Do you ever have 15 minutes to spare?  We all have small slices of time while we’re waiting in line, in between meetings, or waiting in traffic.  If so, what do you do with those minutes?  Efficient experts have suggestions, especially the last one

A.  Capture planning items.  May Wang, productivity expert & coach, suggests immediately recording action items and deadlines that emerged from a prior meeting.  Your electronic device will remember must better than you.

B.  Focus on tasks.  Separate your to-do list into tasks and projects.  Kathy Lee, productivity expert & owner of DoubleSpaces LLC, contends that a task is an action that takes 5 to 10 minutes.  Examples:

> Make an appointment with your doctor, dentist, vet, etc.

> Unsubscribe from junk snail mail using an app like PaperKarma.

> Read an article from a website or social media in Pocket.

C.  Use action verbs.  Maura Thomas, productivity expert & founder of Regain Your Time, suggests starting every item on your to-do list with an action verb.  Avoid vaguely written items such as budget, birthday card, or check to school.  Instead:

> Enter totals into spreadsheet.

> GOOGLE Jane’s USPS address for her birthday card.

> Pay college tuition via online payment system.

The words Enter, GOOGLE, and Pay are all action verbs.  Others are shown throughout this Update.  Each becomes an action statement when begun with the assumed You.

D. Daydream.  Marie Levey-Pabst, founder of Create Balance, suggests wandering in your mind.  Taking time to remember what you are grateful for will boost your mood, outlook, and focus.  Wang contends that Being productive is a function of being focused and working with the state of peace of mind.  It is not about always doing, doing, doing.  Thomas agrees, Your mind needs time to consolidate and generate insights, and these are not things we can command our brains to do.

The lesson plan on Managing Time has been augmented with these insights.