When plans change and you find yourself with a clear diary, what do you do?

Do you use it to catch up with work, get ahead of yourself or just keep slogging away at the pile? Do you get annoyed, thinking of the missed opportunity – what you could have booked into that time, had you known in advance? Or do you take the day off?

I had a workshop cancellation this week, a rather welcome reprieve as I was launching into a 4-day-workshop-week after handing in my book. I had a pile of stuff to do, deadlines I had pushed back, enquiries to follow up, conversations to reignite, and when I came off the train after workshop number 3 I was looking forward to having a day just to ‘catch up’.

Until I serendipitously bumped into my running buddy at the queue for the car park pay station. She suggested going for a run the next morning and I found myself eagerly accepting. The next day I woke up to a message from a friend I had been trying to catch up with for months, asking me if I fancied sneaking in a quick cuppa while she was in the area, and again I found myself saying “why not?”

You see, if I had been running a workshop, the other stuff would have gotten done anyway. I would have found a way to fit them in. But going for a run and seeing a friend for coffee are things I always consciously have to make time for. And it felt so good, to choose to use this time that I had been gifted, and thoroughly enjoy it.

It’s a bank holiday again for those of us in the UK. What are you choosing to use this time for?

And if it’s a regular working day for you, when’s the next gap in your diary?

It doesn’t need to be a day or even half a day. As I overheard on Facebook the other day, “I work 8 to 5 with half an hour for lunch and because it’s my bliss it feels like about 2 hours. Time is weird.”

When’s your bliss this week? How will you enjoy the time you have?