5 Tips To Dominate The Art Of Waiting

How long time have you been waiting in your life?

Sometimes, we try to find out what percentage of our lives we spend working, eating, sleeping, and doing other stuff. Normally, you find out that what you really spend time on is not exactly what you think. Have you ever tried to figure out how many hours you have been waiting in your life? It can be everything from a 10-minute wait for a friend who got stuck in the traffic to hours and sometimes days for a delayed flight.

According to the British website Mirror, only waiting for trains, we are spending an average of 653 hours during an average lifetime, which, by the way, is peanuts compared to the 3,276 hours a woman needs applying make-up and dressing up for a night out.

Waiting time or unexpected events will always occur, and when they occur, they will always occur unexpectedly. Or are there events of “unexpected time” we can expect? Interesting question. Think about it! Cultivate your art of waiting.

Time management is an important part of our lives, regardless of what we’re doing. In fact, managing time properly can help you get more work done and feel more accomplished about your work in general. If you don’t know how to begin or you just feel overwhelmed, keep reading for some fun and insightful tips below.

Some days ago I had to search for a doctor for an infection I had got in one of my ears. Being a healthy person who very seldom has to call a doctor, this
was quite an unusual event for me.

In art of waiting – time flies

Due to good health, my personal network of doctors is below average, I would say, but with some work, a doctor was found, and he had a spot free for me in his time schedule the same afternoon.

The appointment was at 5 pm and as an organized person I always try to be, and also remembering how I feel when people don’t show up at appointments with me, I presented myself at the doctor’s office 10 minutes before the scheduled time.

When I announced myself to the secretary, I immediately got the feeling that this was not going to be on time.

At 5:30 p.m., half an hour after my scheduled appointment, the doctor entered the office. Another 15 minutes later, I finally confronted the doctor to reveal my problem and get a medical solution.

Instead of analyzing how most people spend their waiting time, let´s focus on how to use time that suddenly appears as “new” time efficiently.

In my blog post on May 14th this year, we discussed time as a function of the past, present, and future. Think about it, and realize that you can only act in your presence.

Art of Waiting and How to Use Unexpected Time

Most people, including myself, sometimes get upset, and their frustration is more focused on how to blame the late person and, in some cases, even plan for revenge.

You can always start by discussing that people arriving late to appointments show a lack of respect and education, and you will probably find another 5 to 10 arguments. Good, now you have fed yourself with the necessary anger hormones, but what did you gain? Absolutely nothing!

Tip No.1

Control your frustration

Whatever we do in life, in art of waiting you will always depend on other people and their way of behaving.

Unexpected things happen all the time in your life, and the point here is to not be paralyzed when that happens. This occurs quite often to perfectionists. Their day, their plan and their schedule are so perfect that any kind of interference will literally spoil the day. So, the second tip or advice to handle unexpected times will be:

Tip No.2

Change perfectionism to flexibility

Calendars are great tools for smart time management. Some prefer physical calendars that they can make notes on, while others like to use electronic calendars offered by computers or smartphones. Whatever your chosen method, make sure to add all your to-do items and appointments to your daily calendar so you can stay organized!

The third tip and advice is more of a general efficiency nature, but will help a lot when unexpected times appear:

Tip No.3

Work actively with an agenda

Whatever new situation you have to face during the day, there will always be tasks in your agenda that you can execute. Use your imagination and flexibility and for sure you will find work to do while waiting for somebody.

How To Prepare For Unexpected Time-Space

With some experience, we will start to learn the pattern of each person’s behavior in our contact circles and adapt our own activities accordingly. This doesn’t mean that you will not do your best to achieve a change in the particular person’s behavior. Your “educational mission” will continue restlessly until you reach the goal. However, that you are not sticking to a decided time schedule is still an unacceptable way to behave.

Instead of taking up a magazine searching for a crossword or similar stuff to kill the time that suddenly appeared, you can prepare yourself for such unexpected events.

In some way or another, we all blame that we do not have enough time to do what we would like to do, but you can start to do totally unproductive things when “dead” time appears.

Look into software programs focusing on time management. Once set up, it will be quick and easy to plan how your time is spent. This software is meant to help, and it will prove to be quite effective in managing your time each day.

In today’s digital world, you can literally bring your entire office with you on your laptop, iPad, or Smartphone. You can easily connect all devices to each other; there are absolutely no excuses for not being ready for an improvised working session while waiting for somebody.

Tip No. 4:

No excuses not to stick to the agenda

If no special project pops up in your mind, you can always start answering pending emails, to just take one example. Personally, I have always had tons of books, recorded webinars, podcasts, and similar pending materials, and waiting time is a perfect moment to tick off some of these pending texts or videos.

Last but not the least,

Tip No.5

Build time in your day for unforeseen interruptions

It’s time to own the fact that you can’t control what happens every minute. Things happen whether you want them to or not. So add in buffer time into your schedule to handle these moments. That way, at the end of the day, you’ll still feel accomplished!

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