What do you do when you have 15 minutes of extra time in your day?
Maybe a meeting ended early or you finished up a conversation 15 minutes before your next appointment. The bottom line is you have 15 minutes of free time that you need to capitalize on. So how do you do that?
- Do you start searching through your inbox looking for something to do?
- Do you sit and twiddle your thumbs or make small talk at the cooler?
- Or do you really want to capitalize on that extra 15 minutes of time?
If you’re a busy person at work and find yourself bouncing from meeting to meeting to phone call sometimes not even having time for lunch, those 15 minutes could be very important to you. So here’s a great way to capitalize on them using your inbox.
As you sort through your e-mail each morning, make a special flag or label called “15min” and designate all of the messages that you think you could complete in under 15 minutes with that flag or label as well as any other account or project references. Don’t take care of these first thing in the morning if they’re not extremely urgent.
Now, when you have those extra 15 minutes of time, go to your label or flag folder for “15min” and get a few things done! Before you know it, those 15 minutes of “what should I do?” will quickly turn into some of your most effective and efficient pockets of time throughout the day.