Move All Friday Tasks to A Day, Monday thru Thursday
Slowing your pace is impossible if you don’t take a moment to breath. You have to stop and allow yourself time to think and process. What day do you have to plan? When do you think about how you can improve your process? What day do you have for reflecting? When will you improve and become better at what you do? When will you feel like you’re in control and not working out of control?
Where did the week go?
If you’re like most people, you try to cram all the leftover stuff onto your Friday schedule. You’ve been pushing tasks over each day. Monday you pushed a task or 2 to Tuesday. You abused Wednesday by the tasks you passed from Tuesday. Thursday is so busy because you know Friday is coming. Your time gets away from you on Thursday and you ask this question, where did my week go?
Now it’s Friday and today you have so much to get done. You now have more work on Friday than you did for any one given day. I hate to say this, but repeat this with me, I can’t accomplish it all in one day, especially Friday. Stop thinking that you can play catch up on Friday. It’s been attempted by millions of people, some very smart. Only normal people who don’t aspire to grow and become better continue on this wheel. A person who does, looks like that hamster you had in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Spinning endlessly and going no where.
So what are you to do? I think you only have a couple of choices: (1) take it home with you or (2) define a better alternative to the way you’ve been working.
Choice 1: Take it home with you.
You can, like the people who look impressively busy, take it home with you. Yes, give up more of your time. Do work you won’t get paid for. Take it home. Pile all that work into your car, just to find out you really don’t have time for it this weekend. Friday night you’re tired and just want time for yourself. Saturday, you want to do your Saturday activities or did you give those up because you had to work? Sunday arrives and it feels like you didn’t have a weekend and before you know it, Monday’s back upon us. And guess what, you still have incomplete work. Taking it home is a choice, but is it really the best choice? No.
Choice 2: Define an alternative way to complete the work.
What you need is an alternative and I want to give you one, but it will require some thinking on your behalf. Because you follow my blog, I know you’re a great thinker and besides that, one of my gifts is making one think. Realize that you do have a choice, even though it doesn’t seem like it. My family and I saw the movie Finding Dory and one of the lessons expressed was that there’s always another way. It may not be the easiest or most obvious, but there is always another way. Easy isn’t the name of the game, desired results is.
Now define your alternate way to complete the work without having to interrupt your Saturday and Sunday. Start by moving all the tasks, those that won’t create issues for you, to Monday. Now look at what you have remaining. Of those tasks, can they all be done today. If so, let’s get to work. If not, let’s ask for an extension if at all possible. Any tasks you had planned for Friday, ask for permission to move them to Monday.
The attitude you should have all week is how to protect your weekend. Each day you are working so you won’t have any work that carries over. Find an alternate way. There is always a way, if you can believe that there is.
It’s time you learned to protect your weekend, your downtime. Find the alternative you need to accomplish your work and start by using this Friday to your advantage.
