I’m waiting for daughter to come out of school…

Many times in life we find ourselves waiting. Waiting for a plane to come, or a train to go. Many times, as I’ve said before, we have no control over when we’re forced into the waiting state. Other times, however, it’s just random chance that we arrived early for something (or someone else arrived late).

Don’t lose this precious time!! Never ever let yourself get caught
off guard and suddenly bored. Here are some ideas on avoiding boredom and getting more out of these otherwise wasted moments in life.

Always Have Reading Material With You

Now I’m waiting a few minutes for the BBQ briquettes to coal-up. They’re close enough now that there isn’t enough time to do anything else so I might as well write more.

The important rule of never being bored is: always have something to read with you. I, personally, carry electronic books on my cell-phone. For example, I always wanted to read the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and one day I finally put it on my phone. I was sure that reading a book on my phone would be miserable on account of the small screen size. But A few months later I had read the first book in 5 minute increments here and there and had spent an entire few months never waiting randomly without something to read. I’ve been addicted to E-Books ever since. Mostly I’ve been reading free ones. The ones past the Disney imposed extended copyright date, as can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg, and other sources. Want to read the works of Shakespeare? Gutenberg has them all. My kids have heard Dr. Doolittle only because I happened to have it on a phone when we were somewhere without a source of a night time story.

What’s that? Your phone can’t read documents? So!!! Print them out. Keep one page in your pocket (or better keep 2 so you can cycle to the next when you only have a a paragraph to go). One or two pages, next to your keys or wallet, is not too much of a load. I travel a fair amount for work and always have something work-related printed out so I can walk down the jet-way to the plane reading instead of just waiting in line.

Coals are ready. Gotta go…

Or Be Productive

Now I’m waiting for my beautiful wife…

(Not that reading isn’t to be considered productive)

Another anti-boredom maneuver is to bring something with you that allows you to be productive. My Palm Treo, which has a full keyboard, is letting me type this up, for example. But even without it, carrying a small pen and piece of paper or notebook around on which I could design my next garden, antenna or starship (Sorry. Couldn’t resist. We just got out of Star Trek).

She’s back; Off to Costco

Wow, this Costco line is actually short!

Yes, by the way, typing on a small keyboard on a a phone with only my thumbs is less than ideal and hardly efficient. But it’s either that
or twiddle them.

I’m now waiting for my daughter to come out of school again. Talk
about a place where I’m always early and need to have something
planned to occupy my time!

I’m at home sitting on the couch waiting for my son to bring me a
book. My phone was sitting close than anything else I might grab…

Puzzle Lovers Are Always Prepared

True die-hard puzzle lovers have always carried around a crossword,
word search or, more recently, Sudoku Puzzles. In fact, if you fly at all these days I assure you someone on the plane with you will be staring at a Sudoku Puzzle book for the entire flight. I’m sure you can find websites that will generate random puzzles of many types for you to print out.

It really doesn’t matter what your interest or hobby is. Just figure out how to make it (or more likely a portion of it) portable. The trick is dividing any favorite (or not) task or hobby into small enough pieces that at least one piece is transportable.

Good luck! If you don’t know where to start, try bringing a piece of paper to brain storm with you the next time you leave the house.

Time wasted writing this: -25 minutes. Because it was time gained and not lost.

Bonus points if you can spot the Dr. Suess Reference