Let me tell you a story about this guy named R. Buckminster Fuller…

About 100 years ago or so, he was bankrupt. No job, no potential for a job, he had a wife and kids he couldn’t provide for, and with a life insurance policy that made him literally worth more dead than alive.

He was standing on the edge of one of Lake Michigan, contemplating throwing himself in so at least his wife could collect the insurance money, when he had this sudden realization…

That maybe, just maybe, the universe had some purpose for him after all, and if he threw himself in, he’d never find out what it was.

So he made a wager with himself, to keep it together long enough to see where this would all go.

"If I take oath never again to work for my own advantaging and to work only for all others for whom my experience-gained knowledge may be of benefit, I may be justified in not throwing myself away. This will, of course, mean that I will not be able to escape the pain and mortification of being an absolute failure in playing the game of life as it has been taught to me.

I sought to use myself as my scientific “guinea pig” in a lifelong experiment designed to discover what — if anything — a healthy young male human of average size, experience, and capability, with an economically dependent wife and child, starting without capital or any kind of wealth, cash savings, credit, or university degree, could effectively do that could not be done be great nations or great private enterprise to lastingly improve the physical protection and support of all human lives.

Friends would say, “You are being treacherous to your wife and child, not going out to earn a living for them. Come over here and we will give you a very good job.” When, persuaded by their obvious generosity and concern, I did yield, everything went wrong; and every time I went “off the deep end” again, working only for everybody without salary, everything went right again."

Did it work? Well, he went on to hold 28 patents, including, notably, the geodesic dome.

https://medium.com/@bbirdwell4711/why-buckminster-fuller-is-more-interesting-than-you-thought-f9d213eb0cb7

“Not only did Bucky and his family survive the experiment, they thrived. Without any kind of public relations or marketing support, he would eventually be mentioned in over 100,000 articles, books, and broadcasts. In his last twenty years of life he circled the globe 47 times and spoke to 30,000 students. He published 24 books and funneled $20 million into prototyping and design of dozens of artifacts, from domes to cars to prefab bathrooms. Though his annual earnings eventually rose to $250,000, he never made a profit; he always spent every dollar on research and development, “always operating in proximity to bankruptcy without going bankrupt.””