Most of us early await Friday during the workweek, and when it arrives, we are so keen on getting into the weekend vibe that we often don't realize that the workweek has not finished yet.
While it is natural for you to feel less productive and more pumped to log off on a Friday, some tips and hacks can be used to make Friday a productive day.
In this blog post, we will look at some of the most effective ways to have productive Fridays without overwhelming yourself or killing the weekend vibe. So here we go.
Have a to-do list ready
One of the worst ways to go into a Friday, or any day, is not knowing what you will do throughout the day.
So if you want a productive day, ensure that you prepare a to-do list on Thursday evening so that you are not left wondering at the beginning of Friday.
You can use a to-do list app like Routine to achieve this.
If you are using Routine, then all the tasks you listed for Friday on Thursday will appear on the "Today" screen so that you can focus on what's on hand without being distracted
Work on low cognition tasks
If you generally have low cognitive energy levels to spare on a Friday, then adding high cognition work to your Friday task list will not help.
So pick tasks that you can comfortably pursue without exhausting yourself and making mistakes in the process.
Think of these as your typical "post-lunch" tasks that you can power through even if you are not at your most attentive state.
Start your day early
If you want to get out of the office early on a Friday, you are not the only one. For many who work the 9-5 job, the last day of the workweek ends at 3:00 PM; after that, it is just the wait to 5:00 PM.
But that is still two good hours lost where you could have been productive. So a reasonable way to make up for that would be to start your day a bit early.
How early? That would depend on your preference and your organization's policy, but an hour early should give you that much-needed head start to finish your day early.
Catch up on communication & review meetings
If you have loads of non-critical emails that need to be answered, review meetings, etc., Friday is the day to do it so that you can free up time next week to work on more critical tasks.
A good way to do this would be to block time on Fridays for specific events like meetings and see if you can get your team to buy into this schedule.
You can block time on an app like Routine, which is super simple. Just drag and drop the item into your calendar, and you're good to go. You can read more about time blocking here.
Prepare for the week ahead
Friday is ideal for reviewing the week that passed and preparing for the week ahead. So block time for this, preferably post lunch, where you can create a dump of all the tasks in your queue and then start prioritizing them.
For the non-negotiable tasks, you can block time for them on your calendar. For other smaller tasks, you can batch them together and then block time for the batch instead of individual tasks.
As for the review, you'll be able to see all your tasks/items from the week that passed in Routine's Journal.
Final thoughts
While the approach to productivity varies from person to person, trying out these tips will help you identify what works for you on a Friday, and you can take it further and customize it to suit yourself.
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