How to Want Better Things
How to Want Better Things
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.
A life at work
Graduate
Age 22
Collects a diploma and a faint sense of obligation to make it mean something.
First Serious Job
Age 25
Learns that “making a difference” and “making partner” sound similar if you say them fast enough.
Promotion
Age 33
Attends mindfulness training sponsored by the company causing the stress.
Midlife Pivot
Age 45
Hires a coach to rediscover intrinsic motivation.
Retirement
Age 65
Finally achieves work-life balance by removing the first half.
A life at work
Graduate
Age 22
Collects a diploma and a faint sense of obligation to make it mean something.
First Serious Job
Age 25
Learns that “making a difference” and “making partner” sound similar if you say them fast enough.
Promotion
Age 33
Attends mindfulness training sponsored by the company causing the stress.
Midlife Pivot
Age 45
Hires a coach to rediscover intrinsic motivation.
Retirement
Age 65
Finally achieves work-life balance by removing the first half.
Book
Book
Book
About the Book
About the Book
How to Want Better Things explores why fulfillment so often feels elusive, and how we can learn to want in ways that serve both ourselves and the world. Drawing on research from psychology, economics, and philosophy, the book reframes desire as a skill that can be trained.
By turning aspiration into a practical tool for positive change, the book offers concrete steps toward a more meaningful, impact-driven life. Whether you’re seeking clarity on your own goals or wondering how individual choices can make a collective difference, this book provides the insights and frameworks to help you rethink what you want
How to Want Better Things explores why fulfillment so often feels elusive, and how we can learn to want in ways that serve both ourselves and the world. Drawing on research from psychology, economics, and philosophy, the book reframes desire as a skill that can be trained.
By turning aspiration into a practical tool for positive change, the book offers concrete steps toward a more meaningful, impact-driven life. Whether you’re seeking clarity on your own goals or wondering how individual choices can make a collective difference, this book provides the insights and frameworks to help you rethink what you want
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Author
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Co Author
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Co Author
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Co Author
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Co Author
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Audiobook
Audiobook
Media Section
Media Section
Press
Press
Press
For Journalists and Media
For Journalists and Media
How to Want Better Things is a book about how to make choices that actually matter.
Written by students from Oxford, Harvard, and Middlebury, it explores how people can find purpose in their work and use their talents to do more good in the world.
How to Want Better Things is a book about how to make choices that actually matter.
Written by students from Oxford, Harvard, and Middlebury, it explores how people can find purpose in their work and use their talents to do more good in the world.
"Bridges philosophy, behavioral science, and social impact"
Explores how to align ambition with measurable good
Built around a central question: “What if wanting better things could be learned?”
Available in print, digital, and audio formats
First chapter available now wherever you listen to podcasts
Contact us: press@howtowantbetterthings.org
Join Now
Join Now
Join Now
How to Want Better Things
How to Want Better Things
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.
Contact us: outreach@howtowantbetterthings.org
Contact us: outreach@howtowantbetterthings.org
Contact us: outreach@howtowantbetterthings.org