So you bought a book to read but you finished it, or the in-flight movie is over or boring. If you’ve brought your laptop use the following ideas to help you kill time on a plane. First, to maximize battery time turn off wi-fi (on most planes you can’t use it anyways), turn the screen backlight down to the minimum setting, remove media from the optical drive, turn off bluetooth and close any programs you aren’t using at the moment. Then consult the following list, all things I actually did on the 5 1/2 hour flight from San Francisco to Atlanta.

01. Write

The first idea that came to mind when I started writing this post. I had just finished listening to my The Wisdom of Crowds audio book and I was bored out of my mind. So rather than watch US Airways crap in-flight TV, I pulled out my laptop and started writing.

Write anything, a blog entry, emails to your friends and family, a chapter in a book… Whatever you’re interested get it done now. Do it now and publish or send it via the web later.

02. Clean up Your Desktop

Desktop clutter does two things, it slows down your OS and it can potentially slow you down because when you do get ready to work, some other project you never finished is staring you right in the face, distracting you. A lot of people like to make a “Desktop Crap” folder and just drag everything into that but…it’s still a folder on your desktop albeit a consolidated one. I suggest organizing all your files into folders named according to the type of data they are and placing them in your Documents (My Documents for PC Users) folder. Now you know where everything is at , why it’s there and it’s still only a few button clicks away.

03. Optimize your hard-drive.

Free up some space, delete files, get rid of the programs you never use.

Ardour and Blender…..these were all programs that I download and used for a few days because I thought they would replace their costly alternatives ProTools and Lightwave Studio. Unfortunately they did not, and I haven’t even used them since I first launched them over six months ago. Delete.

My copy of SketchFighter? Delete.

You get the point. Get rid of all that stuff you download to try but never got around to using. After all, if you ever DO get around to using it, you’ll be needing the latest version anyways.

After you’ve deleted things and freed up some space. Hit ‘Apple + Shift + U‘ to launch the Finder’s Disk Utilities area. This folder contains everything you need to repair disk permissions, modify your monitors color profile, etc. ‘Disk Utility’ is the most useful as it will repair any permissions that might have gotten corrupted.

04. Sync your iPhone/PDA or Mobile Device

It’s probably a good time to make sure all the contacts you’ve made over the past few days at SoCon08 are in your Address Book. Sync your mobile device, go through and add reminders under notes as to where you met everyone, why they are important and if you should bother contacting them in the future.

05. Download and Organize Pictures

Whether you’re on your way home from a big trip or not, you could probably spend some time downloading your most recent photos and organizing them. Drag all the ones you want to share into a desktop folder for easy upload to Flickr.

06. Organize Your Dock

If your dock is as big as mine (and I assure you it’s not why not simplify it. Remove all the programs that you don’t use on a daily basis. It’s just as quick to hit the Apple Command Key + Spacebar simultaneously and type the first few words of a program to Spotlight it. Plus, when you’ve gotten extremely fast at this people will be amazed and ask you for the quick key combination all the time.

07. Design Things in Photoshop/Illustrator/Gimp

If you’re graphically inclined, why not open up your favorite program and work on a logo for your new company?

08. Mindmap/plan your next project.

Freemind is an idea refactoring software that allows you to correlate-data in a visual context. It’s highly effective for organizing ideas about anything from books, novels, screenplays, to programs and to-do lists.

09. Code

I write a lot using Processing which is just a Java framework but if you’ve got a Python or Ruby server set up on your laptop you might as well start writing the next big Web App.

Feeling really ambitious? Try digging around in at the command line in terminal (OSX and Linux) or DOS (Windows) to tweak your OS to run faster. Follow this link for some tips on how to get Firefox to run faster.

10. Clean It
Once you’ve really exhausted all your resources by going through everything on this list, it’s time to do some physical labor. Turn off the computer, ask the steward or stewardess for a wet nap, some water and some napkins and to do some light surface cleaning. Make sure the wet paper you use is only slightly damp and not soaking wet. Only clean the external surfaces like the screen, keyboard and the underside. Always save the inside cleaning for the pros unless you don’t mind voiding your warranty.

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