Value Of Unplanned Time
HETAL SONPAL
TEDx Speaker, IRONMAN, LISTENER, PhD Scholar, COACH, Sales & Strategy Leader, Author,
You get the drift. What do you do in the ‘unplanned time’ you get by sheer chance? Too short to plan something big, but long enough to do something significant.
Successful people have a ‘plan B’ for such moments. They will clear pending tasks or respond to some emails, make a few calls, or will simply close their eyes and meditate.
But more often than not, most of us, including this author, get involved in unproductive tasks, like browsing social media. Or some use it for a ‘fag break’.?
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Our lives are full of ‘planned time’ – 2 years in kindergarten, 12 years in school, 4 years in college, and then lifelong work in our ‘career’, we rarely set aside time for ‘nothing’. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, among many other execs, are famous for keeping ‘blank spaces’ in their calendar, which are ‘thinking time, and no one is allowed to book any meetings.
When you make ‘unplanned time’ a part of your routine, you are not caught off guard when you ‘encounter’ unplanned time. You in fact welcome it.
However meticulous we are at planning, we cannot plan for everything. We cannot always be sure if things will go as per plan. There are always going to be some last-minute glitches, which will lead to some unproductive time. To be aware, conscious, and most importantly prepared for such situations is a really ‘smart’ thing to do. We keep complaining that we do not have time, we are busy in back-to-back meetings, etc, but when we really have the time, we are taken aback and do not make the most of it. Many people swear by wanting to take vacations where they will ‘do nothing and then get tired of ‘doing nothing' as they are so not used to such a state. Then they cook of agenda to avoid ‘doing nothing’ and escape the state of ‘nothingness’. So be smart, do what smart people do, and be prepared for making the most of these ‘unplanned’ times, and get successful!!.