Waiting in line at the grocery store took 23 minutes.
My choices were:
1) Read how Oprah is really an alien in the national enquirer
2) Eat candy
3) Learn how to trim 5 pounds in 5 weeks in cosmopolitan magazine
4) Help an immigrant improve their English through The Extraordinaries
Tough choice.
As we progress through the research of this project, and evolve as an organization, we've begun to develop our own theories on *free time* and it's varying distinctions.
Between work, sleep, and other responsibilities, there are four forms of free time:
(at least, four that we have identified so far)
1) The first we call "idle time". Like when you're car is on, and you are waiting for someone. You are often performing another task when idling. We have many of these idle moments throughout our daily lives. You are idling when waiting in line at the post office or the bank. You are idling when waiting at the doctors office or when riding the bus. Idle time usually occurs in blocks of 20 minutes or less, with the rare instances of up to an hour. Remember, idle time exists when your body is present, but your mind is only half there.
2) The second is "spare time" and these are the moments when we do not have any prerequisite responsibilities or prior commitments. Like idle time, spare time usually occurs in blocks of 20 minutes or less, with the rare instances of up to an hour, and the exception being lunch breaks (however, a large percentage of us work through our lunch breaks and/or assign ourselves responsibilities during lunch, therefore lunch breaks tend to fall into the idle time category).
3) The third is "ad-hoc time" and this is time we stumble into. You are in ad-hoc time when your meeting gets canceled, or when your flight gets delayed. This is time we did not plan for. Like idle and spare, ad-hoc usually occurs in blocks of under an hour.
4) The fourth is "leisure time" and this is precious (if not sacred) to most people. Saturdays are most certainly leisure time. People don't part with leisure time very easily, and are quite hostile at the thought of sacrificing this time. These are the moments in our week when we can do what we want to do, and it is hallowed ground for most people. Leisure time usually occurs in blocks of four hours, with the rare instances of up to eight hours, and the exception being vacation days and sick days. Remember, leisure time is a solid block of free time with no other responsibilities, and generally used as a time to escape from the stress of life and relax a little bit.
With these distinctions, we can begin to understand why only 26% of the U.S. population volunteers (2007 Bureau of Labor Statistics):
Most volunteer activities occur at an on-site location, and generally demand that someone has four hours or more to dedicate to a task. Volunteer opportunities can often occur during the work day at the convenience of the organization.
Taking into account the varying length of people's free time, the only place that someone can actually fit in a four-hour block of volunteering would be during their leisure time. It makes perfect sense that people don't want to part with this very easily -- it's their chance to "get away" from their stressful week. This is why volunteering is seen as a *sacrifice* in our society. It's considered to be honorable, noble, and selfless because you are giving of yourself, or more appropriately "sacrificing" from the time you would normally spend on yourself.
I also believe that this is the catalyst behind volunteer service "days" as people are willing to plan for and dedicate a day here or there to cleaning a park. I might be willing to do that once or twice a year, but NOT every week.
This form of volunteering is an old model that has not adapted to the rat-race society that we live in. It's inconvenient, and it doesn't give any deference to the hectic, busy, stressful lives of busy people. It is also completely out of whack with the wants and desires of the millenial generation (the approaching dominant volunteer demographic).
The Extraordinaries
The Extraordinaries creates opportunity for people to do social good in the "idle time, spare time, and ad-hoc time" categories. But we're not talking about just any random tasks -- we're talking about real, productive, rewarding, and beneficial use of people's skills. However, to take advantage of someone's free time between meetings or on a bus, we must reach them via mobile. But, up until now, mobile phones were limited to SMS-based text communication, or voice communication.
Enter the smartphone.
It wasn't until the invention of treo and blackberry that people started using these devices for productive work applications. And further, it wasn't until the arrival of the iPhone 3G -- with mobile Internet, powerful graphics, powerful camera, GPS, video, audio recording, and more -- that we could finally start realizing the full potential of what is essentially a powerful mobile mini-computer. Nearly anything you can do on a regular computer, you can now do on a smartphone like the iPhone or Blackberry, with the added advantage of being in your pocket 24/7.
Even more impressive, is that 115 million people already have smartphones today, and over 700 million people will have smartphones by 2012 (Washington Post, August 2008).
So, when you start thinking about how we can use 700 million people's idle time or spare time, combined with the power and productivity that a smartphone can deliver, you start to dream up amazing possibilities of how we can add value to society through crowdsourced volunteering tasks.
In the end, it's all cognitive surplus or "spare cycles" but most people dont' know what that means. But what it really is, is just the beginning of a new form of volunteering and the use of one's spare time...
Got a Few Minutes Free? Be Extraordinary.
Here's a lunch break blog post for ya...
I've been thinking a lot about ways we can use the system. In doing so, I recently reviewed some old notes, and came across two early ideas that I still think are very valid...
1) FBI MOST WANTED
2) AMBER ALERTS
Probably the two most emotional / scary things in our society are the concepts of a murderer or a missing child, and these scenarios are two of Hollywood's favorite plots. Police in our society are often overworked, underpaid, and only human. But what if we could offer 100,000 more eyes on the streets across the country? We could even use the phone's GPS to segment by geographic region -- meaning that Extraordinaries in Indiana would get Indiana-related "amber alerts" or "fugitive wanted alerts," and the people in New York would get something different, maximizing impact. It would seem to me, that one of the biggest obstacle to the jobs of police officers, is getting enough people to know about the fugitive or the missing child. TV shows like America's Most Wanted, Amber Alerts on highway overpass signs, and Truck Drivers have all teamed up to put more eyes on the street. Why can't WE help?
This is just another example of how our system is well outside the realm of traditional volunteering, but can offer tremendous good to society, and since people are using their time for free, they ARE technically, volunteering. And frankly, it feels good to get bad guys off the streets and bring kids safely home. Talk about the quintessential job of a super hero, or rather, of one of The Extraordinaries.
Our friends over at social actions sent me this link:
http://my.socialactions.com/forum/topics/phone-pal
Would you call a senior citizen for 20 minutes to remind them that there are people in this world that still care about them?
Here's the repost:
PHONE-PAL
Often the senior population in our society gets ignored. What's up with that? They have tons of interesting stories to tell and remember a time before lattes, and had to walk uphill both ways to school. I personally have no idea what either of those experiences are like, and I bet it would be interesting to hear about!
We have a few seniors in our housing sites that are lonely, and we don't want them to feel ignored anymore.
We need volunteers who want to hear about all those interesting stories by spending a little time each week on the phone with these seniors. I bet they'd even be interested in hearing about whatever interesting stories you have to tell as well!
Contact Stefanie Greenberg at sgreenberg@metcouncil.org or 212.453.6916
I think it would be great! What do you think?
Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/superchango/
