If you have a hot loop and want to consume less processor time at the expense of slightly slower processing, you could insert some well-placed sleep or select statements into said loop. You could also use blocking I/O or non-blocking I/O with sleeps rather than hard-polling I/O if you're using hard-polling I/O now. Other than that very general advice and pointing you towards profilers for better ideas of where your hot spots are, I can't really say anything else useful without seeing some code.