What do you do at work when there's nothing to do?
I'm in a position with a lot of free time, just few meetings and WFH. What do you usually do when you don't have any tasks to tackle?
There's pretty much always something that needs to be done, even if I have some time when I don't have specific "assignments" or what-have-you. So I can always just grab something off of the "backlog" / "todo list" and work on that. And sometimes I do.
Other times though, I choose to use some "free" time for learning. I have a number of courses queued up to work through on sites like Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Egghead.io, etc. And there's always Khan Academy, papers on Arxiv.org, JMLR, JAIR, or old conference proceedings from IJCAI or something interesting to read and study. Not to mention a huge list of interesting Youtube videos to watch.
I have a backlog that almost warrants an additional employee.
I still put aside a few minutes to read HN. I think it is good to stay informed. I usually have some free time when I do a longer operation. Formerly I did something else in the meantime until I noticed that multi-tasking often means that both tasks are done badly.
If there is really nothing to be done, I start some projects that might help someone at work.
Right now, and literaly, right now :) I am reading HN. I am an electronics engineer in a medtech, and sometimes there is nothing to do, or I have to wait for the Regulatory departments to review/approve docs, so I have pretty good time of nothing. I do lots of project at home, so sometimes I bring a book (scientific), or articles, on a USB to read.
I walk into people's offices and ask them what they are doing. It has led to projects, papers, new jobs, grants, getting students, etc. I highly recommend walking around seeing what other people are up to.
When I was working from home, I'd do chores, errands, whatever. Hang out with my cat, read something not work related. When I was especially motivated, I'd write up a draft of a blog post about something my employer was doing that was egregiously, laughably, wrong.
1) Read Hacker news
2) Attack the tech debt, typically Documentation
3) Decide to take a vacation
4) Listen to Youtube - stuff were the visual is meaningless, but the talk is interesting.
If it’s something that’s acceptable in the company’s culture, I just go home.
I work on side projects or I dabble with new things, and I send CVs out...