Have you ever had jobs where you don’t have enough to do? Seems like an ideal situation right?
It is not ideal. Without something to do you are left to try to find ways to pass the time. Here are the ways that I handled being in jobs when there wasn’t enough work for me to do.
- Education. As much as possible I would watch videos/read articles and learn what I could to take the next step in my career. After a while, however, without using the skills you tend to forget what you have learned. It still is familiar but you have to use skills you learn to keep them.
- Automate. See if there are ways to automate the things that you do. As long as you have time, you can explore if there is a more efficient way of doing the tasks that you are asked to do.
- Seek additional work. I would talk with my supervisor and ask for more responsibility or opportunities to help other teams. Surprisingly they always said no. They said that it would be too complicated for accounting to figure out the budget if I helped other teams.
- Find ways to help other teams on the side. If you can’t help your coworkers officially, then you can help them unofficially. I would talk to them and ask if they were open to my help and almost always they said yes. I would either directly do work or help them with the resources/knowledge to get the work done.
- Look for a new job. Too often companies that didn’t have enough work were also hurting financially. They weren’t growing, they were dying. When you see the ship sinking, it is time to go
It is unfortunate but many companies go bankrupt. According to this article 80% of the companies that existed before 1980 are no longer around. They couldn’t adapt to the times. So many companies are acquired or go bankrupt. Be willing to leave when times look bad.