This is an I-Heart podcast.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the new corner office, the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the new world of work,

where location and hours are more flexible

than in the past. Today's tip is to use those waiting minutes. Little bits of time during the

day can be wasted, but they can also be used, and doing so can buy you more time in the future.

In a perfect world, everyone would dial into calls or video meetings at the exact same time.

There would never be miscommunications about meeting logistics.

Everyone would be prompt.

In the real world, you're often sitting by yourself on Zoom at one o'clock

waiting for someone who doesn't log on until 106, or sometimes 110, or something even worse than that.

If you are usually the punctual one, and I suspect this is the case for a great many of my podcast

listeners, this can be frustrating.

But while these waiting minutes are easy to waste, they don't have to be wasted.

Having a go-to activity for waiting minutes can open up various possibilities for your time.

For instance, I use waiting minutes to think up ideas for future episodes of this podcast and others.

Sometimes I use them to fill in my time log. I can do logical things for my blog like upload pictures or format things.

One obvious idea is to check email and no doubt a lot of waiting time is spent deleting

emails. But since email expands to fill the available space, I don't think this is actually the best

use of time. You won't gain time by deleting those newsletters that you can't remember subscribing to,

but you will gain time by doing small tasks that will otherwise clog up your schedule

and make you feel like you have a lot on your plate, even if you don't.

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