Hi Reader,
Growing up six hours north of Toronto, Canada, super rainy or snowy days meant slim pickings on TV, especially when you only had two channels. If neither station had anything good, we had to get creative. There was always a jigsaw puzzle, a swim, a skate, a cross country ski, or even learning how to make a DIY pinball machine. But sometimes, there was really nothing to do.
Yet, without fail, out of nothing always came something interesting.
Have you heard of the concept of passive and active time? Passive time is when you’re receiving information, such as binge-watching the latest series on Netflix or scrolling endlessly through news feeds.
In contrast, active time involves actively engaging in a task, for example, playing a video game with friends or building a tree fort.
Active time means you’re actually doing something, like rolling up your sleeves and getting involved. And passive time? That’s more like letting your brain go on holidays while you just go along for the ride.
Passive time versus active time
Growing up in the north, binge-watching wasn’t really an option with just two TV channels. Luckily, we had the woods all around us, or as we Sudburians like to say, we grew up “in the bush.” So instead of screen time, we always had plenty of tree time. Honestly, staring at trees can be surprisingly inspiring. I like to call it “brain-tree shutdown mode.” This is passive time.
Yet we did have plenty of active time. This might have been building tree forts in the bush or rescuing turtles from the road during “rush hour”, which meant more than two cars on the road at once.
So if you find yourself rewatching your favorite TV show for the hundredth time or staring at a bunch of trees, that’s passive time and don’t worry. Passive time can be good for us, especially when it’s nostalgic. However, we all know when too much passive time can become problematic.
Let’s focus on active time. Being active doesn’t always mean springing into action right away. Sometimes the best use of active time is to plan ahead. For instance, researching which types of turtles are likely to cross the road is a great place to start. Or finding out which of your neighbours have the coolest pieces of wood you can use for a fort.
No turtles to protect on remote roads? Then try to spend your active time in your own creative way.
Downtime in projects
Let’s talk about downtime in our workday, in particular around our projects. Do your projects slow down sometimes? Or are you waiting for projects to start? This could mean you have some downtime.
The word “downtime” can have several meanings. In technical settings, it might refer to a system outage where no one can log in. However, that’s not the kind of downtime we’re discussing today.
Or there is “true downtime”, which this author describes as having no goal or focused attention. This also isn’t the type of downtime we’re referring to.
Downtime in projects is when you can facilitate active time with your team, instead of passive time, which leads you and your team staring at screens or aimlessly wandering around your desks without accomplishing anything.
Use project downtime as active time to plan and figure where you're going next. Such as looking ahead to the next six months to see what might be coming down the pipeline. Or finally finish cleaning up the shared drive after that last round of chaotic deliverables. Or even better, start having conversations with the stakeholders for your next project.
The moral to the story
Don't allow your downtime in projects to be passive, but active.
It could also become a valuable team-building exercise, bringing your team closer as they collaborate to actively plan ahead.
If you run out of active time ideas for your team, you can always build a fancy tree fort which I once visited at the Epic headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. This was nothing like the forts I built as a kid, and they definitely did not factor turtle traffic into the design.
Happy active time!
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Barbara Kephart, PMP
Founder and Chief Project Officer
Projects Pivot
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