On rare occasions we have downtime in the office.  However, how we spend that downtime can greatly improve our effectiveness when we get swamped.  I look for ways to improve my productivity.  This typically involved improving my setup.

The first thing I do is look at the new technologies to see if any of them are viable as a productivity enhancement.  If one of them is, I’ll try it out and integrate when appropriate.  The second thing I do is learn something ancillary to my current area of focus.  This usually is something which is not required to perform my job, but could aid tremendously.  By doing this “homework”, when you’re back in crunch time, you’ll be greatly more effective.

For example, when I was doing a lot of coding, I’d spend my downtime improving my .emacs file so I could code much more effectively.  For ancillary learning, I learned about proper interviewing techniques.  This came in very handy when I was interviewing people to join my team as I had some of the best hires of the group.