I used to love Fridays. It was a payoff for working hard Monday-Thursday. You work that entire week to try and line up your perfect Friday. Maybe you plan on taking off a little early to catch some golf or get out of town. Or perhaps you just want to just get a few end of the week tasks done and talk about the baseball games going on this weekend.
Which is why I ask if anyone does anything on Friday. Because I feel like, more and more, I get more accomplished on Friday than any other day of the week. My Monday starts off like many of yours with a meeting of some sort. If any issues have come up over the weekend, they are waiting for me at my desk after that meeting. The rest of the day is setting up interviews and meetings for Monday – Thursday. Whenever I try to schedule anything on Friday, it is usually rebuffed. People don’t want to meet on Friday or too many people are going to be gone. I’ve never done a lot of interviews on Friday.
So what happens is that there are all of these other important tasks that get heaped up over the course of the week and since nobody is in the office or people aren’t wanting to meet with them (and are essentially compressing our schedules to a four day work week), it ends up that Friday is an incredibly productive time for me to get things done.
And while I realize this is geared for M-F workers, what do you do on your “Fridays”? Is it like any other day? Do you get to set your feet up? Or are you like me and become busy?
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HMMM Fridays….if I am scheduled to work a full day then I try to balance Fridays by having a busy morning. Fridays is usually when I take a longer lunch and consider leaving a tad early to pick up the kids. I find that I have lots to do on Fridays, and that the mornings are the most productive for me. Friday afternoons I really try to slow down and change into weekend mode because by then I’m fried.
I find that Fridays are a pretty productive day for me. Lots of managers are gone in my company, and that means I am not having to do little assignments that take me off task. I’d say that that the toughest part of Fridays, are people coming in to BS because their bosses are gone as well. It is nice though, we are are allowed to leave an hour early on Fridays if we wish. Kind of makes it rewarding.
Fridays tend to be one of my most productive days, especially for doing all of those odds-and-ends small tasks that get pushed to the bottom of the pile when all of the higher priority or needed-it-yesterday projects are in full swing during the week. With so many other people out of the office or focused on finishing up and leaving early on Fridays, I have fewer distractions (the location of my office often makes my little corner the gathering place). The folks who are there are in a better mood than usual, so they seem more willing to give you a hand than usual (as long as you aren’t cutting into their own ability to take it easy or leave early). Probably, though, the number one reason that I get so much done on Fridays is that the more loose ends I tie up before I leave, the more I know I’ll enjoy my weekend. I try to leave my work behind when I walk out the door at the end of the week, but that’s hard to do if I know there are some little details left untended. Plus, clearing those small tasks off my desk on Friday means I can hit the ground running on Monday.
I think alot of people feel the same way just before the weekend – they want to finish things up, whereas meetings rarely feel productive and if anything they’re only good for getting new action items, undesirable before the weekend when you want to clear your mind.
Maybe it’s time to to join the 4-day Work Week Challenge: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fourdayweek
Of course, you should cut out your Monday
For productive people, Friday is batting cleanup for the rest of the week.
All those things that have been laying around all week finally get done. E-mail gets cleared out. Calls get made (inevitably to voice mail).
Specifically because the “power players” are out playing and the other 90% of the folks are planning and talking about their weekend, there are no interruptions.
It’s like being in the office 8 hours early. No phones ringing. No people popping in. No meetings planned. Just work.
Want to know who to promote? Look at who is actually working on a Friday.
Dan
HR Guy, good question. Now on Fridays I have my hands full trying to corral my puppies to be in front of the camera for their “PuppyCam Fridays” appearance.
Between getting them toys and acting as the ‘director’ by moving the camera for some more interesting shots, I have cut into my work day some. But hey it’s worth it for Roscoe and Doobie’s fans. -Carl
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