I have a Monday-to-Friday job. At least, that is what it says on the tin. Increasingly, though, I think I actually have a Monday-to-Thursday job, with Friday occupying a rather different place in my working life.
I don’t mean that I no longer work on Fridays. I do. Nor has anyone introduced a four-day week while I wasn’t looking. It is something rather more organic than that. Enough people around me, in my own organisation, among clients and across the wider working world, seem to have changed their habits that we have reached a critical mass. The working week itself has quietly changed shape.
Friday has become different. Try arranging an important meeting on a Friday afternoon and you will see what I mean. Increasingly, the serious business of the week gets compressed into Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Meetings, client conversations, events, workshops, deadlines and decisions all seem to gravitate towards those three days.
And let’s be honest, Monday isn’t quite what it used to be either. Monday has increasingly become the runway into the working week. There are emails to catch up with, plans to make, papers to read, conversations to restart and priorities to establish. With hybrid working now normal for many people, it can feel less like the first full day of the week and more like preparation for the intense three-day sprint that follows. I do like a WFH on a Monday for all these reasons.
Then Tuesday arrives and we are off. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday can be relentless. Diaries become Tetris boards. One Teams call finishes as another begins. Face-to-face meetings have to compete with online ones. Travel has to be squeezed between both. Lunch becomes something strategically consumed during the seven minutes you have accidentally left between appointments. And who has noticed the flurry of emails and handovers on a Thursday afternoon from those who aren’t working the next day, many start with the phrase ‘can you just…’.
And then comes Friday. Those that are working a four-day-week don’t find it achievable always. How many times have you said to a colleague “I didn’t think you worked on a Friday” as you meet with them or receive an unexpected email. I have though realised that my Fridays have become valuable precisely because they are quieter. They are increasingly when I can think, write, finish things, reflect on what happened during the week (and write a blog or two).
I rather like it. But there is a problem. If we carry on organising our work on the assumption that we still have five equivalent working days, while everyone is actually behaving as though there are three core days, a preparation day and a reflection day, we create an enormous amount of unnecessary pressure. So perhaps we need some new rules.
Rule one: stop pretending every day is the same. It isn’t.
Rather than fighting the emerging rhythm, we could design around it. Monday can be a day for preparation, team connection and setting priorities. Tuesday to Thursday can carry more of the collaborative work. Friday can offer more protected space for thinking, writing, learning, finishing and planning.
That doesn’t mean an organisation needs to declare Monday ‘preparation day’ or Friday ‘reflection day’. It means recognising how people are actually working and making better use of it.
Rule two: Tuesday to Thursday cannot absorb everything.
This is the danger. If everyone decides these are the ‘proper’ working days, they quickly become impossible. Eight hours of back-to-back meetings isn’t collaboration. It is endurance. Five minutes in between isn’t good practice. We need to get much more disciplined about what actually requires a meeting. Could it be an email? Could three people deal with it rather than twelve? Does it require an hour, or would 20 minutes do? Most importantly, does everyone in the meeting actually need to be there? When three days become prime working real estate, we should become much more careful about how we spend them.
Rule three: protect the edges of the week.
I’ve started to see Monday and Friday differently. Monday is an opportunity to look ahead rather than immediately surrender the diary to other people’s priorities. Friday is an opportunity to look back, clear things, write, think and get the loose ends of the week under some sort of control. There is something extraordinarily satisfying about finishing Friday knowing that Monday morning’s version of you won’t inherit complete chaos.
Rule four: don’t confuse quiet with unproductive.
This may be the biggest lesson. Modern working life has made presenteeism and activity terribly visible. Meetings are visible. Calls are visible. Events are visible. Teams messages are visible. Thinking isn’t. Yet some of my most useful work happens when there is nothing in my diary, or when I say no.
Writing a proposal, working through a difficult problem, thinking about a client’s challenge, making connections between apparently unrelated things or simply having the space to consider what we should do next can be more valuable than attending another six meetings. We should get better at valuing that work.
Rule five: leave some white space.
This is the rule I am trying hardest to follow. When I see an empty hour in the diary, my instinct is still sometimes to think, “Excellent, I can put something there.” I am increasingly trying to think, “Excellent, I can leave it there.” Have you noticed people putting meetings into your diary because they see that space and don’t resist the urge to fill it? Because the completely full diary has become a strange kind of workplace status symbol. We look at it and think we must be important because everybody wants a piece of us.
Perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps having enough control over our working lives to leave space for thought, reflection and the unexpected is a much better sign of effectiveness.
Rule six: build a week for energy, not just availability.
There is also something here about energy. I don’t have the same energy at 4pm on Thursday after three packed days as I do at 10am on Tuesday. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make me more productive. It simply makes the quality of what I do less consistent. So perhaps the new working week requires us to think not just about when we are free, but what sort of work we are best equipped to do at different points in the week. It is different for everyone.
Put the big conversations where the energy is. Put the preparation before them. Put the thinking and reflection afterwards. It sounds obvious when you say it like that.
Perhaps Friday hasn’t disappeared after all. Maybe my Monday-to-Friday job hasn’t really become a Monday-to-Thursday one. Perhaps what has happened is more interesting. The five days have stopped pretending to be interchangeable.
Monday prepares. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday deliver. Friday creates the space to finish, think, recover and work out what comes next. Of course, that won’t work for everyone. Plenty of jobs require continuous cover and plenty of organisations need people available throughout the week. I am talking from the privileged position of having a sort of desk job. I don’t have to be stood behind a shop-counter, I save that for Saturdays! Nor should a new pattern create problems for colleagues whose working days or responsibilities are different.
But for those of us whose work is largely meetings, projects, clients, thinking and communication, there may be something useful in acknowledging the week we actually have rather than continuing to organise ourselves around the week we used to have. And if Friday becomes the day when there is finally enough room in my head to think properly, I am going to stop feeling guilty about it. Indeed I have all those four-day-a-weekers to thank for that!
I might even put it in the diary: Friday, 9am to 5pm: Work.
