How often do you find yourself having dropped the kids off to a weekly activity to make the decision to dash back home or to the office, or to sit it out in the car, or pool side, or football / rugby / hockey side and do something constructive with your time?  For most parents and guardians, they feel they are on full taxi mode come 5 pm!

Something we don’t always consider is that these hanging about times whether 30 or 60 or 90 minutes are precious moments of time, that can often be our most productive.

And here’s why:

  • Limited time – once your little (or not so little) ones have been safely delivered, the countdown begins for their imminent return. This limited time encourages you to focus your activities around what little time you have.  The Pomodoro Technique is a reminder that bitesize activity from 25-35 minutes, with a 5 -10 minute break, is an optimum work regime.
  • Change of scenery – sitting in a new environment removes the usual distractions that our office or workspace tempts us with.  A change of vista gives us new visual and audio stimuli that can open up our creativity, or simply support us to zone in rather than out.
  • Small wins – knowing we have limited time, we tend to look for something that can be realistically completed in the time we have.  Sometimes it offers us a time-window to start something that we’ve been putting off, or finishing a task we’ve been mulling over.  Small wins are the keystone to motivating us to carry on, giving us that sense of achievement and that dopamine hit along the way.
  • Me time – we don’t always have to be investing these pockets of time on work activities, in fact, many of us see this as a perfect time to do nothing at all!  A perfect opportunity to chat with other ‘taxi-drivers’, to indulge in a personal hobby, or even have a power nap, all in order to recharge our batteries.
  • Put it aside – most of us rush from one meeting to another, or from project to project, investing little time to pause and reflect.  When we pose ourselves a question, or have a problem to solve, it’s often the 3Bs of ‘bed, bath and bog’ that generate the insights, as we step away from the situation and let our unconscious brain works on finding the solution in the background.

So as the clock ticks towards 5 o’clock today, instead of grabbing your laptop take a moment to pause and ask yourself:

  • ‘what do I need?’
  • ‘what do I yearn for?’
  • and ‘what would help me?

I’d love to hear what reflective question you’d ask – get in touch and share your thoughts.