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Kind things you can do in five minutes
Nobody needs a free afternoon to be kind. These take about as long as waiting for a kettle, and most of them happen in the gaps of a day you were having anyway. If you have been meaning to do something and keep not getting to it, start here.
Showing 91–120 of 197 ideas
Stand next to someone being harassed
Intervening directly can escalate. Standing beside the person and talking to them usually does not.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Pick up what fell out of someone's bag
Gloves, cards, a child's toy. The owner will not discover the loss until it is far too late to retrace.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Check on the one who held it together
At every funeral one person organizes everything. They are the last to be asked how they are, often by months.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Not rated yet
Hold the lift for whoever is carrying something
Cleaners, porters and delivery staff with loaded trolleys wait for lifts far longer than anyone with free hands.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Put back the bins that blew over
After a windy collection day the street is strewn with other people's bins and rubbish. It takes one person ten minutes.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Not rated yet
Put your number through a door
Most neighbors have no way to reach each other. One card through a letterbox fixes that for years.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Not rated yet
Offer your wifi when their internet goes down
For anyone working from home, an outage is a lost day of pay. A password shared over the fence gets it back.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Not rated yet
Give a visitor the real recommendation
Tourists get sent to the thing on the map. Locals know the version two streets away that is better and cheaper.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Take the appointment nobody wants
The 8am slot, the Friday afternoon, the awkward gap. Someone has to take them, and flexibility is a thing you can give away.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Step aside early on a narrow pavement
Whoever moves first is usually whoever is least able to. Deciding to be the one who moves is free.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Review the small place that is not struggling yet
People review businesses when they are closing or failing. The useful time is before that.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Go back in and say the food was good
Kitchen staff never meet the people who ate what they made. The feedback loop is completely severed.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Write the delivery note before they arrive
Most failed deliveries are a driver guessing. Three sentences of instruction saves a doorstep conversation and a wasted trip.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Warn the parent who has not seen it
A toddler heading for a road or a pond. The parent is two seconds behind and has not looked up.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Take the other end of the pushchair
Stations without lifts turn a pushchair into a trap. One person taking the front end solves it in twenty seconds.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Knock when you realize you have not seen someone
Curtains shut two days running, bins not out, post building up. Noticing is common. Knocking is rare and occasionally decisive.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Not rated yet
Answer the most junior person first
Inboxes are triaged by seniority without anyone deciding to. Reversing it once a day costs you nothing.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Hand back what the machine gave you by mistake
Money left in a cash machine or an overpaid change is someone's actual money, and they will notice.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Keep inviting after the diagnosis
People stop inviting the seriously ill to ordinary things, assuming they cannot come. Being asked is the point.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Not rated yet
Make the introduction you keep meaning to make
You know two people who should meet. The introduction takes four minutes and you have owed it for months.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Not rated yet
Decline to join the pile-on
The hundredth reply telling someone they are wrong adds nothing except to the total weight landing on one person.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Leave the public toilet better than you found it
Someone cleans that room several times a day. Thirty seconds of tidying is the most direct help you can give a stranger.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Find out who is on their own at Christmas
People will not volunteer that they have nowhere to go. The question has to be asked directly and early.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Not rated yet
Walk a lost person to the corner
Directions are forgotten by the second turn. Walking someone to the point where they can see it is what works.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Warn someone about the ticket they are about to get
Thirty seconds of effort saves a stranger sixty pounds they very possibly cannot spare.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Learn the dog's name first, then the owner's
The dog is the easiest introduction on any street, and the one conversation nobody finds intrusive.
5 minutesFreeA neighbor
Not rated yet
Write down whether a place was actually accessible
Step-free claims are frequently wrong, and disabled people plan whole days around information nobody has verified.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Tell the driver you are genuinely not in a hurry
Taxi and delivery drivers assume every passenger wants speed. Saying otherwise removes a pressure they carry all day.
5 minutesFreeA stranger
Not rated yet
Remember the date everyone else forgot
The anniversary of a death or a miscarriage is carried privately by one or two people and acknowledged by nobody.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Not rated yet
Ask what they wish people would stop saying
Everyone going through something hard has a list of well-meant phrases that make it worse. Nobody ever asks.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Not rated yet