Giver

The terms giver, matcher, and taker were first introduced to me by a close friend. He had read Give and Take by Adam Grant, and when reading the section about givers he instantly thought of me. He said that my personality is the most giver type even among givers.

The Framework

The book talks about an interesting phenomenon: givers tend to end up on the very top and very bottom of society, while matchers are in the middle and takers middle to bottom. This has a detailed logical explanation behind it.

• Givers believe in extending kindness and always helping others in need.
• Matchers believe that all contributions should be matched.
• Takers maximize their own benefits and make use of anything possible to their advantage.

For the givers at the very bottom of society, they are the ones that get exploited by takers of everything they have and stuck in their hard lives. For the givers at the very top, the effect of always helping each other in life compounds. Since givers almost always choose to give, matchers will often help back, which creates an environment of reciprocation around the giver.

After deeply discussing this topic with my friend, we reached the conclusion that the optimal strategy within this society is to be a matcher but always choose to give first to kick start the cycle of giving.

The Prisoner's Dilemma Parallel

The matcher strategy mirrors the winning approach in a famous game theory experiment called the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. In each round, two players independently choose to either cooperate or defect. If both cooperate, both earn a reward. If one defects while the other cooperates, the defector takes everything and the cooperator gets nothing. If both defect, neither earns anything.

The experiment was run as a computer tournament by political scientist Robert Axelrod in the early 1980s, inviting game theorists to submit strategies. The winner — on both occasions and despite being the simplest program entered — was Tit for Tat, submitted by Anatol Rapoport. The strategy: cooperate on the first move, then do whatever the other player did on the previous move.

The properties that made it successful map directly onto the giver-matcher framework: it is nice (never defects first — always choose to give first), retaliatory (doesn't let exploitation go unanswered), forgiving (returns to cooperation when the other player does), and non-envious (doesn't try to score more than the opponent). This is essentially the matcher-who-gives-first strategy — start by cooperating, match what comes back, and the cycle of reciprocation compounds over time.

Becoming a Giver

Just knowing the principle or logic of this is not enough to make someone change from a taker to a matcher or giver. The change has to happen on the mindset level and over an extended period of time with a lot of effort. It can be facilitated by someone who's a giver that's willing to guide, which is actually the most efficient way.

To start, the person in question needs to have the goal or will to change. This can come from:

1. Realizing that being a giver is super beneficial — whether through reading the book or observing a giver. This is the easier start but harder going onwards.
2. Directly helped by a giver and aspiring to be like them — the harder and more intrinsic start, but the path is much straighter.

Then this person will start the long and not so easy journey to give and learn from giving. At first, the person will be slightly stingy and bothered by not enough appreciation or return. Starting like this is super common and very understandable, since you are trying to rewire your mental logic on the fundamental level. The advice is to start with small things that don't take up much time or effort, try to ask "how can I help this person," then gradually let helping become a habit. It will take a lot of time, but trust that change will happen bit by bit.

Learning and being able to choose who to help is the next important step — not everyone deserves the effort. Only the ones who want to improve or change and will show gratitude should be helped. Kindness is super, super valuable and should only go toward the places where it can have the most impact. Some givers always choose to help anyone in need regardless of how thankful the receiving person is, but for the sake of your progress in this journey and your time, choose people to help that will aid you in furthering your journey to becoming a giver.

After a while, you will find that you have more friends, more people are willing to stand by you to help, and the giver mentality is slowly baked into your mind. Then when your default thought is "how can I help," you have truly become a giver and are ready to open your arms to embrace the world with kindness.

Imperfection

Despite everything said above, no giver is perfect, because we are human after all. Figuratively speaking, 100% givers is basically the embodiment of Jesus (if you believe in God — if not, you still get what I mean). Ethical standards of God are impossible to achieve, but a good role model to look up to (you don't have to be religious for this — I'm not religious and will talk about religion in another article).

Never try to be a 100% giver. This will cause immense pain, because you will be constantly ashamed of all the petty things you care so much about and how far that keeps you from being complete. Instead, the approach should be: "I acknowledge that I am human and can never be perfect, but I should improve and be the best I can."

Since we are still homo sapiens, helping others and getting thanked afterwards is a huge boost in confidence in becoming a giver, and naturally we want to avoid getting stabbed in the back — that sure hurts. All givers need some form and amount of appreciation even though they may only need a tiny bit to keep going. We trust in our beliefs to keep giving even without a lot of praise, but for the sake of maintenance, do show your giver friends some love and thanks from time to time — you might even get a cute flustered reaction as a pleasant surprise.

Don't Become a Doormat

When being a giver, be cautious of not becoming a doormat. Your time and kindness is precious, and people should know even the nicest person has a temper. This is also extremely important to your continuous commitment to being a giver. We cannot avoid setbacks and hurtful things because we make bad judgments, but we can always try to minimize the chances of such happenings.

Some people get trampled over, their hearts turn cold, and they become afraid of giving themselves or their kindness away. No giver wishes to experience this and also doesn't want to see this happen to other givers either. Be a giver but learn to protect yourself while doing so.