, scholarship, salaries, etc. For instance, a $100,000 endowment might provide ~$5,000 a year for those costs. (I’m over-simplifying, and you can read more if you like.)

But here was the epiphany:

What if we, as people, considered contributing to our own personal kindness endowments?

Heck, Mark Cuban believes niceness is an underrated skill, and so should we. And sure, kindness might go a long way in building one’s personal network or wealth, but on its own merits alone, why not practice kindness for the peripheral, greater good it might return?

That said, here are some ideas about how to be a kinder, more thoughtful person.

Express Appreciation When Sending an Email — Even From Your Phone

I promise you, the few extra seconds won’t get in the way of your need for brevity. Too many times, especially in work settings, e-mails get right to the point without addressing the people with whom we’re communicating.

Sam Sommers said it simply,

“Saying hello makes a difference. There’s surprising power to hello.”

Consider a Thank You Note, Not Just an Email

This is a bit of a lost art, though until we officially lose the USPS, people still love getting mail.

Nearly a decade ago, John Coleman wrote about the importance of writing by hand,

“…electronic communications are rarely notable. But handwritten notes are unusual. They take minutes (or hours) to draft, each word carefully chosen with no ‘undo’ or ‘autocorrect’ to fall back on.”

React With Kindness, Even When You’re Angry

How we react and respond in times of difficulty says a great deal about us — and not just who we are, but who we can be.

These days we aren’t given many examples of humility and grace in the public sphere, and I know this behavior can be wholly difficult in the face of adversity, though it’s infinitely important for us to try.

“I can’t change the direction of the wind,” mused Jimmy Dean, “but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

Closing Thoughts

Practice builds muscle memory, and as a practice, if you intentionally invest in your kindness endowment 100 times, you’ll do it the 101st time out of habit. The ROI (return on insight) on that investment is huge, and it makes us better people — better colleagues, better partners, better parents.

In business alone, I would argue kindness is in fact not a “soft skill,” but rather, one of the most important, measurable characteristics we can embody. Theologian and mustache king Albert Schweitzer mused, “Constant kindness can accomplish much.” How brilliant, his choice to embellish the phrase with the word constant.

So how about it, folks? How about we consider putting away those smartphones and go make a contribution to our kindness endowments — I bet the payoff will be greater than 5%.

Notes: The original title of this piece was “No, I will not pardon your iPhone brevity.” Upon reflection, I instead leaned towards positivity.