Great Ways To Use Your Spare Time Better

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If you’ve found you’ve got quite a bit of spare time these days, you’re probably getting sick of using it to just watch Netflix and surf the internet. Sure, those are fun activities, but you can’t do them all the time. And hey, a bit of personal development never hurt anyone! So it’s time to think about new ways to spend your spare time, and maybe even get a little productivity out of those hours.

After all, why wouldn’t you want to fill your time with all kinds of fun things to do? Going on new adventures, giving back here and there - it can fill your life with all kinds of rich experiences! And if that sounds like something you want to get involved in, check out the ideas below to get you started. You can use your spare time in whatever way you like, but sometimes it can feel like you’re stagnating!

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Watch an Exercise Tutorial

Spare time is great for working up a sweat! If you’re currently worried about a lack of activity in your life, exercise tutorials can be found completely for free through Youtube, so you don’t need a gym membership or to sign up to a paid class. And if you already know what you want to focus on, you can just tap that in and find a 20 minute workout that’ll be perfect.

Most fitness gurus who post on Youtube also do multi video workout programs; these will be arranged via playlist, so feel free to work your way through it at your own pace. You’ll never need to part with any money, and you’ve just put your spare time towards your health and wellness! Using these tutorials 3 times a week is a great target to aim for.

Meal Plan for the Week

Meal planning saves you a lot of time over the upcoming week - you don’t have to use the oven or stove at all when it’s already ready-made. If you’ve got a week’s worth of meals in the freezer, you just need to put them in a bowl in the microwave for dinner time tomorrow and the day after.

So sit down now and put some recipe ideas together, and then nip out to grab the ingredients and some tins to keep the finished product in. It’s also best to write the date of cooking on the top, to make sure you only keep your prepared dinners around for 6 months max. Most food tends to get a little frostbitten after this time period.

Start a Reading List

If you love books and getting lost in a story, this won’t be a hard one to pick up. But starting a reading list can be a great way to pass the time whilst allowing yourself to learn and pick up experience along the way.

Even a cheesy rom-com can have something to tell you! Many reading lists are already made online and can be followed along by page or by using audiobook subscriptions, if you’d prefer.

Maybe it’s time to read all the literary classics we studied in high school? Maybe you want to try some LGBT+ literature that you’ve never even heard of before? No matter what genres you like, or what type of fiction you’d love to get into, there’s a reading list out there that'll suggest some great titles and hidden gems to you.

Make a Little Extra Cash

Even if you’ve only got 15 to 20 minutes, you can use that time to make a bit of extra cash that’ll help pay for a night out (or in) with your loved ones. Many people turn to websites that offer paid surveys on a regular basis, but if you want to start your own blog or start selling ebooks, that’s also totally viable.

All you need is an internet connection and something to write about over the long term. Update your entries consistently and you’ll start gaining traction; active websites and authors go a lot further on search engines thanks to the way the algorithm trends.

But if you don’t want to write, you can even just boot up Vickers Casino and play a slots game here and there. The internet has many ways to generate a few extra pounds, and the more you do so, the better your gains will be.

Get Involved with Your Community

If you want to really put your time to good use, why not lend it to other people? Getting stuck in as part of your community is a great way to give back, and is one of the best ways to provide the kind of change you want to see first hand.

Doing an hour or two at your local soup kitchen, or running the till in a local charity shop, or simply clearing out your house to donate some items goes a long way to benefit. And you don’t need any formal qualifications to do any of these things!

You could also volunteer at charity events like local football games or museum days for families; as long as you’re out there and taking part, you’ve used your spare time very well.

Build Your Own Vegetable Garden

Building a vegetable garden takes a bit of time and effort, and you’ll need a few weeks to fully put one together, but it’s a worthy endeavour! After all, you’ll be growing your own food and be able to put together meals using your own produce - what could be more sustainable?

Head down the garden centre and get some seed packets or starter pots, prepare a space in the back garden for dedicated planting beds, and then follow directions on the packets to grow with the most success. Most of all you’ll need to pick your time right, unless you’ve got a greenhouse at your disposal.

You could also pick up a couple gardening magazines for some more in depth advice. But otherwise it’s not hard to cultivate a couple of plants, especially when there’s so much sunshine out there!

Learn to Do Something with Your Hands

This is especially good for people who spend a little too much time on the internet! If you learn to do something with your hands, you can redirect all of that energy you spend on the digital world into something more real.


It’s much easier to be proud of yourself when a finished product is sitting in hand! If you like to draw or paint, buy a sketchbook. Or perhaps you’d like to start baking cakes and perfect your icing skills? Maybe you could give wood whittling a go?

Crafty skills that require a good amount of technical knowledge help to give us a sense of self esteem, and we have real things to look at once we’re done. You don’t need an internet signal, and if the wifi ever drops, you won’t sit there bored.

Got Some Spare Time to Make Good Use of?

We all have a day to ourselves here and there, and we definitely have at least half an hour in the afternoon to put to good use! So when these free moments of time come around, use them wisely. Kick back and relax every so often, but then try out a new hobby or do some internet surveys to make some extra money. And if you’ve got an hour or two to spare, why not volunteer for a little while? It’s a great thing to add to your CV!

Indie Mystery Thriller Book Recommendations!

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Do you like mystery and or thriller books? Here are some mystery thriller books by indie authors that you should check out! For more books, see my indie books page!

The Only Way Out Is Death

From author Varun Gwalani comes a new escape room murder mystery perfect for fans of Korean survival drama Squid Game and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. The Only Way Out Is Death is a fast-paced suspense novel set in an empty hotel, where twelve people have to kill to survive.

Twelve powerful people are kidnapped and imprisoned in an empty hotel.

Each of them have three choices:

Live out the rest of their days peacefully in the hotel,

Die by suicide so the rest of their companions can go free,

Or murder one of their companions so they alone can go free.

The Only Way Out is Death follows the story of these twelve people from the perspective of a young lawyer, Kiriaki, told as the events unfold. She has to forge uneasy alliances, navigate complex relationships and feuds, and, above all, try to stay alive. Meanwhile, the mastermind of this death game is lurking just out of view, watching them closely, making sure they are primed for murder.

Room 119 – The Whitby Trader

High-flying trader Dean Harrison has it all – the London penthouse apartment; the fast car; the beautiful wife. But when the threads of Dean’s life start to unravel, they do so with alarming speed. Following the advice of a frail stranger,

Dean sets off for Welnetham Hall Hotel and is plunged into the mysterious world of Room 119 – a world where nothing makes sense. How does everyone in the hotel know his name? Why does he travel there on a train line that shut down over fifty years ago? And who is the sinister man in black who pursues him wherever he goes?

As he gradually pieces together the puzzle of Welnetham Hall, Dean is forced to re-evaluate his life and realises that nothing is more important to him than his wife and daughter. Desperate to get back to them, he vows he would lay down his life for the people he loves.

It’s a promise he may have to keep.

Free on Kindle Unlimited

Funicular – What is truth when the past is a lie

After his life is threatened, DI Bob Dixon leaves London hoping for the quiet life in the northern village of Saltburn-by-the-Sea. But when he takes on the case of young Lizzy Scraggs, missing since a huge tide hit Saltburn six years earlier, he embarks on an investigation that will push him to the very edge of reason.

Out on the beat, Bob learns the legend of the funicular car that left the top of Saltburn’s famous cliff lift many years ago carrying two passengers, and arrived at the bottom empty save for an abandoned ticket. And every big tide since has seen another local child disappear.

Feeling increasingly manipulated by a shadowy nemesis, Bob struggles to make sense of the seemingly impossible clues before him. How can the dead live again? Who is the tortured man haunting the churchyard in nearby Marske? And with the next massive tide just hours away, can Bob solve the puzzle and bring an end to the tragedy of Saltburn’s missing children?

Free on Kindle Unlimited

The Gouge

"I haven't forgotten what you did!"

Carson Bates ran away from Cypress Creek to hide from his dark and troubled past—his father was the serial killer known as “The Man in the Woods”. Twenty-two years later, a simple text message reveals that his secrets have caught up with him.

The freshly slain bodies of two teenage girls have been discovered in the woods of Cypress Creek, and the methods in which the girls were killed are identical to the those that were found nearly twenty-two years earlier. The now retired detective who worked the first case has long suspected that Carson Bates knew more than what he revealed during interrogations; Now is his chance to prove it.

Carson returns to Cypress Creek to finally face his past, but it is soon clear that Carson isn’t the only person in that small-town that is harboring dark secrets about that night in the woods.

Free on Kindle Unlimited