I spent my 20s in a series of jobs that never stuck. By the time I was 28, I felt lost. I went to temple for the High Holidays for the first time since I was a kid. Because I couldn’t follow the Hebrew, I started writing in a notebook. I wrote about my failed dreams and how I felt like a passive follower on my life journey—not a passionate protagonist.

Articulating all the ways that my life was lacking somehow fostered in me a sense of agency and motivation. I narrowed it down to one thing I hated most about myself: I smoked cigarettes. So, on October 19, 1994, I did a “lifetime quit” on smoking. Every day I didn’t smoke would be a day I lived my life, rather than it living me. The next year, while writing in my “Book of Life,” I became more ambitious. I decided to quit my job and start a company focused on helping people navigate the internet. I named it FreeLoader after my late friend Tom Cole who was then living on my couch, and who loaned me the seed money.

Adding to my Book of Life has become an annual commitment for the past 28 years. I have come to call this “partnering with my future self.” Each year I ask what future Mark would thank present Mark for doing. I then commit to make it happen. Through this practice, I have changed my life—gaining the focus to improve habits, relationships, and build companies.

I have also seen how this kind of partnership and practice can play out in my community. Our tiny coastal town of Bolinas, just north of San Francisco, has a long history of solving its own problems, which became the subject of a 1976 book called The Town That Fought to Save Itself. The multi-strata enclave has continued this tradition. Recently we rebuilt a vital road that the state had abandoned. We came together at the beginning of the pandemic to launch one of the most progressive COVID-19 testing programs in the country, an inclusive model that has since been repeated around the world. We also provided COVID-19 relief for our undocumented neighbors who had been left behind by government programs.

When a community comes together to solve its own problems it reclaims its agency and becomes emboldened. This community focus is core to my giving philosophy, which is shaped by a desire to facilitate entrepreneurial ingenuity so that people can take sustainable and regenerative action in their communities.

I am motivated by the forces that shape me. Along with raising my family and making an impact with friends and work, surfing has become a fundamental force in my life. The ocean, as Sustainable Surf and SeaTrees co-founder Michael Stewart says, is the “unsung hero of our planet.” With my free time spent in the ocean, I feel compelled to address climate change with the ocean at the center. I hope my children can live in a world that is regenerative, biodiverse, balanced, and thriving. To that end, I plan to reduce and offset our family’s historical and future carbon footprint by a factor of ten.

It is with great joy that I am signing the Giving Pledge and launching the Future Self Project. I plan to offer investments and ideas to existing and new projects focused on improving all of our futures.

Our ongoing work will include developing “Future Earth” projects that my partner Hilary Shaw is passionate about—conservation, regeneration and permaculture—as well as finding ways to support communities investing in themselves.

When I wrote in my Book of Life this year, I asked what the Shaw Pincus family in 2032 will thank the Shaw Pincus family in 2022 for doing. The answer was clear: develop giving platforms that enable communities to partner with their future selves. Accomplishing this in ways that make a difference feels ambitious, and we’re excited and committed to do as much as we can.