I stumbled on David Maister’s 1985 research on waiting psychology while thinking about loading screens. His foundational principle: occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time. But he uncovered something deeper. Anxiety, uncertainty, and unexplained delays make waits feel exponentially longer.
That got me thinking. Most product teams treat waiting as friction to eliminate. Load faster. Reduce checkout steps. Skip the queue.
But you can’t eliminate all dead time. Users will wait during loading, onboarding, checkout, processing. The question isn’t whether they wait, it’s what you do with that captive attention.
Look at how the best products handle waiting
As I explored this more, I started noticing patterns everywhere.
Look at how Disney handles theme park queues. They don’t just move lines faster. They build interactive games into waiting areas. Characters parade through crowds. Space Mountain’s twisting paths hide the full queue length, reducing anxiety about what’s ahead.
Consider how Asana onboards new users. They don’t overwhelm people with Gantt charts and dependencies upfront. They start with basic project creation, then gradually reveal advanced features as users gain confidence. The onboarding wait becomes capability building.
The pattern: people tolerate waits when they understand why they’re waiting, see progress toward completion, and have something meaningful to occupy the time.
What separates high performers from the rest
The best SaaS products get dramatically higher onboarding completion than industry averages. They use progressive disclosure: revealing one valuable feature at a time, teaching as users engage, turning configuration into discovery.
E-commerce brands fighting cart abandonment don’t just optimize checkout speed. They explain shipping timelines transparently, show order progress in real-time, and use recovery emails that provide value (product recommendations, size guidance) alongside the nudge to complete purchase.
These companies understand that dead time isn’t just infrastructure to optimize. It’s experience to design.
Why this matters more than you think
Page speed matters. Even small delays tank conversions. Amazon, Google, and others have documented how milliseconds of slowdown directly impact revenue.
But speed alone doesn’t solve this. Pinterest discovered something interesting: they reduced perceived wait times dramatically without dramatically changing actual load speeds. Better skeleton screens and progress indicators made the experience feel faster. The result was measurable increases in both search traffic and sign-ups.
The insight: perception matters as much as performance.
Where is your dead time?
Look for moments where users have no choice but to wait:
- Onboarding flows with account setup and data imports
- Checkout processes with payment verification
- Loading states during search or complex calculations
- Processing delays for reports, exports, or deployments
- Queue systems for high-demand access
Each one is captive attention. Each one is an opportunity to educate, build confidence, reduce anxiety, or deepen engagement.
The question isn’t whether your product has dead time. It’s whether you’re wasting it on spinners, or turning it into story time.