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It’s 2:30 on a Friday afternoon. Just 90 minutes before you get to bail for the weekend. After a week of writing, editing, gathering information, and formatting and laying out content, you’re just about braindead. Those last 5400 seconds tick away too slowly, and you can’t focus.
Some Fridays are better than others for me. On the good ones, I’m engaged right up until it’s time to come home. On others, I find myself in the braindead category.
Working on different deliverables for different projects gives me a variety of activities to choose from to keep my mind interested for the last couple of hours of the week. Variety is a key to staying engaged.
The best situation for me, though, is having some reason to talk to someone. Today was a great example. An interaction designer had been assigned to have me review some prototypes, and he came at 3:00 to go over my suggestions. Having a conversation keeps my brain turned on and active. So when I encounter the Friday afternoon blahs, the best thing is to find a SME or developer to visit. (Scheduling ahead of time is good etiquette, of course, but some people may be open to spur-of-the-moment visits.) Having someone to interact with always livens up my brain.
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7 Comments to 'Dealing with the Friday Afternoon Doldrums'
March 23, 2009
You get to clock out at 4 PM?! Lucky you. I have to stay until 5:30.
When do you start? My work day is 8 hours long. 8:30 to 5:30. One unpaid hour for lunch.
March 24, 2009
Our department is pretty flexible—the idea for most of us is that you get the work done and you’re there when you need to be in order to coordinate with other team members. By choice, I start my work day at 7:30am and don’t take a very long lunch, enough to give my brain a break. Other jobs in the organization require specific hours.
March 25, 2009
Oh, that sounds cool. I might try that sometime. I would have to get approval for that, and right now there are other priorities.
March 28, 2009
@Ben: Funny you should mention these doldrums! Ever since January, when our company acquired a foosball table for one of the corner offices, these doldrums have virtually vanished!
For example, just yesterday, Friday at about 4:30pm, three colleagues and I started to play a few games. In just one-half hour, another half-dozen developers, consultants and project managers packed the room. Haha. I must admit, foosball has become quite a magnetic spectacle, not only in interacting with coworkers I rarely work with, but also in fighting the afternoon doldrums with some friendly teamwork and taunting competition! ^_^
March 30, 2009
There’s also a foosball table in a room near my workstation, but I’d feel a little guilty using more than five or ten minutes of my time in there.
But when some people who do play get into the games, the rest of us can hear them through the walls—it definitely livens them up.
March 31, 2009
Foosball and flexibility — What concepts! Grin. That wouldn’t float here in puritanical Pennsylvania, on the East Coast.
In businesses here, business hours are, well, business hours. Period. Flex-time is disappearing as fast as the stock market dives.
And foosball?! Yeesh. I wish, but no way that’s happening.
April 3, 2009
@Ben: Hey, here’s a little update. Since the manager who was “Foosball Coordinator” said his final good-byes today before leaving for greener pastures, he passed the torch to none other than “The Ninja” a.k.a. myself. Unlike the first (and stalled) tournament, this new one will consist of volunteers only. Within hours of assigning opposing captains for the “Development Devils” (Dev, QA, Training, Support) and “Solutions Sharks” (largely PMs and ACs), I’ve already collected two-dozen signatures. It’s looking to be a wild tourney, haha. =)