Don’t let the winter weather stop your from being productive. Even if you can’t go out and aren’t used to being at home all day, there are plenty of things you can do to keep yourself occupied.
Unpredictable weather can put a dampener on your day—plans to work on your ebook design could go askew.
You may find yourself looking out the window, wondering when it will stop snowing and how that will affect the rest of your week.
But that doesn’t have to be the only way you spend a snow day. You can be more productive than you think, if you keep an open mind.
We look at a few ways to be productive during snow days.
Get Through Your Emails
Nobody tells you how many emails you have to answer as an adult—one’s inbox is constantly inundated with messages from friends, colleagues, potential clients, third parties, and spam.
Most people skim through their email subject lines to decide which ones are or aren’t important, and which ones are spam, finally opening only the emails that are urgent.
There are ways to sort out your emails using filters so you don’t miss the email offering you Google analytics help or the ones from your manager telling you about a new project.
But what about the rest clogging up your inbox? They may not be urgent, or even important, but replying to those emails could lead to long-lasting collaborations.
A snow day is the perfect opportunity to clean out your inbox and your spam folder—where important emails sometimes end up.
This process will make you feel productive and organised.
Keep in Touch with Colleagues
You may not be the only person affected by heavy snowfall—many of your colleagues will be struggling to get to work and be stuck at home just as you are.
If nobody you regularly communicate with or collaborate with is in the office, you may think you can’t be productive, but that isn’t exactly true.
Technology has made it possible to stay in touch with people even from a distance—and not only via email.
Collaboration tools allow you to connect with your colleagues whenever you need to—as long as they’re available.
You can also use You can also use voice assistants or join audio, video and web conferencing services, so you don’t need to miss the big meeting because of the snow.
If you need to speak to your colleagues or managers to tick tasks off your list, you can, thanks to technology.
Do Some Repetitive Work
There are somethings that can only be done in an office—especially if you are relying on files on your office computer.
If that is hindering your ability to be productive on a snow day, why not do something repetitive like collating your travel spending, or cataloguing books for Facebook marketing?
These tasks are perfect for a day when you can’t go out but want to accomplish some work.
Repetitive tasks keep you occupied and are better accomplished when you aren’t in a busy office being interrupted by colleagues and managers.
Spend Time Researching
Just because you aren’t sitting in your office, doesn’t mean that you can’t expand your mind and become a better worker.
A snow day is the perfect opportunity to spend some time researching—time that you rarely have in the office and that you don’t want to give up your free time for.
Read up on this guide to self-publishing on Amazon or learn how to use the one funnel away method for marketing.
Any concerns about not being productive on your unexpected day in will disappear because you will actually end up being enriched by the time you get back to work the next day
Experiment
Another great way to be productive during a snow day is to try a few experiments that you haven’t been able to.
An office environment has a number of perks, but it can be unforgiving when you are trying something new without knowing what results will ensue.
If you’ve been putting off trying out the new timeline makers you came across or practicing what you learnt in those creativity lessons you took, now is the best time to do it.
Use your snow day to try out a few work experiments that you can then report on.
Some may be successful; in which case you can take the results to work the next day and share it with your team.
But even if the experiments are failures, it doesn’t mean that you’ve wasted your day in. By trying something new and not succeeding, you definitively know what you should avoid.
Being productive doesn’t only mean ticking things off your list—it’s also about going beyond your usual routine and trying something out of the box.
Feel free to try a few experiments on a snow day and you can have some interesting news to share with your team and managers when you next get back to work.
Be Productive this Winter
Snowy weather can be difficult to deal with, even if you have lived with it all your life. But just because a snow day has forced you to stay indoors, doesn’t mean you can’t be productive.
We have outlined five ways that you can still be ‘at work’ even while you’re at home:
Clearing up your inbox is a good way to stay productive—you can feel organised and be more efficient when you get back to work the next day.
Staying in touch with colleagues so you can continue working on your projects together is possible with the use of the right tools.
To keep your mind off being at home, do repetitive tasks that wouldn’t be easily accomplished at work.
You can also spend your snow day doing research, which you wouldn’t be able to do at work without interruption.
And finally, a snow day is a great time to conduct work experiments that you can share with your team the next day at work.