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5 Things To Do With 5 Minutes (Other Than Read This Post)

If you work long hours, you may feel like you never have any free time. I think most of us have more down time than we think, but the problem is it often comes in very short chunks. Someone else is late for a phone call. You've got a few minutes before your next meeting. We often use that time to check email or check the headlines, but here are some other ways to give yourself a mini-vacation:

  1. Read a poem. Pop over to The Poetry Foundation and read their poem of the day or take a quick jaunt through the archives. You'll start your next conference call in a literary mindset.
  2. Take a mini museum trip. Several great museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Kunsthistorisches and Prado have extensive online galleries where you can study a painting and read more about it.
  3. Send a love letter. Write it on old-fashioned paper and stick it in an envelope for greater impact. Or send a quick "I love you” text to your spouse or kids.
  4. Stretch. Less awkward looking if you have an office door, but even if you don't, a few toe touches will ease the knots gained by sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours a day.
  5. Research an item from your bucket list. So you want to visit the Great Wall of China before you die. Who offers flights? Tours? When's the best time of year to visit? How much would it cost? Breaking a big goal down into doable steps greatly increases the chances it will happen.
What do you do when you have 5 minutes to kill?

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Photo courtesy flickr user, Search Engine People Blog
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