Archives for April 2015

Procrastination

Procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the “last minute” before a deadline.

Is procrastination a good or an evil…Which quote fits you best?

“Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.”
– Thomas Jefferson

or

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
– Mark Twain

Procrastination is so easy to come by, distraction is now literally at our finger tips.  How easy is it to get lost in the world of the on-line abyss, with email, social media, and YouTube.  (who has not wasted hours watching screaming goat videos), but believe it or not the art of procrastination has been around as long as there has been someway to record human behaviours.  Why do we purposely add  the additional stresses caused by procrastination?  Especially in this stress ridden, hurry up and wait laden society.  We all know that stress has negative impacts on every aspect of our health, including physical, mental, social and professional. However, knowing all this we do we all do it anyway.  So why?

According to Tim Pychyl, a procrastination researcher at Carleton University in Ottawa, The more aversive a task is to you, the more you’ll resist it, and the more likely you are to procrastinate. Pychyl, in his research, identified a number of task characteristics that make you more likely to procrastinate. Tasks that are aversive tend to:

  • Be boring
  • Be frustrating
  • Be difficult
  • Lack personal meaning and intrinsic rewards
  • Be ambiguous (you don’t know how to do it)
  • Be unstructured

The more negative emotions you show toward a certain task, the more likely you are to procrastinate.  He describes procrastination as the gap between intention and action…a weakness of will if you may.  Who wants to spend time doing something from the above mentioned list when you could be doing something that gives a more self gratifying feeling.  Accounting Vs. Reading a book, Reading a book Vs. Watching your favourite TV show, Watching your favourite TV show Vs. going to lunch with friends…But in the end the accounting still needs to get done, no matter how much you put it off.

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Volunteers Can Change the World

What is Volunteering

Volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity and is intended to promote goodness or improve human quality of life. In return, this activity can produce a feeling of self-worth and respect. There is no financial gain involved for the individual. Volunteering is also renowned for skill development, socialization, and fun. Volunteering may have positive benefits for the volunteer as well as for the person or community served. It is also intended to make contacts for possible employment. It is helping, assisting, or serving another person or persons without pay.

Volunteers do such a wide variety of tasks and jobs in your local and global communities.  Volunteers do everything from stuffing envelopes to serving on boards of directors. They raise funds for charity, coach sports teams, run youth and children’s programs, deliver meals, shop for the elderly, help recent immigrants settle in, work to protect the environment, help feed hungry people, guide museum and art gallery visitors, and build homes for homeless people, and so on and so on.  Volunteers are the basis for many of our earliest establishments, including Hospitals, Homes for the elderly, Orphanages, and several well known and long standing health and welfare organizations including the SPCA (Established 1869), the Canadian Red Cross (1896), The Victorian Order of Nurses -VON (1897), and Big Brothers Big Sisters Canada (1913), just to name a few.  Take a few moments and think of the place that are driven by volunteers and the work that they do, the meals on wheels drivers, the parents of the PTA, the girl and boy scout leaders, the local minor sports associations, the porters at the hospital, the list can go on and on.  Chances are you and/or your family are impacted by the work of a volunteer on a regular basis.

As our lives continuously get busier and busier, it gets harder to find time to donate.  According to the National Statistics the number of those who volunteer are dropping.  In 2013 12.7 million Canadians volunteered their time, compared to 13.3 million in 2010, that’s a 5% decrease.  On the other hand, the need that volunteers service are on the rise.  And so the cycle continues.

Margaret Mead quoteImagine what the world will be like without the dedication of volunteers with a cause, what would the world be like if Rotary International did not have the mission to eradicate   Polio, as a result Rotarian’s have contributed over US$850 million and hundreds of thousands of volunteer-hours, leading to the inoculation of more than two billion of the world’s children.

Please take some time to recognize the time and hard work volunteers put into your community and abroad to ensure that great Organizations can continue their work, and continue to change the world.

National Volunteer Weeks

  • April 12-18 2015
  • April 10-17 2016
  • April 23-29 2017