Who's to say? I'm almost tempted to even say "who cares"? I mean that, as in, "what good is it going to do to find the answer to this question"? Even IF it weren't the case that the answer is probably different for every single individual, what would you do differently if there was a discrete answer and you knew it?<p>For what it's worth, I spent a decade of my life (basically the 1990's) dedicating hundreds of hours a month to being a volunteer firefighter. I did everything from being a probie to being Fire Chief over the years, ran hundreds of calls, spend FSM knows how many hours in training, got my instructor certification to teach FFI and FFII, Incident Command, and LP Gas Firefighting classes... and now I don't do any of that anymore.<p>Why not? I don't know, my interests changed, my career took me in a different direction, and now I spend my time doing other things. I don't do much volunteering these days, other than a trivial amount of time working with the local mountain-bike club on building and maintaining trails. My time is so precious to me, that I find I'd rather try to help charitable causes and other orgs that I believe in, by just donating money. So now I make donations to, or maintain memberships in all sorts of groups: IMBA (International Mountain Bicycling Assocation), NRA, EFF, Libertarian Party, Gun Owners of America, FSF, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Second Amendment Foundation, Grassroots NC, etc.<p>Outside of that, I feel like the best path for me to both accomplish my personal goals and to help make the world a better place, is by founding a startup and building an awesome company that can create jobs, and - once we're profitable - do even more in terms of giving back to worthy causes. Plus I simply feel driven to be engaged in the act of creating something, and right now that means trying to create this company.<p>But that's just me... again, I expect everybody has their own take on things.