Often times in life you end up with a project, job, or role that affords you with a good deal of down time where you just don’t have anything to do. Some people enjoy the time to relax, others find it extremely boring. Many hours are spent on Facebook, playing solitaire, minesweeper, or some other time waster. These are great tools for taking a short break but if you have more than 30 minutes available, please avoid these black holes.
What I can say is this down time is a great opportunity for growth. You are at work with nothing work related to complete, you can’t leave, so what now. My recommendation is that you pick a subject or project and get started. During my first project at my current company I had about 4 weeks where our client did not provide me with a laptop. I helped where I could on paperwork but there really wasn’t more than an hour or so of work to complete a day. I decided to spend the rest of my time learning Java and SQL. The group I was a part of did a lot of work in these languages so I thought it would be valuable to learn to program in these languages. I bought a book, downloaded some free software and started writing a Suduku puzzle solver. The project was a blast and it taught me the basics of database applications, knowledge I have used countless times in my career.
Take the time afforded and look at it as a gift. You know have the opportunity to start working on the project or goal you’ve always wanted to achieve. Of course you could spend the time on Facebook, but tell me how many uber successful people you know that spend all their time looking at their friend’s pictures. Be creative, use the time to learn or create. It is much more intrinsically rewarding.
