What to do in traffic: 15 useful ideas

1. Listen to podcasts

Remember the good old radio programs where the presenters discussed pressing topics, periodically distracted by stories from life? Podcasts are about the same thing, only anyone can record them, since there is no need for particularly sophisticated equipment. As a result, new issues are now appearing faster than mushrooms after rain: there are both conversational and thematic (for example, audio lectures about art or history).

Podcasts are ideal for background music for anything: you can listen to them while you're in traffic, cooking dinner, or cleaning. If you are still not in a club of fans of this format, it's time to at least try and understand why this all has become so popular.

2. Turn on audiobook

Reading in the car is uncomfortable, and for some it makes some feel sick, but what about listening to someone else reading aloud? This is a great solution if you regularly make a list of books that you want to master this month or year, and then realize that at best you have made it to a quarter of the target.

True, you have to spend a little time looking for a reader. Perhaps you will not find a suitable performer right away (you never know, suddenly you will not like the intonation or the peculiarities of diction will cut your ears). No one forces you to rush: if you are in traffic jams every day, then you will have plenty of time to find the perfect announcer.

3. Do gymnastics for the eyes

It will not work to knead the whole body in the car: it is still a bit cramped for a full charge in the cabin. But you can do some simple eye exercises. There will clearly be more benefits from them than from hanging on Instagram.

What do we have to do:

1. Rub your palms well and place them over your closed eyes. When your hands give off warmth, rub your palms again and put them to your eyes again. Repeat this procedure three times.
2. Blink quickly, then close your eyes and count to five. Do the exercise four times.
3. Close your eyes, count to three, open them and stare into the distance until you count to five. Repeat the exercise four or five times.
4. Make three or four circular motions with your eyes to the right and then to the left. Look into the distance and count from one to six. Repeat the exercise two times.

4. Learn English

Yes, we know that you already have a lot of things to do, so there is no time for courses and tutors. It doesn't matter, install the learning app and practice a little, but regularly. At least 15 minutes of classes every day is better than hours of daydreaming about what you will someday pick up and master the language perfectly.

First, find out what is wrong with your English: perhaps your vocabulary has dried up since school days, or you don't remember a single grammar rule. In many applications, there are tests for this case that will tell you what to focus on and help you design a suitable training program. If you are fine with vocabulary and grammar, but there are problems with listening comprehension, combine our two tips and listen to podcasts in English.

5. Meditate

Cork is an ideal place to train concentration and the ability to detach from everything worldly at the right time. You don't need to sit in the lotus position and chant mantras; you can even meditate in a taxi or bus. Of course, if you are not driving.

Straighten your back, sit comfortably, put your hands on your knees and close your eyes. Concentrate on the breath and watch the air pass through the nostrils and leave the body as you exhale. When you relax, on the count of “one” inhale, hold your breath, count to four and exhale slowly. Breathe in this way for at least five minutes - you can set an alarm so as not to be constantly distracted by the clock. Extraneous thoughts will creep into your head, but do not succumb to them and return to calm breathing.

6. Organize your smartphone

Start with photos. Set up copying pictures to the cloud so they don't take up space on your device. Revise old images and mercilessly remove duplicate and blurry images.

Then move on to applications and games. Perhaps you keep some of them just in case, but if in the last six months you have never opened them, then this case is unlikely to ever come. Feel free to delete everything that you do not use, and instead of useless programs, install those that may be useful at any time.

For example, the application “Citymobil»If you often use taxi services. The service operates in many cities of Russia and is constantly expanding its geography. Citymobil gives all new users a 10% discount on the first 10 trips. To get it, register in the application and enter the promo code CITYHAKER.

DownloadQR-Code

Citymobil - order a taxi

Developer: City-Mobil

Price: Free

DownloadQR-Code

Citymobil - order a taxi

Developer: Citymobil

Price: Free

7. Find out where the entire salary is going

Go to the bank's mobile application and study the statistics of expenses for the last couple of months. As a rule, all spending there is divided into categories: you can immediately see how much money you left in supermarkets this month, and how much was spent on buying clothes and sitting in a cafe. It may turn out that the coffee you buy every morning on your way to work is making a decent hole in your budget.

If you prefer to pay exclusively in cash, collect checks. Install an app for tracking expenses and methodically add all your expenses. Ideally, you should have at least 10-15% of the previous one for the next salary. If it does, you are great, if not, think about what expenses you can painlessly refuse, and send those same 15% immediately after receiving the money to a separate savings account.

8. Call mom

I bet you never have time for this, and every conversation boils down to an impatient one: “Yes, yes, everything is okay with me, bye”? Don't be so, parents want to share their problems and find out what is happening in your life.

There is nowhere to rush in a traffic jam, so you can finally chat with your family. Or write to friends with whom they have been planning to meet for a long time, but everything did not work out.

9. Organize your mail

First of all, sort out the mountain of spam and unsubscribe from unnecessary mailings. Then you can customize your categories or labels. For example, all emails from colleagues will be sent to the "Jobs" folder, and emails from online stores with discounts will be sent to "Sales".

Don't forget messengers. Open Telegram and go over the list of channels you are subscribed to. You can send unnecessary ones to the archive for a while. If after a couple of months there is no desire to extract them from there, feel free to unsubscribe.

10. Update your resume

If you have been thinking about changing your place of employment for a long time, stop postponing this step. Shake the dust off your resume and make it look decent: bring it up to date on your skills, work experience, and projects you are proud of. If you don't have a resume, it's time to create one.

Look for interesting jobs and ask for a test assignment. This step does not oblige you to anything, but if you are going to change your place of work, you need to keep yourself in good shape and monitor the situation on the labor market. Who knows, what if a test accidentally performed will become a pass to the company of your dreams?

11. Choose where to go on vacation

It only seems that the May holidays are still far away. If you are going to spend a long weekend properly and go on vacation, it is high time to look for cheap tickets and collect visa documents.

Do not wait until the last: it is unlikely that such a successful idea came to your mind only for you, so tickets and places in hotels before the holidays will fly out like hot cakes. In addition, there is still a chance to save money, and the closer to May, the higher the prices become.

12. Decide on your weekend plans

If you still don’t know what you’ll be doing next Saturday and Sunday, chances are good that two days in a row will just stretch out on the couch. But there are plenty of options for how to spend the weekend with benefit.

If you don't want to stay at home, go through social networks and look for announcements of interesting concerts and master classes there. If you don't want to go out, take a weekend to clean up. It sounds boring, but order doesn't just happen. You don't have to kill your free time for general cleaning with washing windows, but start small. For example, go through your wardrobe for the spring: return shoes with flew-off heels for repair and wash jeans and T-shirts. Dispose of tattered clothes that cannot be stained anymore and make a list of things you need to buy for the new season.

13. Think over the menu for the week

What to cook in the evening is probably the last thing you want to think about after a working day. You can simplify your task and throw in options for simple and quick dinners in advance. Make a list of all the dishes you know how to cook, and then choose from them those that take 40 minutes at most. Scatter them every day to alternate between meat and poultry dishes with fish and vegetables.

If possible, make cooking waste-free: for example, if today you cook chicken for salad, tomorrow you can use the broth from it for soup or rice. In case of force majeure, keep a pack of pasta and a can of tomatoes in your own juice at home: an elementary pasta with sauce is a great option for harsh days when after work there is no energy for anything.

14. Play with your child

Even for adults, traffic jams are torture, but for a child it is torture. Entertain your little one with a simple word game. For example, you can improve your logical thinking and play "What's unnecessary here." You name four objects, animals or concepts, one of which is out of the ordinary, and the child guesses a word that does not fit the rest in meaning. For example, duck, elk, bear, wild boar. Obviously, the duck is unnecessary.

Name Five Objects is a simple game that will help you develop your powers of observation and vocabulary. Five blue objects, five K objects, five objects that you have in your kitchen - the list of options is limited only by your imagination.

15. Chat with the taxi driver

If you are stuck in a traffic jam in a taxi, talk to the driver. Many of them have a good education and a high cultural level, so an ordinary trip can turn into an exciting excursion.

And you are interested, and the driver is more fun. It is already depressing in traffic, so it is better to pass the time for a conversation than in deathly silence. Just not a word about politics, and it’s better not to complain about your hard life: the taxi driver still didn’t hire you as a psychotherapist.