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According to the Volunteering in the United States survey, “providing professional or management assistance, including serving on a board or committee” is the second most popular form of volunteering for Americans over 55, after “collecting, preparing, distributing or serving food.”

ey’re increasingly targeting boomers with what’s known as “skills-based volunteering” opportunities whose jobs are valued at $40 to $500 an hour, far more than traditional volunteering’s $18 to $20 an hour, according to a blog post by Emily Ferstie of United Way for Southeastern Michigan.

but we do know that third-party data brokers sell all manner of information to businesses, including “police officers’ home addresses, rape sufferers, and genetic disease sufferers” as well as suspected alcoholics and cancer and HIV/AIDS patients.

The first is that almost everything is personal. In the words of computer scientists Arvind Narayanan (Princeton

this model simply doesn’t reflect the reality of the deeply unequal situation we now face. Those who wield the tools of data tracking and analytics have far more power than those who don’t.

Many workers aren’t even getting the pay they’ve been promised for the work they do. Complaints of wage theft, like that experienced by NFL cheerleaders, jumped by 400 percent between 2000 and 2011. It’s rampant in some industries: 89 percent of fast food workers say they’ve been made to work for free off the clock, denied overtime pay, or simply paid less than minimum wage. More is stolen from low-wage workers than is robbed from banks, gas stations, and convenience stores combined. Lawmakers in a handful of cities and two states, Colorado and New York, have passed anti-wage theft ordinances to crack down on companies that steal wages and make it easier for workers to bring claims.

When our intentional mind is engaged, we act in ways that meet an outcome we desire and typically we're aware of our intentions. Intentions can change quickly because we can make conscious decisions about what we want to do in the future that may be different from the past. However, when the habitual mind is engaged, our habits function largely outside of awareness. We can't easily articulate how we do our habits or why we do them, and they change slowly through repeated experience. "Our minds don't always integrate in the best way possible. Even when you know the right answer, you can't make yourself change the habitual behavior," Wood says.

Forty percent of the time we're not thinking about what we're doing," Wood interjects. "Habits allow us to focus on other things…Willpower is a limited resource, and when it runs out you fall back on habits."

The second principle is remembering that repetition is key.

Introverts often wish they could change themselves. But there is tremendous power in self-acceptance. Once introverts stop struggling against their essential nature, they often report feeling liberated and more aware of how to maximize their natural gifts.

1. Introverts don’t fit their negative stereotype.

2. Introverts are not anomalies.

Corporations are interested in making skilled volunteering a larger piece of their community involvement activities, and companies like Microsoft, HP, American Express and The Gap are publically and actively building more skills-based and pro bono volunteering programs.

The skilled volunteering movement is also growing among individuals – organizations like Taproot Foundation and Catchafire have joined VolunteerMatch to connect skilled volunteers directly with nonprofit projects, and they are growing by leaps and bounds.

standardized taxonomy of skills that volunteers possess and that nonprofits search for.