If you're running a creative business or consultancy, sooner or later work is going to slow down. But that doesn't mean you should, too. Slow times should be viewed not as a curse, but as an opportunity to do all the housekeeping, strategy, planning, and personal development that you always wish you had time for when you're busy.

Making effective use of slow business periods is one of the tactics that keeps small businesses competitive. Instead of playing Angry Birds and waiting for the phone to ring, use this time to sharpen your skills and business practices, streamline your processes, add new competencies, and lay the groundwork for long-term success.

Here are ten things you can do to to stay ahead of the competition.

1. Work on your website

I don't know anyone who doesn't have a long list of improvements they want to make to their site if only they had the time. Well, now you have time. Here are a few suggestions:

• Update your portfolio
• Write a new tagline
• Refresh your bio and get a new photo taken
• Fix broken links
• Retire out-of-date content
• Write ten blog posts you can unroll throughout the year
• Update your client list

If you don't already have a website, there is almost nothing better you could be doing in your down time than building one.

2. Design a marketing strategy

Don't have a blog? Maybe it's time to start one. What about a monthly email newsletter? Or a customer relationship management (CRM) system? A search engine marketing campaign?

These marketing techniques require a big investment in time, but once in place, they require only a few hours a month to maintain and the payoffs are huge. Done well, they might mean that this slow period is your last.

3. Take a client out to lunch

You don't have to take clients out to an expensive restaurant. If your client is busy, suggest you'll pick up gourmet sandwiches and bring them to her office. While she's noshing on brie and arugula, remind her of the terrific project you finished for her firm recently and ask if she knows anyone else who could use your services.

4. Stay busy

Don't let your skills atrophy. Take on small pro bono jobs for good causes. These jobs often provide more creative latitude than paying work and can make nice portfolio pieces. Don't overcommit, however. You don't want a pro bono commitment to get in the way of accepting real paying work.

Or go ahead and make your own work:

• Do a makeover of an awful website for a famous brand and post the before-and-after designs on your blog.
• Go around the neighborhood and take pictures of interesting signage or type treatments and make a photo essay about it.
• Go back and revisit past projects and think about how you would design them differently now.
• Brainstorm a mobile app design, even if it's technically unfeasible.
• Start a wiki for one of your hobbies.

The world is full of stories of people who stumbled upon a profitable new niche or line of work as a result of doing something fun while underemployed.

5. Learn a new skill

Don't know HTML? Slow time is a great time to take an online class and develop new skills. Lynda.com has hundreds of classes on everything from photo retouching to 3D animation to how to pitch projects. Or check out your local community college for inexpensive instructor-led courses.

6. Network

Instead of waiting for the work to come to you, put yourself out there and make it happen. Face-to-face networking is the single most effective thing you can do to promote your business. Don't concentrate exclusively on design events where you're more likely to meet your competitors than potential clients. Check out your local chamber of commerce or meetup.com for meetings of industry groups you have experience working with.

Even smarter, don't just attend networking events—volunteer at them. Volunteering not only saves money, but it removes a lot of the discomfort of being in a room full of strangers. If you're volunteering, you have an excuse to talk to people and a reason for being there. You'll meet way more people as a volunteer than you ever would as an attendee.

7. Cross-train

Go to a museum, take up an instrument, learn a foreign language, write poetry, join a bowling team. Not everything you learn needs to be (or even should be) work-related. Cross-training builds new neural pathways, expanding your creative repertoire and giving your work more depth.

8. Read

Remember that long list of articles you have bookmarked to read later? And all those tweets you favorited because they have interesting links you didn't have time to explore when you were busy?

Slow time is catch-up time. It's an opportunity to get caught up on the influential blog posts that everyone is talking about, those back issues of The Economist (alright, fine: Vanity Fair) piling up in your bathroom, those design books you bought but never opened.

9. Do a business audit

When was the last time you figured out your hourly rate? What's your success rate on proposals? Are you making more money this year than last? Which clients are the most profitable? Do you even know how much money you need to make to break even?

There's no time like the present to become that savvy business person you never imagined you could be. Understanding the fundamental economics of your business is hugely empowering because it gives you a rational basis for making decisions like how much of a discount you want to offer a particular client, whether you can afford a new computer, if you need to raise your rates (or even lower them), and what kind of jobs you should be going after.

10. Take time for yourself, guilt-free

When work is busy, it's easy to forget to eat right and get enough sleep and exercise. We forget how to enjoy the simple pleasures of reading a book for four hours on a Sunday afternoon, of sitting on a park bench and listening to the birds, or playing soccer with our kids. Unexpected free time is one of the perks of entrepreneurship. Do your soul some good and just enjoy it.