How to Make the Most of Time While You Wait

Editor's note: If you have a pressing business-etiquette question for Miss Conduct, please send her an email.

Punctuality may be the soul of business for FedEx, UPS and trapeze artists, but on the inside of most businesses it feels like we wait and wait and hurry-up-and-wait.

We wait for an email response, then await return calls to arrange a meeting. We wait in the waiting room, then we wait in the meeting room, then wait for the deal to come through. The question is, how can you make all this waiting work for you?

The Benefits of Waiting

The short answer is indeed that good things come to those who wait.

The wise employee uses inevitable delays in deal-making or production to control emotions, to think a problem through with more clarity or to heighten the other guy's anticipation -- whether he works in a financial center or a French restaurant.

(Just recall the conventional wisdom of waiting three days between getting a new crush's phone number and calling -- it both cools the fire enough for you to be witty when you connect and it increases ardor in the meantime.)

Emotional cooling is one great side effect of waiting, but only if the wait is embraced with acceptance.

Fight the delay and you'll remain locked in conflict and frustration, groaning like Marge Simpson whenever Homer ruins her life again. At this point, you can outwait the frustration (after all, you've got the time!), or you can employ the wisdom of Bart Simpson and "Don't have a cow, man."

So how do you do it?