Generally speaking, all of us are not made of same things. Some people have cracked the code of becoming big and I have read several books and watched numerous interviews of such successfull people. If you filter down on what all (or most) of them says is their secret, you would reach to a very specific list of skills one should possess.

One such thing that caught my attention was "Have a side project".

People who work for big things are not working to get their time to be converted into money. They just keep working without thinking of money. And you don't have to be in business in order to replicate such behaviours in your life. 

For a working professional, it's a 9 hour job and he/she is left with 15 hours of pure self time. Out of these 15 hours, let's assume you like a good deep sleep of 8 hours, you still are left with a chunk of 7 hours. 

What do you do in those 7 hours?

Some would say we need to have a work life balance, so they try to fit in the 'balance' part in these 7 hours. Do you seriously need that much 'me time'? 

Well, you can have all of that as me time but if you can just use around 50 percent of it, you have 3.5 hours where you can do multiple things that will make you the better version of your yesterday's self.

For me, I like to allocate that time to my learnings. These learnings generally vary from my technical skill enhancements to soft skills like communication or maybe negatiation. 

There are few things I do to utilise these extra bonus hours everyday. 

• I try to declutter my digital data. This includes sorting out emails and deleting the ones that are useless. Update resume based on skills I had learned recently and upload the same on LinkedIn and Naukri. I arrange my files and documents in laptop and tablet in order to be effective when I next need them. Check for subscriptions that are no longer needed and saving money on that. 
• Other times I register for online seminars or instructor let trainings that would help me in my job. Which eventually increases my chances of doing better at work and hence possibly increasing my active income over time. 
• I connect with friends and family people that are working in my same domain of work or maybe different one. Same domain people help you realise new things that are directly relevant to you and different line of work gives you awareness of things happening around. 
• I make my travel bookings or atleast spare some time to check on offers or discounts that can save me some money. If booking is already made, I would go ahead and check of free upgrades that I can get. If travel date is approaching, I would book airport transfers.