I have recently been inundated with emails, podcasts, and even direct mail (because it’s never the wrong time for junk mail, I guess) that all have the same basic theme: “You’re sitting at home with nothing to do now, so you should do THIS instead!” The “this” can be anything from online classes to art projects to charity donations or streaming services.
Free time: Noun
1. time available for hobbies and other activities that you enjoy; a time period when you are not required to work.
2. something you may not have any of.
I’ve seen similar things on Twitter and LinkedIn (which, by the way, are the only two social media services I use) and my wife has reported even more of this kind of thing on Facebook. Apparently, some people are learning a second language with all the spare time they have.
Let me be clear – I do not have any extra free time these days. My workdays are starting earlier and going much later than they do when I am in the office, and I find my calendar booked almost entirely with a plethora of newfound 15-minute calls that used to be conversations in hallways. I also find that because days have lost all meaning recently (today is Blursday, the twentyteenth day of Marprilay) that I’m spending time every day on work deliverables regardless it being a weekday or weekend.
I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m working 24/7 – I do have time when I am not working. It’s just that it has been filled up with supporting my wife as she structures our kids’ days and facilitates their remote learning. I want to go on record and say that I have never appreciated teachers as much as I appreciate them right now – keeping a 6 and 7-year-old on task and focused on a writing assignment makes herding cats look simplistic.
By the time the kids are in bed around 8, both my wife and I are dead on our feet. I usually try to kick a few more emails out of my inbox and maybe play Xbox or PC games until 10, and then it’s time for some desperately needed sleep until the next morning.
Still, just the messaging about how to make productive use of free time has gotten me thinking about ways I long to try to grow myself. I believe vehemently in continuous learning and improvement – both of our teams and as individuals. However, having so little time where I don’t need to produce or parent recently has gotten me thinking about what I would like to do if I had time.
For the rest of this entry, I wanted to present a few things that I think would be a great use of free time if you find that you do have some – many of them are things I personally wish I had some time to do. However, let me be exceptionally clear here – if you do not have free time – that’s OK. If you’re taking care of your family, staying healthy, and meeting your work obligations – you’re doing great. Please do not feel any pressure to do any of these things – focus on your individual priorities.
However, if you truly do have downtime (as I know certain folks on my own team have right now due to their job role) I hope some of these suggestions are helpful. Again, all of these are things I’ve already invested time in, have completed, do regularly, or are things I want to invest time into.
Lee Cockerell ran this.
Not jealous at all….
Read The Customer Rules by Lee Cockerell. Lee was the Executive Vice President for Disney World; he ran an operation significantly larger than most of us ever will for a brand that people are deeply passionate about. He talks about customer service in very tangible, actionable terms. I require everyone on my team to read this book. If you think you don’t serve customers and this book doesn’t apply to you, you’re wrong. Read the book anyway
Bonus: If you have time, check out Lee’s podcast and if you manage people read Creating Magic.
Sign up for VMUG Advantage and set up a home lab to practice with vSphere 7. It’s brand new, so you probably don’t have it in production. It’s a major release, so there are things in there you don’t know how to use. Spend the time now to get really comfortable with it and you are going to be in much better shape when your company decides to move forward. Heck, maybe you can even drive the project! You don’t have a home lab? No worries! Advantage includes VMware Workstation and Fusion so you can create a nested environment. Great articles on this abound – start here.
Learn Linux. If you haven’t noticed – Linux is a cornerstone of enterprise IT. It’s great that you’re a Windows native and understand it inside and out. You need to know Linux. There are tons of resources out there about where to learn it, but I would focus on Pluralsight or Linux Academy. Both offer online resources. Pluralsight has more variety than Linux Academy, but Linux Academy may go deeper. Full disclosure: while I get a free Pluralsight subscription, I also purchase memberships for my team and am a general fan of their offering.
Beef up your cloud skills. If you’re an AWS person, spend some time learning Azure. If you’re an Azure person, spend some time learning AWS. If you’re a GCP person, spend some time re-evaluating your life choices. I’m just kidding on that one – but you get the idea. I have zero confidence in the cloud landscape’s stability right now. I don’t know what the cloud marketplace will look like in five years, and neither do you. I don’t feel comfortable having all my skills in one basket and I think diversity of skills is essential.
Learn personal finance skills. I know this is a tech blog, but I can think of few skills and disciplines that will return more peace to your life than mastering your budget and personal finance skills. The middle of a pandemic is actually a great time to get a start on this – especially if you have concerns about income reductions. I’ve heard people say that when they make (and stick to) a budget, it feels like they got a serious raise. While there are zillions of plans and resources for this, I have personally benefitted from this one. Note: the longer I live the less infatuated I am with that company, and I would recommend you look at You Need A Budget for software once you understand the process.
Do a random act of kindness. This quarantine is rough for everyone. The world can truly benefit from some additional acts of kindness. I’ve seen some amazing things like leaving some supplies for delivery drivers, or tipping a ridiculous amount on a donut, or donating to causes that help. I can’t tell you what to do or how because this is all about your passions and heart, but I can tell you that it will make you feel good and make the world just a little bit better.
Have a Zoom cocktail hour with your friends or distant family. Friends! Remember them? Look, even if you don’t have a Zoom account (you don’t? What’s wrong with you?) you can get a free account and hang out with your friends over a cocktail, coffee, or an entire bag of Totino’s pizza rolls. Having done the latter - it may not be your best choice. The point is – connect with the people you care about and enjoy some laughs with them. I’ve played a tablet board game with a few friends while on a Zoom with them and it was awesome.
Do some virtual networking. There are a ton of professional organizations that are doing online networking events. The VMUG community is invited to get together every Thursday. While there are some community veterans in the room, there are just as many people who it may be their first VMUG event ever. Everyone is invited to Peers and Pints. Check out @MyVMUG on Twitter for the link each week. At a bare minimum, find a few people you’re connected to on LinkedIn and reach out to see how they’re doing. Just getting your name in front of people who know you can be super valuable to your career.
Read the news from a legitimate news source. That means that you intentionally pick a source – and do not read whatever Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram serves you up. Misleading and disingenuous news is real and it’s shocking how many people willingly consume and accept it as fact. I am generally very quiet on political issues, but the greatest threat to democracy right now is misinformation. I will make no recommendations on where to get news, but I think a great site to help validate sources is the Media Bias Chart. Note – you probably will not like this chart and that’s why you should pay attention to it. Also, if your source of news isn’t even on the chart – it’s a really, really, bad sign.
Honestly, this is 100% valid these days.
No one is within 6 feet, and no kids are asking for help with the iPad.
I was originally going to go up to ten of these ideas, but after getting to nine, I realized that I would never have time to do all of those with any real enthusiasm, even if I had 18 hours a day completely free.
I’m going to go back to how I started this – if you don’t have free time right now, that’s OK. Don’t feel a ridiculous pressure to learn Latin during your free time from two and four in the morning. It’s OK to rest so that you’re at your best. Seriously – I’m doing few – if any- of these right now, and I literally wrote the post.
If you do have time, I hope you use it well. Make yourself smarter, make your relationships stronger, make connections you didn’t have before. Or, just take a nap. You might need one (or more) in the middle of this.
On to you:
Do you feel like you have more or less free time now than you did before the pandemic?
Do you have a wish-list of things you’d like to do for your professional or personal life? What’s on it?
If you don’t have a list already in your head and you have free time what are you going to start doing today that will make you well-positioned when we’re back to “normal?”