No matter what industry you are in or even if you’re between jobs right now it is always important to make sure you are getting the most out of your day.
If you are a contractor or working on a remodeling job there are always going to be down times. But its what you do with that down time that makes the difference between having a good day today and having garbage pile up on you later resulting in a really bad day.
Whenever you are awake you should be doing something related to making your life better. Even if you’re just sitting there watching TV after work theres nothing stopping you from dusting the room or organizing your stuff while you catch the latest episode of NCSI.
Just for that example you have an hour that you would be spending in your living room or bedroom watching tv and giving it your full attention like it really deserves your full attention. And right next to you or on a desk in another room is a pile of papers… maybe they’re bills or invoices or just stuff you are saving. What if you grabbed them and started sorting them.. or what if you went through the weekly circulars and looked for some discounts at the supermarket.
Doing that would not really take away from your enjoyment of your show…
Or what if you boiled up a box of rotini and then threw it in a casserole dish with a pint of ricotta cheese and a quart of diced canned tomatoes and a half a bag of mixed vegetables or some chopped sausage and threw it in the oven while you watched TV. You would have dinner for tomorrow or maybe the rest of the week. And most of the time you’re not cooking your waiting for stuff to cook so you have plenty of time to watch TV.
And what if you grabbed the clothes out of the hamper tossed them in the washer before you started cooking that casserole and only had to check on them once every half hour.
So in that one hour instead of just sitting there doing nothing….
You freed up two more hours for washing clothes and making dinner the rest of the week.
A lot of us do this naturally but often even if you are the type person that throws a load of wash in the washer before dinner and then takes it out after dinner there are other times when you just don’t think about multitasking.
What if you’re on the job and have a half hour or hour for lunch. If you normally pickup lunch or bring it and eat it in your car you can clean your car out while you eat. You can go through the trunk and do things like check your oil or air pressure in your tires .. it only takes a moment.
If you’re a contractor on the job you can hose down your truck and make it look presentable.. dump all that fast food garbage in the trash. Sort your tools or how about cleaning them up and making sure everything is accounted for.
You don’t have to take care of everything the first day but you need to remember that these down times even if they aren’t you sitting on your butt waiting for a delivery of lumber are times when you can offset hours of your life in the future.
If you’re sitting there and you see theres something in front of you that needs doing.. then get up and do it. There will be time to sleep at night. This is not to say you shouldn’t take a rest but what do runners do when they finish a race.. they don’t fall on the ground and lay there .. they keep on walking.. and thats what we all need to do.. keep on going .. as long as its reasonable.
Anything you can do right now is something you won’t have to do later in the day.
Anything you can do today is something you won’t have to do tomorrow.
Anything you can do… is better than doing nothing.
So if you have downtime right now because its winter.. this is the time when you need to think about reorganizing your shop, fixing your tools, looking for better contracts that can save or make you money.. reorganizing the way you keep your inventory and paperwork sorted..
Or just making dinner and washing a load of clothes while you watch TV.
Every little bit adds up to making your life better.