I find Friday's to be one of the toughest days of the week to get work done. Most people have been busting their humps all week, the weekend is about to begin, and the motivation to start a major new initiative is usually dwindling at this point in the week. So how do you make Friday productive? Make it fun!
...or at least enjoyable.
I have found that saving your most satisfying tasks until Friday is the best way to make a Friday productive, enjoyable, and allows you to end the work-week on a high note. This has worked for me. This has worked for members of the teams that I have managed.
For example;
- In a prior role, I lead a team of engineers. We reserved Friday's for investigating new technologies, testing new products or coding a pet project.
- In my current role, I reserve my Friday afternoons for my weekly review. I get great satisfaction from this exercise. I can close down my work week, recording what I've accomplished, identifying what I need to do in the next week and addressing what I need to follow-up on.
- As a computer geek at heart, I have also used Fridays as my day to deep dive into technical problems that needs to be solved. To this day, I still dig doing that type of stuff.
Keep your Friday's light. Keep your Friday's reserved for what you want to do. The company you work for will benefit because you are giving 110% as the week is winding down. You will benefit as you end your work week on a high note because you've been working on something you enjoy; something that gives you personal satisfaction.
This is my twist on the Google way. That is; Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. Perhaps 20 percent does not work for you or the company you work for, but at a minimum, I would encourage everyone (and the people they manage) to take some time for something they are truly passionate about on Friday's.
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