Ways to stay productive

Originally published October 9, 2019

No matter what job you have, you more than likely have busier days than others, or at least busier moments than others.  I certainly fall into that category.  Sometimes I have a lot on my plate, sometimes I don't.  Sometimes I get a lot of phone calls, and sometimes I get hardly any.  Busy days just seem to fly by, because we aren't checking the time as much wishing it would go faster and our work days would be over sooner.  Slow days just drag on, and I have learned that you just make it seem like it goes faster by staying productive and busy.  

The goal you should be focusing on when you're slow and have little or nothing to do is trying to find something to do that can help the company you work for to some extent.  Whether it helps yourself be a quicker or better worker or it helps others, so long as it helps someone or the company as a whole, it's worth doing.  Updating various things around the office helps.  Even little chores like cleaning around your workplace or a shared work area or a break room can be beneficial, because it saves time so someone else won't have to do it later.

I know what you might be thinking.  I am currently working, yet here I am writing this.  This, to me, is productive because I am organizing my thoughts and I try to offer life lessons or helpful advice with these posts.  I think it also benefits me because it helps me become a better writer and perhaps be a bit more articulate, and it helps increase my typing speed.  My typing speed before I really got into writing and blogging was around 55-60 words per minute.  After a few years of writing and blogging, I am now at 75-80 words per minute.  

I don't spend all my time doing these posts when it's slow.  I clean up in the kitchen and bathroom when it needs it.  I update any document I need to when there is a change to be made.  I have gone through a lot of the features of word and excel so I become more knowledgeable with those programs in the future and become a larger asset to the company.  I have familiarized myself with our phone system by not only exploring its features but by reading the manual for it.  It also helps to be available at a moment's notice, in case anyone needs help with something for any reason.  

Being productive for me isn't hard.  Or at least it's not a hard choice to make to be productive, because I feel guilty if I am not productive.  I don't know how people can slack off on jobs where they work next to really hard-working people, yet I have seen it happen (at my past job).  I could never do that.  My parents raised me too well to be content with slacking off.  I can't just sit and do nothing, mainly because that's boring.  Throughout my life I have become very good at finding stuff to do to occupy time and to try to be somewhat productive.  The more experience you have doing it, the better you are ​at​ doing it.  For me, it helps to either make a mental list or an actual list on a piece of scratch paper of things I could do when it's slow.  Whenever something occurs to me while I am working, I jot it down.  

The bottom line is that being productive is a win-win situation.  It helps out the company you work for, and it helps time go by faster so your work day is done quicker.  Again, I don't know why anyone would chose to not be productive, unless they completely despise the work they do.  Fortunately for me, there's not a whole lot I despise doing, but more than that I just like the feeling of being productive and doing a good job.  It sure beats the alternative.