You wake up with an unexpected coffee break because your scheduled event has been canceled.
You have some free time at your disposal and you should make the best of it.
Scrolling down on your Facebook wall or playing Candy Crush won’t help you achieve your goals.
There are better ways to take advantage of short coffee breaks and make the rest of your day more efficient.
Here are a few ideas to spend your time in a better way:
1. Relax
Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Listen to the humming of birds and the sound of flowing water.
Green trees and blue sky calms the mind and stimulate human well-being and relaxation.
Relaxation should be part of your daily ritual because your health must come first.
If you live in a big crowded city and cannot reach a green place to enjoy nature, let me give you a tip which can get you relaxed even in a loud place.
Close your eyes and follow your breath. Take deep breaths and follow them repeatedly.
It’s all about focus. Your attention wavers less and you’re not as easily affected by external distractions.
A relaxed mind is a productive mind.
2. Listen to podcasts
While sipping your coffee, listen to a podcast.
Listening to podcasts is a great way to stay in touch with the latest news in programming. There are tons of good podcasts that are not talking only focused on software development, but also about personal development, time management, and other tips and tricks which can be applied to your daily life.
Two such podcasts are Developer Tea and Simple Programmer.
They are extremely useful to junior programmers because they provide valuable information about the life of a programmer and the techniques and methods that are used daily to do your job properly.
Furthermore, they also have guests who talk about their experience in the industry.
3. Get Organized
The coffee break is the perfect time to go over any to-do lists and write out anything that still needs to be accomplished by the end of the day.
If you have a bug that still needs to be fixed, create a new task so you can have track of your work.
Prioritize your tasks according to their importance and deadlines.
Set daily goals for tomorrow. Setting goals leads to success, which is always a good thing.
A task management app can help you create tasks and keep track of them. I’m using Wunderlist to get my stuff done.
Wunderlist is a simple to-do list task manager app that helps you to manage multiple work projects and share them with your partners.
It is available on both desktops and mobile devices and it’s free.
4. Read a Book
It is good to have a book within reach that you can read not only during a coffee break but also on the train, waiting up in a queue, or crossing the Atlantic by plane.
With a single Google search, you can find plenty of good free digital books on various subjects.
If you are fresh out of ideas for books you can read, I suggest checking out John Sonmez’s Soft Skills book.
5. Learn Using Mobile Apps
Almost everyone living in a civilized country owns a smartphone.
Why not you use it to learn new things during your coffee break?
If you are bored of searching for learning resources on various sites, I tell you that there is another way of learning using your smartphone.
Use mobile apps that are built solely for teaching you various things, like programming.
It’s good to note that these apps most of the time teach you the only basics of programming because, of course, the app is limited by the device’s properties.
Two applications that I recommend are Lrn and Code School.
These apps are great for beginners and for those who want to learn more programming languages.
If you choose to learn by using your mobile device’s apps, I suggest you turn off all notifications on your smartphone so you won’t get distracted by them.
6. Reach out to friends and colleagues
We all have a list of friends we keep forgetting to call.
Your coffee break is the perfect time to contact your friends, ex-colleagues, family, and even business partners.
They will feel appreciated and will be grateful that you called them during the little free time you have.
This is a good opportunity to strengthen friendships and maybe establish new business relationships too.
Reaching out will make you feel recharged and you will be more effective and productive for the rest of the day.
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