Many times, when met with small windows of “awkward downtime”, we decide to just pull out our smart phone and scroll.

Here are a few ways alternative ways you can spend those 5 – 10 minutes…

• If you Use Day One, scroll through your Day One timeline and read a previous journal entry.
• Browse some old photos and memories.
• Launch Day One (or any other journal you have) and log how you’ve spent your time so far for the day. Doing this for a few weeks can also be super helpful for getting a perspective of where your time and energy are being spent.
• Write down 3 new ideas. These could be articles you want to write, business ideas, places you want to visit or photograph, topics you want to research, date ideas for you and your spouse, gift ideas for a friend, etc. These ideas never have to to be acted on — the point isn’t to generate a to-do list, but rather to exercise your mind. Ideation and creativity are muscles, and the more we exercise them the stronger they get.
• Send a text message to a friend or family member to tell them how awesome they are.
• Stand up and do some stretching / body movement.

Have some ideas of your own? Send them my way on Twitter (@shawnblanc)