Happy Monday Friends!
Life has been crazy and I’ve been traveling nonstop a lot lately. Life starts slowing down after Thanksgiving, but I figured it’s quite the opposite for everyone else. The holidays are when everyone starts traveling like crazy and making their trips, and I figured it’s the perfect time to share a post on productive things I do while I’m on a plane!
Some people really like to take that time to watch movies, play games, and relax, but I just can’t. It’s very rare for me to have “no connection” time, so I always have to be doing something productive. A lot of airplanes are now equipped with wifi and though I’m always so tempted to get that crappy $8 wifi network, I actually take advantage of that “no connection” time to get a lot of things done that I typically would hate to waste my time on.
Again, this list is my personal “no connection” to do list and it may not be for everyone, but thought I’d share it because I know it would be helpful for some of you!
1. Clean Out My Photo Library On My Phone
Yes, go figure, I take a million pictures and have thousands of photos on my phone. I take this time to clean out my library, go through my albums, and favorite what I love & delete what I want to get rid of. This is always my #1 thing to do on flights!
2. Delete Old Text Messages
Similar to #1, who has time to delete old text message threads besides when you don’t have service or connected to the Internet world? Text messages can take a lot of space on your phone, so I delete irrelevant text messages on my flights!
3. Organize My Desktop + Folders On My computer/Hard Drive
I am the absolute worst about my keeping my desktop clean and folders organized. From Bloguettes files to my blog files to even my personal stuff, I have a million things always open throughout the week and I’m just always on the go. On top of documents and files, I also deal with a million photos and video files, so I spend my flight time to organize everything!
4. Write My Blog Posts
I know this isn’t relevant to everyone, but for those that do have a blog, flights are really time best time to write blog posts. You’re disconnected, not distracted, and you can really focus on your post to write something super meaningful. I like to just open the good old Microsoft word and type it all up in there to paste it on my platform once I’m connected back to the internet.
5. Edit Photos
I don’t want to share my entire photo workflow here right now, but it’s a whole process and I do it on my flights. I promise to do a post on it soon, but I wanted to share that I do use my time on flights to do a whole lot of editing in Lightroom. I know editing is a part of my job for my blog and though it’s my favorite part of content creation, I sometimes have guilt spending time editing my photos. Why? I honestly don’t know. Maybe because I enjoy it, but I feel like I could be doing something more productive? Who knows, but I really enjoy editing on flights!
6. Clean Out + Format My Memory Cards
This goes along with #5, but I’m terrible at cleaning out my memory cards. I have about 6-8 memory cards with me at all times and I always have one in my DSLR and my vlogging camera, so things get very confusing- especially when my card becomes full and I need to pop another one in! I use my flight time to completely transfer photos that I need on my hard drive and delete those that I don’t need then putting the card back in my device to format the card.
For those of you guys that don’t know what formatting your card means, it basically is “resetting” your memory card, so you have space on your memory again, but you have to make sure you cleared out your card before you format it or else you will lose EVERYTHING.
7. Finance + Budget
Going through bank statements is something that I think a lot of people procrastinate until when they have to, but I’ve done it a few times where I actually download or print my bank statements before my flight and go through it for expense items or to make sure I know what I spend each dollar on. It really helps stay within my monthly budgets or when I have to do my taxes, so I’m not dreading it at the end of the quarter.
8. To Do Lists
I’ve found that to do lists are always better when they’re well thought out and prioritized before they’re executed. I’m not saying I do this for every one of my to-do lists, but it really helps when I take the time to think about immediate tasks to things that can be pushed to later and flights are the best time to do it!
So those are the 8 big things that I always do when I fly. Again, we are all so limited with time, that while you deserve some time for a break, I think the “no connection” time is the time that is the best time to be productive!
I hope you all have a wonderful week and hopefully this blog post was helpful for some of you! I’d love for you to comment below on TIP posts you’d like to read from me!
