What to expect when you are expecting a project.

Written by: Sherif Ali
Part of The ALYS Biz Talk Series

In today's business, it is very common to find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands when you are between projects, here are the top 6 things to do while waiting for your next assignment.

1. Update your CV

Even if you are not looking for a job, it is very useful to keep your CV up-to-date (besides, who knows), add the last project you were working on and the new skills, technologies or tools you have used. It is significantly easier to maintain your CV like that then trying to prepare it from scratch just before applying to a job.

2. Maintain your contacts

In business it all comes to this: your contacts. It doesn’t matter what you know, what matters is who you know that knows it. Join LinkedIn.com or Xing.com ,call your ex-colleagues and let people know you are around.

3. Clean up

Start categorizing your emails; move emails from old projects to folders other than your inbox. Same goes for you computer, organize your documents, put your old project files in a folder carrying the name of the project and clean that desktop of yours from the extra icons you won’t be using anymore.

This goes a long way when you start something new, you will find that it is much easier to find everything.

4. Smart up

This is a great time to catch up with your reading. Pick up that book that has been lying around for sometime now or go to the bookstore and buy a good book.

5. Know more

You don’t have to do some brain draining activity (at least not just after a long tiring project) just catch up with the world, go to YouTube.com and start looking for videos about new technologies, products or anything that interests you or use a search engine to look-up information over the internet, you never know what you will stumble upon.

6. Write your own blog

This is a great way to speak your mind, keep your blog professional and clean. It is an interface to your character and might be seen by any person including your managers and your colleagues.