One thing that sets apart great leaders and world-class business people from others is their ability to work smarter. Most of the people, including myself, have a lot of dead time at our disposal. Some of us acknowledge its existence, and others ignore it. Ten mins. Waiting here, fifteen minutes waiting for someone, etc. The way you chose to spend this fragmented time makes all the difference in the world. Know that even five minutes is not that short. There are a lot of things that you can do in that time frame and free some space on your calendar for later hours. It could be anything from typing an email or making that one important call once you learn to utilize this intermediate dead time. You will eventually find time for much better and more enjoyable things. Before we move any further, let’s discuss what dead time actually is.
What is Dead Time?
Deadtime is the time you spend waiting for your friend/ appointment, queuing, commuting to someplace. It’s time you have no choice but to invest in a particular objective that is, in most cases, not productive. Think of utilizing your dead time as an extension of scheduling everything you do. The more disciplined you are as a person, the more sensitive you become to know exactly what you are doing with your time.
It is absolutely human to succumb to distractions that exist in our environment. But if you have a schedule or a framework in place, you are less likely to slip into habits of spending time doing nothing. The same applies to being aware of your dead time. Utilizing your dead time is all about having a plan in mind about how you take advantage of the time that wasn’t scheduled. For example, if you are waiting in a queue, you, in all probability, won’t be able to do anything like writing a report. But you might utilize that time to do some research or reading the news.
Resurrecting Dead Time
There should be no scope for dead time on a well-scheduled day, but whenever it is there, make sure you are capitalizing it. There can be a lot of instances when you can not foresee dead time. For example, if your client calls you up and tells you that they will be an hour late when you find unexpected traffic on your way back from the office or a long queue at the train ticket counter. Whatever may be the cause, you can still prepare for both expected and unexpected dead time.
It is important that you recognize that you are losing time, but it is even more important to quantify how much time you are losing. Let’s say you commute to your office traveling for 45 mins each side. This amounts to approximately 30 hours a month. Even if you remove 2-3 weeks of vacation, it still amounts to 345 hours per year. If you are currently not doing anything productive during your travel hours, you have a lot of untapped potentials, my friend. If your travel involves driving, for obvious reason you can’t be busy doing other things. But still, there are some passive activities that you can do to make your time more productive without compromising your attention. You can listen to podcasts or audiobooks to broaden your knowledge. Following are some ways to translate your current dead time into something productive.
Tips to make your dead time productive
1. Organize your environment
In a scenario where you are waiting for your boss to reply to an email or waiting for something else, you have nothing else to do. Organizing is seemingly a great way to help you save time in the future that you can use to do something more rewarding.
The following are some ways that definitely help you become better at organizing. Because when you organize what is on your plate, you inadvertently stall a lot of stress that could come your way.
- Take simple decisions quickly
- Make a list of everything
- Have a room for everything
- Align your resources
- Have a system in place
2. Manage your E-mails
Emails are important and a formal platform of communication at the workplace. However, there are just plenty of emails that are there and are of no practical importance. Most of the emails that you receive in a day are useless/ spam. Despite that, you feel the urge to look at your phone every time there is an email. The following are 3 ways to help you manage those emails so you do not miss any important emails while keeping in mind that you do not get distracted from your work.
2.1 Schedule it in your dead time
You can turn off the option of notification for an email from your home screen so that it does not distract you from your work now and then. Set aside a separate time of the day when you check all the emails at once. Do not dedicate more than 30 mins to each session. It is also essential to set your colleague’s, manager’s, and client’s customer accordingly, depending upon when and how you will respond to them.
2.2 Do it in the “low productivity” hours
Everyone hits a peak of their productivity at a specific time of the day. The time when you are most efficient could be early morning or late at night. Save your primary job or the most rewarding job for those high productivity hours. Things like checking emails and other notifications should be checked in the other hours.
2.3 Make them a task
If there are days when you think you have plenty of emails to respond to or if you will take more than an hour to respond to anyone’s email. Set aside a separate time to respond to email as an action program on your to-do list.
2.4 Delete the unnecessary mails
Do not keep the emails in your inbox forever. Doing so can cost you losing sight or missing an important email. It becomes tough to manage with time when you have all important and not-so-important messages together. Make it a point to go through all of your emails, delete the ones you do not need, and archive the ones important.
3. Make/update your to-do list
Digital distractions kill time like nothing else, and it is definitely not good for anyone. Between all the digital distractions of the internet, cell phones, and other technology, today’s businesses are taking a different shape. Projects are getting humongous and are changing at a much faster pace amidst the present competition. The pressure of workload associated with the success of the organization is larger than ever. Even the simple tasks today require a great deal of attention and multi-dimensional plans.
This is where the To-Do list comes to the rescue. The idea of breaking down mammoth tasks into smaller chunks that are easier to handle goes a long way. It relieves the stress as you can see your distant goals in small and achievable fragments. It also makes it simpler to verify the completion of each step. It also helps in tracking down the problems in each step. With time it helps in accomplishing large-scale projects and achieve remarkable results.
4. Practice Meditation
Meditation and its benefits are proven time and again as a means to release mental tension and improve general well-being. The mere practice of meditation can help you increase your energy, help you with emotional well-being, and help you with memory and focus.
The practice helps you to distance yourself from the feelings and thoughts that come up. By detaching yourself from your thoughts, you prevent them from growing into a potential problem. Try and make meditation a habit. Find a suitable quiet place, turn on some nerve-calming music and relax.
5. Align your resources
Resources are significant and necessary for the completion and execution of every plan. It can be time, man-force, or money, for that matter. It is always advised if you can anticipate the resources required before you dive in.
You should try and break big tasks into smaller parts and anticipate the resources required for completion. Consider people and other resources required to complete the project. Look out for ways you can get the required resources and take action accordingly.
6. Fix your priorities
Learning to give due weightage to each task ahead of you is a big step forward. Categorize the items as per the priority. Putting the high-priority task on top. This helps the person with some clarity in head and knowledge of what is to be done now instead of what can wait.
It is equally important to strike out the tasks which are completed. It gives you a sense of accomplishment and motivation to move further in your list. Also, it helps you keep away all the confusion. Another interesting hack is to divide your list into ranks with a set of letter or color codes.
7. Browsing
Reading the latest news article, checking scores of the sport you follow, and even online shopping can be tempting when working in an office. You should know all of these activities are frowned upon in any workplace. These things steal significant time out of your day and can be called a breach of workplace rules.
Shutting down WiFi or just the internet is not really much of an option since most of us work on cloud-based software and need the internet to function fully. Some site blocking software you can install not to access those particular websites when working.
You can also use approaches like the Pomodoro technique that can help you stay focused on your work. You may reward yourself with some browsing in between your highly focused work sessions.
8. Exercise
There are just so many benefits of doing exercise that every time you look up for it, there are chances you will find something new. It does keep you healthy and your body lean. It also helps you remove toxins and flushes your blood and lymph. Cardio exercises and aerobics help you keep your lungs and hearts all healthy. At the same time, the weight exercises keep your bones and muscles strong. You do not need to take membership in some fancy gym to get a personal trainer perse. You can do a great job with your body weight, little equipment, and a little space at home.
9. Go out and walk
Walking is one of the most natural movements of the human body, and it can be done anywhere. It is best if you step out a little. Being outside and breathing fresh air can rejuvenate our system. Also, walking in natural light can have various positive effects on the human body. By walking, you do not just take care of your body, but also you get a chance to clear your head. This is a great way of using your recess so that you can join back your work with a fresh outlook. If you start doing it on a regular basis, you sure will be able to see the difference.
10. Journal
There are just so many reasons and benefits of journaling that one can’t simply highlight all of it in one go. The best part is that great applications with wonderful UX design help you fetch the same benefits (if not more) out of it. The following are some benefits listed:
- It helps you visualize your goals and gain clarity of your real priorities
- Diary acts as a safe house of your ideas
- It helps better articulate your thoughts and streamline plans for future
- It lets you apprehend future obstacles and gives a clearer understanding of your drives and purpose
- A place where you can be honest and not fear any judgments
- Most important of all, it helps you organize your inner convoluted thoughts
The best thing about writing a journal is that you are writing it for no one but yourself. You don’t have to work to make it entertaining or less boring perse. You don’t even have to care about grammar. Just take 10 minutes out at the end of each day and scribble your thoughts, accomplishments, and ideas.