But probably not for the same reason the Easybeats had Friday on their Minds. I have Friday on my mind because I arranged with my current employer to move to a four day week starting from the beginning of the year. I mentioned this in my first ever Income/Expense/Activity report a few days ago.
The problem I faced on my first Friday was a realization that I wasn’t prepared. Oops. I quickly sat down and brainstormed a few activities for the day, and came up with some things to do. In the end I got a couple of things done, but it wasn’t a productive day. I also realized that I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for the day.
By the time the next week had rolled on, I had put some more thought into it and came to a single conclusion.
The One Thing
That conclusion was to have one primary goal for each and every Friday.
The goal is to do one or more activities that will generate income.
It’s too easy to fall into the trap of doing a set of activities that while they may be useful - such as writing blog posts - don’t directly produce income. This isn’t to say that writing content doesn’t produce income, it does. A good post can increase traffic and readership and thus have a positive effect on income.
However, I see content generation as an ongoing activity that brings continual growth to a web site. It’s the secret that isn’t really a secret, encouraging readers to become subscribers and come back day after day to read my valuable content.
I would be better off planning and building a new website, or spending some time on an existing website evaluating how I the ads are performing and looking at other alternative. I could spend some time searching for appropriate affiliate links and building a PPC campaign. I could even create a product using Cafepress and sell it through my site.
These are all things that could be done in a single day, but would take a lot more time to achieve over several evenings, and would take away time from developing content.
Friday On My Mind
This still doesn’t help me when Friday arrives. Sure I’m going to do some activities that will produce some revenue. But what?
Well, I think about this during the week. I’ve got a whiteboard on the wall in my home office, which I use to write down the ideas and random thoughts that pop into my head.
On Thursday night, I’ll decide on the main activities for the next day. Sometimes those activities are left over from the previous week. I’ll estimate how long each activity will take and write that next to it.
Finally, I’ll list the activities in the order in which I’ll do them, with their allocated times next to them.
Let’s Dance
When Friday arrives, after all the preliminaries, I’ll start working on the actions in the list. When I complete an action, I’ll cross it off, take a short break - maybe for coffee or a 10 minute sit down on the couch - and then I’ll move on to the next action.
Even though I’ve ordered the actions in the order I want to do them, it doesn’t always happen that way. I try and keep to the time limit, and in most cases I do, bit sometimes it’s necessary to finish the action even if it takes an hour or two longer.
I also find that the list grows during the day. I’ll finish an action, look at the list, and think of something else that belongs there. I write it down on the assumption that if it doesn’t get done then it will next Friday.
I should also tell you that I’m not a morning person, so the morning is generally unproductive. My mojo kicks in around midday, and I can finish quite late on Friday evening or early Saturday morning. A great reason to do this on Friday and not Monday.
Anyway, that’s my current process. As this experiment progresses I expect that my processes will evolve and take new directions.
