What To Do With 15 Minutes

I have often found that when I plan out my day, as well intentioned as I am, I find times where there are gaps of focused productivity…

Let’s set the scenario… It looks a little like this:

• You have your goals for the day listed.
• You’ve mapped out how you plan on spending the “x” amount of hours you have available in your day to focus on your big goals and the bigger picture of what you define as success in your own life…
• You’re motivated and focused!!
• Then, you find you have 15 free minutes between calls. Or you finished a project early and have 15 free minutes. You’re waiting for your kids at the bus stop for 10 minutes. Or perhaps you have an hour to kill while your daughter is at dance class

What do you do with this cool found time besides get sucked into Facebook or your favorite retail websites??

Or you say to yourself “I don’t have time to do this big thing over here so I won’t even start”. And then you’ll flitter that time away when in reality, you could move your big goals forward…

I would find myself not using that time to my advantage so what I did, is create a list of things I can easily do in say 15 minutes… It’s kind of like a cool trick to chunking things down into mini actions!! But as these mini actions add up… big things happened to your goals as they get closer and closer…

In my office I made a large list of mini post its… each one has a time frame and a select “task”. Then when I find I have 10 or 15 minutes that I chose to use productively, I already know what I can do in that moment …

Here’s a list of cool Mini Actions you can use when you find yourself with a spare 15…

I’m even going to break the list down into different categories for you…

For just you:

• Get up and walk around outside for fresh air. The fresh air will reboot your ability to be creative!
• Relax. Sip a cup of tea quietly and reflect on all you have done so far! Being in a positive place inadvertently provides us with better outcomes
• Meditate
• Dance to your favorite 3 or 4 songs
• Send a quick message to a friend and schedule lunch

For your biz:

• Clean out your email box if you don’t maintain it regularly
• Organize your computer files
• Brain dump a few blog topics
• Follow up with a prospect
• Write 3 thank you cards
• Make 2 connections for people in your network
• Register for 2 upcoming networking events

For your home life:

• Clean out the kitchen junk drawer
• Make your bed
• Unload the dishwasher
• Fold a load of laundry
• Fill out those pesky school forms you’ve been avoiding

Of course there are hundreds of things you can do in fifteen minutes when you really think about it… This article is just to get your mental juices flowing…

How could you use a mini action in your biz or life to move closer to your destination…?