How to Wait in Line More Efficiently and Effectively

Waiting times can be frustrating for sure, but with a proper plan, you can turn them from time-wasting activity to a highly beneficial one. All you have to do is to be a bit prepared in advance and quite soon waiting times become your friend!

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How to Wait in Line More Efficiently and

Effectively: The Q2 Style

Let’s think of these common places:

A bank

A dentist

A tax office

A grocery store

A post office

An airport

Now, let me ask you: what is the very common thing that you may have to do in all of these

places?

Yes, you are right: waiting

Unfortunately, this what you have probably done a lot in the past and in fact, waiting your turn makes you bored and even annoyed You feel even more emotional about the waiting, if you have

a busy day going on: you really should be doing more important things than just waiting for

something Time should be better spent than by wasting it by waiting

You can’t always avoid it

We all face the waiting times, that’s for sure But eventually what makes you feel emotional about

it is caused by the lack of preparation and planning

First of all, you run into the waiting situation without giving it any thought in advance For instance, you decide that now it’s time to go to the grocery store, even if it’s rush hour and most of the other people are doing their shopping there too

Then, without any preparation and proper plan, you can’t take advantage of your waiting times This emphasizes even more of the feeling of wasted time and ineffectiveness With these two factors, waiting times feel plain useless, even though you could effectively take advantage of it

What causes us to wait?

When it comes to waiting, there are two components of the issue:

a) Them: The instance where you have to wait is not fully effective in its actions

b) You: You enter into the waiting situation without any plans or with wrong attitudes

For instance, in the first scenario, you might have to wait at the post office for your turn This could be caused by a lack of personnel who are handling the customers at the post office The queues can be also caused by inefficient processes that the instance is currently using and this is causing unnecessary queues to build up

In the second scenario, you make the waiting times a worse experience than what they have to be

In the case of the tax office, the negative feelings are accumulated as long as you have to just sit (or stand) and wait for your turn Without any plan, your waiting time feels like an eternity and it makes you mad that you are losing valuable time like this

The Q2 thing I was talking about

In the title of this post, I was talking about the waiting in the Q2 style You may be wondering what

I was talking about

Well, the Q2 refers to Quadrant 2 and it’s part of the four quadrants that the late Stephen Covey

introduced to the public (the four quadrants was originally created by former US president Dwight

D Eisenhower)

Covey divided time into four quadrants with the following criteria:

Q1: Urgent – Important

Q2: Not urgent – Important

Q3: Not important – Urgent

Q4: Not important – Not urgent

Out the four quadrants, it’s the Q2 that’s

the most important one The original

definition defines the Q2 the following

way:

Prevention, PC (production

capability) activities

Relationship building

Recognizing new opportunities

Planning, recreation

As Stephen Covey defined, one of the Q4

activities is time wasters and waiting in

the queue is definitely one of them

With a little planning, you can take the useless Q4 activity and change it to a beneficial Q2 one and make the most of the waiting time for your personal advantage

In specific, I’m talking about the following things:

Studying (reading, listening, watching)

Jotting down ideas

Writing

Learning new things is an investment to your business and to your personal life And if you ever wondered when you are going to start reading that interesting book that has been sitting on your desk for ages, then this is the opportunity you have been waiting for

Also, waiting times can cause your creativity to spark When this occurs, be ready to jot down those great ideas for blog posts or other things you’d like to do in the future Writing is also a fine way to spend time while waiting For instance, when I’m waiting at the airport, I might take my

laptop from backpack and start writing writing posts – whether it’s for my own blog or for others

Let others be frustrated while you invest in your future

With the following steps, you can take the most out of your waiting times:

1 1 Find alternate ways As technology develops, there are going to be new and exciting

possibilities to avoid waiting

For instance, I shop my train and airline tickets online, do the check-in online (this works for only selected airlines for now), do my tax return related things online, pay my bills online Nowadays it’s possible to do a lot of stuff through the Internet – rather than standing on the queue as before

2 2 Stop following the herd This is a nice tip that I “re-learned” after reading a good time

book by Dan Kennedy: No B.S Time Management for Entrepreneurs

He mentioned about not following the herd In other words, being aware when others are running errands and taking care of yours outside the rush hours

With this tip, you can already cut down the waiting frustration a lot

3 3 Prepare mentally in advance If you don’t have any other time to take care of your

errands than during the rush hours, be aware of this in advance This helps you to be

mentally prepared for the waiting time

4 4 Have the right equipment with you To make the most of my waiting time, I’m carrying at

least these things with me:

Amazon Kindle

A pen

A notebook

A MP3 player

My smartphone

A physical book

If I know that there is going to be a longer waiting time ahead (for example at the airport), I also carry my laptop with me In addition, you can also have your tablet computer with you if you own one That’s my “mobile waiting toolkit” and it helps me to deal with waiting times much smoother and without frustrations

5 5 Load your equipment with right material I’ll make sure that I have enough material to

cover before I enter the waiting situation For instance, I download the e-books or drafts of

my blog posts to my laptop or the podcasts or audiobooks to my MP3 player

There is yet another handy tool that you might know, but I bring it up anyway If you have an Amazon Kindle, you can use it with a service called InstaPaper

InstaPaper lets you to save web pages for later reading and before hitting the road or

running your errands, you can export the pages to your Kindle This way you can read the posts through your reading device while waiting – instead of just staring the wall at the tax office :)

6 6 Do whatever suits the situation best Your waiting time defines what you can do during

it For instance, if I’m at the airport or at the train, I might write posts or go through training material because the waiting time could be very long

On the other hand, if I know that the waiting time is short, I might grab my physical book or

my Kindle and start reading for a moment

Waiting times can be frustrating for sure, but with a proper plan, you can turn them from time-wasting activity to a highly beneficial one All you have to do is to be a bit prepared in advance and quite soon waiting times become your friend!

Over to you: How do you take advantage of waiting times?

(Photo credit: Large group of people waiting via Shutterstock)