People working for larger enterprises know what I am talking about when mentioning the sometimes annoying push for Impact related thinking. Everything you do needs to have impact. You are constantly reminded to chose your actions by the level of impact they will have. For the longest time this had a quite negative impact on my ambitions to contribute to charity work in my sparetime.
It hindered me to start doing something because I thought that I don’t want to waste my time, if I do something for a charity it needs to have impact. In the end it was only wishful thinking and I never started something, I donated money but that was all.
A friend recently told me that he feels bad that he contributed so little when he helped “only” for an afternoon cleaning the river bank with some other people of his town while he thought he could do so much more.
Statistically it does not really make a difference if you help a single granny crossing the road safely or thousand grannies. The world is so big that there is no noticable difference in the impact these actions have. It can be that with the one single good action you already inspired someone else to be a better person with a wave of positive follow up actions by others who are consecutively affected by this tsunamy of good deeds. There is no guarantee that the 1000 actions of the other person will have a broader impact, they might remain unnoticed. I would compare it with a lottery ticket. The chances you win are not significantly higher if you by 1 ticket or 1000 tickets.
My conclusion is: in companies it is important to keep the impact related to your activities in mind, in your spare time contributing to charities or just beeing a good person it shall not hinder you to do even small good things.
Every good action, even the smallest one, helps making the world a better place.
Start today with a small good deed.
