Track downtime at work

So a lot of jobs involve accomplishing certain tasks, but others are about being responsive to what is going on. Maybe respond to tech needs as they come up, or security calls, or you are greeting visitors at a front desk. Someone needs to be there. A receptionist can't exactly say, hey, I have greeted people so well for the first six hours of my shift that I can leave early. The job is to be there in case someone shows up.

If you have had a job like that, or you are in one now, you know that some days can be frenzied. The service calls are coming left and right. Other days, however, might be a bit slow. When I was in college, I sometimes worked overnight shifts at the campus student center, if someone needed something or if there was a security concern, I had to triage that, but a lot of the time I was just hanging out

and occasionally making rounds. I am kind of embarrassed to report how much of that time I spent surfing the early version of the web. I remember reading a lot of forum posts and refreshing to see if maybe someone in some other time zone had posted anything new. It's kind of sad, but it is understandable because the problem, of course, is that this work downtime is really hard to use well. On any given day, you might have no time, or you might have a lot of time.

Downtime might come in two minute chunks, or you might get an hour, so it is hard to plan what to do, hence the scrolling. But it is not impossible to use this time well, and a key part of using this downtime effectively is knowing as much about its contours as you can, so try tracking it. It might help to use some sort of time tracking app because we're going to get very granular here for a few days.

Whenever your downtime starts, you hit start, and then when you get a request or need to deal with something, you hit stop, you will see how much downtime you have. For instance, it would be good to know that in an eight hour shift, it is highly likely that you will have two and a half to three hours that aren't spoken for. Seeing that chunk of time might motivate you to think about what might be possible, whether that's working on new projects for your employer, or if it's

an option where you work doing something like reading. You'll also get some sense of the rhythms. For instance, maybe the first four hours of your shift tend to feature a lot of things you need to deal with, but then the second four hours tends to be a lot lighter. Or maybe you'll see that most of your time confetti comes in five to ten minutes spurts, so you can start to think of what will fit in that time.

It is highly unlikely that you'll get an hour, at least not in this job, so you don't need to worry yourself about that. Instead, you can make a list of five to ten minute things that you could do. In any case, people tend to feel more satisfied when they are not spending a ton of time scrolling around online. Yes, you may be getting paid for this time, so there's that,

but that doesn't mean you want to waste it. As long as you respond quickly to requests, there's nothing better about scrolling than say, reading a book and working on a certification for a future job might be even better. Knowing how much time you have to work with can help you see if the latter might be possible. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening

to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, is or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.