personal development

Productive ways to spend free time

May 30, 2020Rabea

Free time gets pretty boring for some of us, unless we have a vivid fantasy world full of storylines. I wanted to share some productive ways to spend free time with you, since productivity doesn’t have to mean work.

Learn the basics of a new language

Knowing the basics of a few languages can be super helpful in a time full of online interactions. You might never travel to a place you’ll need it, but you’ll be able to understand someone speaking or writing in that language a little bit. I’m German and in my early twenties and I’m always the person international visitors come to first if they want to know when their train is coming or where to find something. While English is mostly enough to interact with pretty much anyone, a few words in Spanish, Chinese, Russian or even Korean can’t hurt.

Update your passwords

I don’t like doing this either and procrastinate it sometimes, but update those damn passwords. If you wanna be super safe you should download something that creates and saves passwords straight on your computer without being connected to the internet. Also enable two-factor authentification wherever you can and check if your data has been leaked in recent years. HERE is a website to check that. You’d be shocked how many data leaks there are.

Cull your fridge & pantry

Food expires, shocker! We tend to have some super old food in our pantry simply because it is dried goods, but if we are being real with ourselves, we won’t make that. In case you don’t want to waste food you can either plan to do it THAT week or gift it to a friend. Also do that with your fridge, sometimes we story sauces and all kinds of rarely used stuff in there that might already be too old. Just, throw away some food or give it away. Take note of what you didn’t eat and realize the excess in which we live.

Backup important files

Just like the passwords this is a often procrastinated task. Just take that damn afternoon and save your favorite pictures onto an external harddrive. A lot of paperwork is also digital now and should be backed up extra just in case. Maybe you also just have big files you don’t access much, like videos or old projects. Put those onto an external harddrive too and free up some space on your computer. And while you’re at it: Sort through that download folder!

Meal Prep or try a new recipe

Now that I’ve gone full mom-mode at you: Have some self care time. Meal prep for the next few days to safe some time. In case you aren’t a meal prep kinda person, just try a new recipe for dinner today. I recently found a really cool ice cream sandwich recipe that I still want to try. Maybe you should have a scroll through Pinterest or analyze your pantry with one of those neat apps that give you recipes based on what’s in your home.

Make a 5 year plan or update it

Please don’t tell me you don’t even know where you’ll be in a year. None of us do. We all have bigger goals and we should work on achieving them. A five year plan is exactly that. It’s not about picturing your perfect life in 5 years, it’s simply a tool to get you closer to your life goals. I wrote an entire post about how to break down a 5 year plan that you can read HERE. Write it, use it as a guide, thank me later.

Write letters for your friends

And now a wholesome thing that you will absolutely love doing in your free time: Letters. If your friends are real friends, they won’t give a damn how bad you are at writing letters, but they will be over the moon about you thinking of them and sending them one. When I was about 16 I had a year where I religiously sent one letter a month to an online friend. I don’t talk much to half of those people anymore, but still see the fruits of being kind and thinking of them years later. Do something nice for your friends today!

Those where some productive ways to spend your free time. If you need 93 more things to do in your free time or these were not the ones that spark motivation, you can grab my “100 ways to be productive today” mini eBook. Get it by signing up for my newsletter squad below and get some other neat freebies: