Is the working week too long for you? Do you look forward to Saturdays (and not a Monday to Friday)? Are your important business activities like marketing slipping behind? You are probably working on customer projects 5 days a week and have no time to work on anything else. No one can blame you for that but why not take the decision to work only 4 days on customer activities and dedicated 1 day a week to working on these other things (or not working at all)?

This blog is a quick tip on freeing up one day a week to concentrate on other non-customer related activities.


Your 20% Time

Having a busy schedule with demanding customers means your important business related activities and anything you want to do in work will take a back burner and not get done. As you know business activities are just as important as your customer work and you need to schedule and prioritise this work just like anything else. It’s easy to say, but much harder in practice to accomplish.

I therefore recently decided that Fridays are "no customer work days". I will not schedule in any customer project work for a Friday unless it is urgently required of course. The weight of my shoulders is immense. I cannot wait until Friday, it is my favourite work day!

I had this idea after reading that Google allow their staff 20% time in which they are free to experiment and dabble in other research activities which eventually may lead to new and exciting Google tools. Google understand the creativity and benefits in giving this time to employees to work on other projects. I decided I want a 20% time, which equates to 1 day, and therefore allocated Fridays to this.

How To Accomplish a Non-Customer Day

In order to accomplish this you must of course have a task management process and schedule that you rigidly follow. All customer work is scheduled in for Monday to Thursdays. You must only allocate tasks for each day that you can accomplish each day, so you must have a task scheduling process that allows you to do this (more on that in later blogs). With an efficient scheduling process you can ensure you get all the things you planned for that week done, allowing for Fridays to be YOUR day. You can even take it off sometimes, or at least a few hours for a classy lunch in a posh restaurant (another little tip – REWARD yourself whilst IN work sometimes!).

So what do I use it for?

  • Write 1 blog every Friday
  • Advertise the business on 3 websites
  • Read a book or magazine (work related!)
  • Plan the following weeks schedule
  • Send customer invoices
  • Process my inbox
  • Tidy the desk and office
  • Do something to make my life a little more productive
  • Research ideas, software, tools and processes to help improve work
  • etc etc etc

I must be honest and say I do do a little customer work. I check emails a few times a day to make sure I don’t have anything urgent. But any tasks that arise on Friday I schedule in for the following week and reply politely saying I will not be able to do it until next week. If anything is urgent the customer will soon let you know so you can re-assess the day.

I can honestly say Friday is now one of my favourite days of the week because it is relaxing and allows me to be creative, constructive and efficient. The tasks I do on Friday are very important for the following weeks work ensuring that next week will be an efficient working week.

So give it a go. Don’t plan any customer work for a Friday. Ensure you have an efficient Monday to Thursday working week so you can your 5 days work done in 4, then take some relaxing working time on Friday to prepare for an even more relaxing weekend.