The news hour is replete with tales of failing financial institutions, rises in unemployment numbers, and inflation of prices at the pump, grocery, utilities, and other sources of the supplies we consider necessary for life in the U. S. I long to talk to elders who observed the leading indicators prior to the Great Depression, to compare and discuss today’s level of preparedness for large-scale set backs in our economy. More to the point, how do our companies – and we as individuals – cope with adversity? Adversity is a prompt for change. And change is not often immediate: it is usually a transition. If we observe the need for change early enough, that transition may be more orderly, less disruptive to our lives.Tools that help during periods like this include introspection, ability to set achievable, observable (measurable) goals, mentoring relationships, and opportunities to interact with others through direct acts of sharing or giving. Those opportunities include volunteering your time and talent. While volunteers focus on giving, they open a channel for receiving. What do you get from the act of volunteering? Self respect, for one thing. A smile when the receiver of your time and focus responds. A sense of connection, or community.Are you giving? In The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner describe a tool for assessing your commitment to an activity. You can use it to test the fit between your desire to give to your community and your actual investment in volunteering. Keep a calendar for a week or a month, writing in your activities: if we are defining volunteering as giving of your TIME and talent, this should be easy! Then add the hours and divide by 168 (the number of hours in a week) or 720 (hours in a month). Is the percentage 10% or greater? Kouzes and Posner suggest that if you are truly committed to something, you will devote at least a tenth of your time to it. Now, 16.8 hours a week of structured volunteering would be tough for most of us… but what it you considered time with neighbors, kids, elders, teams and troops, clubs, and so forth? Count the time you do things for others that (1) are not income producing and (2) are not done from a sense of duty. Chances are good that 16.8 hours is a realistic measure of volunteering.Why go through this exercise? It is only a first step… the second is to begin to notice the ROI, Return on Investment. Do you feel more connected? Respected? Needed? Satisfied? Look for the signs of being valued by others: this is your ‘return’ for what you give. When the economy gets tough, when downsizing seems more the norm than expansion and growth, when natural disasters hit, you have a tool for maintaining focus and connection. I interject Kouzes and Posner’s measurement tool in many seminars and lectures, as I find it useful in my own life. It gives me a reality check when I think I am investing enough energy to accomplish something of importance to me. How close to 10% am I in terms of putting effort into that activity or goal? It helps me stay on track when CNN proclaims that Wall Street is broken, that Galveston is flooded, when the PFD fund has lost mega dollars. Check it out for yourself — try the 10% Solution. Mary M Rydesky