Reducing work on Mondays and Fridays

Even though I like what I do, I sometimes have days in which I'm not particularly excited about beginning to work. Maybe I didn't sleep that well, or maybe I just don't have the necessary energy to begin working. Maybe some unexpected things appeared and I'll be busy with those for a big part of the day. Or maybe I'm simply not in the mood to work on a particular day.

This happens mostly on Mondays or Fridays. In the weekend I try my best not to work at all. I don't exercise, I don't write, I don't code, nothing. I just try to relax, I play some games, I watch some movies or TV shows and I do my best to forget about work for a bit.

But that can easily make me a bit too comfortable, up to the point where once I have to actually work, I'll be lazy and I'll procrastinate. If I play video games too much, or I watch too many movies, I'll want to do those things on Monday as well, so work is almost always slow at the beginning of the week.

The same thing applies to Friday. After working the entire week, I don't always feel like doing my best during Fridays. I have a much more relaxed approach when it comes to work, I begin to think about what I want to do during the weekend, and I sometimes begin my relaxing a bit earlier than usual.

On those particular days working can be a bit slow, or a bit tedious. I still do it, of course, but not always with the same pleasure as in other days. So what I like to do is work a bit extra during the other days of the week in order to have only easy things to do on those two particular days.

For example, I sometimes write more than one article in one of those three days of work, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I try to come up with an additional idea for a post and if I can, I write it. If I don't have the time to do that, I'll write a few main points that I'd like to talk about when I'll actually start working on it. This makes it so much easier for me to begin a week, or end one, without stressing myself too much about what I'm gonna write about.

If I have a coding project that I'd like to focus on I try to come up with a list of things that I need to think about, or do, that will move my project forward, and I try to come up with ideas about how my process should look like, what code might work, what ideas I might be able to implement, and so on.

This is much better than trying to think of a solution, and to also implement it right on Mondays or Fridays.

I go as far as to choose what type of books I want to read and what type of videos I want to watch sometimes. Obviously this is mainly related to productivity. There are certain books I read for pleasure and certain books I read because I want to learn new things. Same thing for videos. So I choose what to focus on at the beginning and end of the week so I don't have to decide then.

This is not exactly the best productivity tip you'll ever receive. It doesn't help me make some huge extra progress, or make extra money, or whatever. However, it can be a nice little thing you can do to make work a little easier on a Monday or a Friday if you suddenly feel extra lazy in one of those days. This way you make work a bit more pleasurable, and you'll have some extra time to spend however you like.