Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. Today’s video is like the human heart
and barbershop quartet harmonies: it comes to you in four parts. Part 1: The Holidays.
Hank, here in the United States there are several holidays coming up.
And this year both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve fall on Tuesdays, and I will be taking
both those days off.
Part 2: related. I've been thinking about burnout a lot lately.
I’m not really burnt out at the moment, but I am starting to think differently about
the role work plays in my life.
Ever since I was about 22, I've worked many nights and most weekends.
I don’t recommend working that way and I don’t need to, but I've continued to do it anyway.
My central goal for the next decade is to do fewer things that the world constructs as “work”
and more things that are valuable but not usually imagined as “work,” like spending time with family
and doing the dishes and sleeping and reading and volunteering my time and talents to causes I care about.
I’m just saying that out loud in the hopes that it will make me accountable.
Part 3: The Project for Awesome.
So Hank, back in 2007 when we first came up with the idea for the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck,
it was mostly a joke, like we "decreased worldsuck" by paying for people to go to their first concerts.
Which is a value added to the universe, I think, but maybe not the most efficient one.
But then the Project for Awesome started to grow, and the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck
became a real charity that can accept tax deductible donations despite its very silly name.
And last year, the Project for Awesome raised its ten millionth dollar for charity.
The P4A is my favorite time of the year, and I can't wait for the strange mix of exhaustion
and exhilaration it brings.
The 13th annual—how is that possible— Project for Awesome will happen this year
between noon Eastern Time on Friday December 6th and noon Eastern on Sunday December 8th,
but the Indiegogo will launch this year on December 3rd.
There will be many amazing perks available—more on those next week—and because the Project for Awesome
is a volunteer-run organization, except for credit card fees and the cost of making
and shipping physical perks, all donations go to charity.
As in past years, during the first half of the Project for Awesome,
we’ll be raising money for pre-selected charities, Save the Children and Partners in Health,
both of which our community has worked with for over a decade, and both of which have excellent reputations
for reaching and assisting the most vulnerable people in the world.
I should mention that this year’s P4A fundraising will be entirely separate from the project
we announced a couple of months ago with Partners in Health Sierra Leone.
Over 3,000 of you have joined us in donating to support the strengthening of Sierra Leone’s healthcare system,
and we are so grateful and excited to watch that progress over the next several years.
But during this year’s P4A, as in past years, we’re raising so-called “unrestricted funds,”
which allows PIH and Save the Children to spend the money wherever it’s most needed.
Partners in Health, for instance, might need money to support a clinic in the Navajo nation
or to buy medical supplies in Haiti. They know better than we do where the funding gaps are,
and unrestricted funds are really important to charities, so we’re keeping the Sierra Leone project separate.
If you have any questions about this or about anything, please leave them in the comments!
It occurs to me that someday YouTube will probably move the comments section to like a sidebar,
and then it will look to people like I’m just pointing at my pants.
And then it occurs to me that someday, YouTube will not exist at all. But back to the Project for Awesome!
Right, okay, so during the second half of the Project for Awesome, as in past years
we will be raising money for charities chosen by you.
YOU make a great video in support of a charity you think deserves a grant
and then upload it on Friday December 6th,
and if people vote for it at projectforawesome.com, that charity might receive part of the funds
raised during the second half of the Project for Awesome.
So we’re counting on you to make great videos and pick worthy charities. Alright, let’s talk about money!
Hank and I will be matching the first $150,000 raised in this year’s Project for Awesome.
And I know lots of you have donated to lots of causes, so really no pressure,
but if you would like to join that matching fund, you can email us at ftdws@complexly.com.
That email address is also in the dooblydoo and in the comments below.
If you are able to join the matching fund, you will be thanked profusely
and it really does help drive donations. Okay, Part 4!
For making it to the end of an update video, you win a picture of my brother and me as reindeer—
one of the amazing months of the 2020 Project for Awesome calendar.
Rudolph, I’ll see you on Friday.