I constantly find myself with small windows of free time between larger chunks of activity and I’m struggling with how to use them effectively. As I write this I’ve got about 30 minutes before I have to leave for the evening. Within these pockets of unallocated time I often find myself scrolling through social media or “doom scrolling” — just completely aimless, space out activity. I scroll, I don’t remember what I’ve seen, I’m just looking, kind of vegging out.
The other thing I often do during these times is pace around aimlessly, like I’m trying to find something to do but can’t commit to anything.
Why are these times difficult? I think it’s because I have a notion that “I don’t want to start engaging with something and then get interrupted”. I think that if I get into a task for a brief period then by the time I really get going, I’ll have to quit. So what’s the point of starting?
Perhaps I even have a checklist of smaller work-related things to attend to. I could spend 30 minutes cleaning up a document or reviewing some code, but I just walk away because I can’t get past the resistance to start. I could start but what if it ends up taking longer than I think and I have to put it aside? When I can’t choose an area of focus, my mind pretends like it’s sleepy. I’m in one of these aimless time windows now and despite a nap this afternoon plus an energy drink a couple hours ago, my eyelids are getting heavy as I write this – which is ridiculous because I’m not actually tired.
Having caught myself in this state, I was sufficiently chagrined that I hadn’t written anything today and thus I’m writing this blog post. Indeed these short empty windows of time are ideal for dashing off a quick draft or making some notes that could later lead to a blog post. In this moment I’m having to push aside the resistance that I’ve described above — that I don’t want to engage because by the time I have to stop, I’ll just be getting into the activity.
As a counterpoint to my resistance, I documented in my journal earlier this week an instance where I blasted out about 1000 words in 30 minutes. That is a sizeable piece of prose and a productive outcome from what would otherwise have been a blank interval of time.
In this case I’ve been writing for 8 minutes and I’m just under 500 words. A few more minutes spent on editing and I’m about to publish this to my blog! I aspire to write more and have demonstrated that I can rapidly produce a draft on a topic of interest. I need to build the reflex to use these free 15-30 minute blocks productively, either by writing or reading material I’m trying to conceptually integrate. Just 15 minutes a day over the course of a week is 105 minutes of hopefully productive engagement which otherwise would have been wasted.
