Downtime / doing nothing is so crucial for letting your brain marinate over a problem or idea! Leave those gaps be.

Option B: Have a side project or personal you're hacking on with Claude/Codex and pop back to the terminal to respond to the latest prompt / get in cranking on the next feature.

And breathe, taken literally. Get off your phone OP and just do a bit of meditation for those minutes, I promise you'll feel better, more so than trying to micro optimize within that time.

maybe productive isn’t the right word - more like satisfying and constructive. Right now I might play blitz chess or end up checking the news or X. But when I’m in the middle of a good book or some long form content, I’ll use that time to read and it’s much more fulfilling.

And I think breathing meditation is an excellent idea! I didn’t only mean phone-specific activities at all! Thank you