The DFN Lounge

With

Wingnut

Of

Pepee's Pornn Palace

Down Time

What do you do with down time? Down time being the unavoidable time when your Internet connection takes a vacation. It never happens at a good time, it always comes when you need to be connected the most.

So what can you do now that the phone call to support is over and they have scheduled an appointment for a week from next Friday? Well, after you're done picking up the pieces of the phone and tossing out the empty beer bottles there is plenty you can do besides checking the connection.

As your mind starts to spin out of control about all the productive things you can do with that time (well mine did anyway), step back and rethink your goals during this downtime. I always seem to have to start a list of things I need to get done, from cleaning my desk to catching up on tax time paperwork, and the list goes on. Once you have your list of goodies there is one thing and one thing only to do.

Go to the top of the list and write in "Spend some time with my family", if you're a single person and have no family close to you change it to read "Take some time just for myself". Sure we could spend it all working on our business to try and get ahead a bit, but we are all doing that already … right?

You will be totally amazed at how good it feels to spend a little extra time with your family, doesn't matter if it is time with your kids or playing some pool with your wife or girlfriend (or who/what ever you have at home). What you do is not as important as doing something, taking the time to relax and bond is what is the worthy part. Not only does this score major brownie points for you but also it has a side effect that I wasn't expecting.

If you're like me you tend to overwork at this business as many folks also have other jobs and work at this at nights many of which go into the wee hours. You can always tell an adult Webmaster by the dark circles under their eyes from the lack of sleep. For some you could even call it an addiction (webaholics). The unseen positive impact of my down time was that the mild "web burnout" I had seems to have been eliminated. The extra time not working on the net seems to have re-energized my creative juices.

It will also come to a point where your family starts to wonder when you're going to start working at "that web stuff" again. The clear indication that it is safe to return to the cave known as "the office" and return to that list you started off making.

Now you not only have a fresh list of things to work on while offline but a refreshed attitude and a new injection of creativity to work from. So tackle that list of building new templates for the next round of tgp submits, or free sites, or avs sites. What a great time it would be to grab one of those Photoshop tutorials you printed out from the past issues of the DFN and actually DO ONE! Better yet grab an NPOW that you thought was awesome but never actually got around to doing and start working on it.

When you connection does finally come back on you should be able to start uploading and submitting like crazy. It shouldn't be long after for you to see the rewards of your mini forced vacation. Sometimes it is as simple as looking at the glass as 49% full rather then 51% empty.

Wingnut