10 Fun and Productive Ways to Pass Your Time While Waiting for a Package

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Student Lifehacks
waiting for a package

The faster the tempo of our lives is, the more unbearable waiting becomes. Is a friend late for three minutes? Is your flight delayed by half an hour? Is a package delivery late? Some of us are getting so anxious in these situations—one would easily set the world on fire.

However, long waiting times and shipment delays are inevitable in this world. Especially now, when the postal system is affected by the COVID crisis, political struggles, and other critical developments. Unfortunately, delivery problems have affected BooksRun as well—how frustrating and tedious are those extended waiting times for a textbook you need so much… However, waiting for a package might not be such an annoying thing. Here we’ve picked ten productive and fun activities you can enjoy while your textbooks are on their way to you! 

Want to know a fun fact about delivery waiting? Even if a shipment is not delayed, you’re still anxious about receiving it—you want to grasp that ordered thing right now. The Urban Dictionary even suggests a name for this phenomenon—”pre-parcel anxiety.” This state of waiting for a parcel is “often accompanied by frequent glances at the front door for signs of the courier driver when you hear any audible or visual queues of their presence.” Does it sound familiar? 

We experience this anxiety for a reason: let’s say in a bookstore, you enjoy your purchase the very moment you paid for it. You immediately get a brand new textbook or a guide for your next journey destination you’ve given tons of money for. However, suppose you’re smart, and you use BooksRun to get cheaper textbooks. In that case, you won’t get an item as soon as you pay for it—you’d need to wait several days while our partner delivery services ship it to your doorstep. But your brain treats the purchased object as your possession and sends you threatening signals: “That textbook is yours; you’ve bought it. Why can’t you use it? What delivery? You mean someone else is having your textbook right now? Check your delivery status one more time! They’ve probably lost your book.” 

person anxiously waiting for a package
Designed by Freepik

And these signals become even more disturbing if the delivery time is extended. We apologize for the inconvenience that delayed shipping can cause you. Unfortunately, we can’t affect the processing times of postal services. At the same time, BooksRun believes that getting anxious about it is very destructive behavior. Instead of updating the delivery status every five minutes or checking for the courier to appear on the corner, you can call a relative or a friend you haven’t spoken to for a while. Instead of asking all your friends who also rent or buy used textbooks from BooksRun if they have already gotten their books, you can check other learning opportunities for the same subject.

I bet these activities will be a much better use of your time than all those anxiety-driven things you often turn to. So check the list below for other tips on handling your time while waiting for a package—you’ll find ten excellent ideas for being productive or having fun!

Laugh

Make a meme about long waiting times and share it with your friends. Laughter is one of the best cures for hardships and boredom. Use the meme generator!

Learn

Watch YouTube videos on the subject of the textbooks you’ve ordered. There are some fascinating channels about science, history, and so much more.  

Plan Ahead

Set up your bullet journal and the schedule in the meantime. The beginning of the academic year is the best time to review your goals, clarify your daily routines, and form new habits.

Amplify

Get your hands on some new amazing apps designed to enhance your productivity at college. Notion is the new hit of this year—we’ve described this app and other tools in this article.

Explore

Why not start checking possible and career tracks? You can review trending college specializations, contact your college’s career services, and connect to alumnae to learn more about their experiences. Even if the epidemic situation doesn’t get better, you can still opt for a remote internship.

Wait in style

Find a book or a movie about waiting. Yes, “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” is an easy and very sentimental pick, but can you find something more creative?

Read

Catch up on some classic literature—from Plato to Harper Lee. The time you spend reading is never wasted! 

Cook

Prepare something extraordinary or try a recipe you’ve always found fascinating. For example, you can cook something that you’ve never tried before!

Declutter

Review your clothing items, stationery, reading lists, random files on your laptop, and books—here, we’ve described the step-by-step process of decluttering for students. Maybe there’re still textbooks from previous terms you haven’t sold yet? It’s now or never; sell used textbooks and earn some money while waiting for your package to come!

Be Grateful

Write a lifetime gratitude list. It is one of the best calming exercises that ever existed. Write down as many individuals and things you’re grateful for and answer to yourself—why? Creating this list will teach you how much you already have, and your life is pretty much perfect without that thing you’re waiting for. Save it for the future because reading through it from time to time (and adding new lines to it) can be an excellent resource for rooting down and feeling grateful.


Have you found something for yourself? We hope some of these activities will let your mind wander in a different direction and enhance your life quality. However, there might be a situation when your textbook is dramatically delayed, and you can’t complete an assignment or prepare for an assessment test. Here we’ve reviewed the reasons behind these shortcomings. We also want to give you some troubleshooting tips to handle this situation successfully. First, you can ask your friends to share the materials or to work on some assignments together. Then, you can also talk to your professor. If you didn’t get the book on time, but you need to do an assignment based on it—try to explain to your instructor why this delay occurred (because it’s not your fault) and ask for a possible solution. Maybe they can propose you a different assignment or move the deadline to a later date. In any case, don’t underestimate how understanding people can be!

Cheer up and don’t let extended waiting times ruin your mood and productivity. We wish you a successful beginning of the academic year. Stay safe!

college student received ordered textbooks
Designed by drobotdean / Freepik

Iliana K