The Friday Effect…
Our world is slowly moving towards a four day work week. This has proven to be quite successful as well. Studies show that productivity has remained the same or has increased whilst employee stress levels, health and work-life balance have improved significantly.
Well, how does this connect to our topic? Whilst the fortunate few who live in countries that are trying out shorter work weeks for the same pay; for the rest of the world, longing for a well desereved friday from the first day of the week seems like the only option.
What I’m trying to achieve here is to give a few pointers to help organize your work week to be able to enjoy your well deserved time off during the weekends.
- Monday
The most hated and the most busiest day of the week. For most of us who are working, usually mondays are hectic and are full of meetings and calls (depending on the type of your job obviously). The best way to have a successful Monday is to get through the meetings and calls, make proper notes of the next steps, finish any pending work that you had brought forward from last week and try to complete any desk jobs and walk-in meetings that you might have. - Tuesday
Tuesdays are often mini Mondays in general. Tuesdays are mostly as busy as Mondays. So to conquer Tuesdays, you should again focus on the office completing the scheduled meetings or calls that you might have, completing the previous day's pending work, and getting through to the next day. Try not to keep anything pending for the next day. The more tasks you complete by the beginning of the week, the better it will be during the middle and latter parts. - Wednesday
Referred to as the “Hump Day”, Wednesdays are when people start to get the Friday feels. This is when usually employees start to feel really lazy anticipating their perfect weekend whilst finding it hard to stay focused and productive. To turn a Wednesday around and make it productive, one can use the day to attend meetings outside their workplace such as supplier meetings or client meetings. If it is possible and allowed, you can try changing your work location to a coffee shop, or a coworking space to stay ahead of the procrastination and get your head in the game. - Thursday
With just one more day to go for the weekend, the productivity levels on Thursdays are lower than that of Wednesdays. You can use Thursdays to look back at the week so far and reflect on what you have achieved and what you could have done better. And also finishing up on the pending tasks that you have for the week and also planning for the next week can be done on Thursdays. - FRIYAY!
Finally, we reached friday!! Hooray! But yeah, how do we make Fridays productive? How many of us have idled the whole day on Fridays without doing much, whilst just passing time on our mobile or laptops till it hits the clock-out time? Yep, I feel guilty too. How do we actually make use of a Friday? Well, it's not that hard. Since we have decided to make plans for the next week by Thursday itself, we can use Friday to schedule meetings or calls for the next week, organize your work schedule for next week, plan the deliverables and next steps, and before the end of the day, try to finish any pending work without carrying it forward to the next week.
It can be a bit hard to focus and be productive on a Friday, but when trying to focus on work, music and a good cup of tea or coffee can be of help for most of us.
Though I’ve written about a typical 9–5 job here, I guess some of these can be used in general life as well. With that, I hope this helps you to have a successful, organized work week which you can make the most out of whilst being able to raise a glass on Friday, towards the week ahead without worrying about pending things to do.
