Graduation speeches promise you’ll change the world. Start by changing one person’s day. It counts more than you think.

Big promises about changing the world are mostly unusable, because they arrive with no first step. The scale you actually have access to is one person at a time, and that is not a consolation prize: most people’s lives got noticeably better or worse because of something somebody did in a hallway. Impact arrives retail rather than wholesale.

Find one person this week whose day you can make easier and do it without mentioning it: cover a task, save a seat, send the notes. Pick somebody who cannot pay it back. Keep it small enough that you actually finish it rather than planning it.