The blog

If you are an ​”eager beaver” such as myself, then you do not like being kept wait­ing. Do not get me wrong. I also enjoy ​”doing noth­ing”, which is some­thing you do any­way, such as walk­ing, reflect­ing, con­tem­plat­ing and eat­ing ice-cream on a bench in the park.

So I do not feel the need of get­ting things done all the time, but being kept invol­un­tar­i­ly wait­ing when I would like to fin­ish some­thing is not my thing.

Slow­er than molasses
When the com­put­er is start­ing slow­er than we had expect­ed, when the doc­u­ment is tak­ing for­ev­er to print, when the line to the post office is sev­er­al meters long and when the col­league is work­ing at a slow­er pace than we would want them to, it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case that we can not do some­thing else. Rather, we sim­ply can­not do what we had in mind.

Some­thing which you nev­er have time for
If we want and choose to, there is always some­thing we can do. If we are at the office, there are sure­ly things on our to-do-list which are marked with the con­text ”@office” and which we might not be depen­dent on hav­ing our com­put­er to per­form. It could for instance be sift­ing through that old pile in the book­shelf while wait­ing for the com­put­er to start. As long as we have our smart­phone when on the move, we can take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to check a few things @internet when stand­ing in line for some­thing. Since we ​”always have our mind with us”, we can take out a piece of paper and out­line the agen­da for next week’s meet­ing even if the ​”Fas­ten seat belt”-sign is lit and no elec­tron­ic devices may be switched on.

But why?
If we still get some­thing done when we do not just want to be kept wait­ing, then being put on hold in some way will not be so bad after all. Besides, we then man­age to do more of the things we have to do. It’s as sim­ple as that!

Do this

1. If you want to, decide to write down all the times you were kept wait­ing today on a note as soon as you notice that you are being held in sus­pen­sion some­how. Make it as easy as pos­si­ble. It is enough to have a Pos­tIt-note on your desk or in your pock­et through­out the day.


2. When you real­ize that you wait­ing for some­thing, write down what you are wait­ing for and where you are.


3. Try think­ing of some­thing you can do while wait­ing. Write this down as well.


4. At the end of the day, cre­ate a cheat-sheet list­ing the sit­u­a­tions you were kept wait­ing in and what you could do in each and every one of these when they occur next time.


5. Save the cheat-sheet where you keep your check­lists, rou­tine-descrip­tions, tem­plates and oth­er struc­tur­al guides which help your through­out your workday.


6. When you find your­self wait­ing and feel the frus­tra­tion ris­ing, take out the cheat-sheet and get a tip from your­self on what you can do instead of suf­fer­ing from your circumstances.

Dis­card the discontentment
If you map out the (prob­a­bly) recur­ring sit­u­a­tions when you will be kept wait­ing or be put on hold through­out your work­day, it will be eas­i­er to think of what you can do while your are wait­ing. You will get more done and feel less dis­con­tent­ment and annoy­ance. And no, you do not have to work every sin­gle minute of the day, but when you do want to work, there will now be some­thing avail­able for you to do.

What is your way?
How do you avoid waist­ing time while wait­ing? Tell me!