How to be Productive After Everyone’s Stopped Working on Friday

It’s 2:33 PM on a Friday afternoon.

Your workweek has consisted of intense meetings, long hours and tight deadlines. Now you are trapped at your desk as you wait for the arrival of important emails that won’t appear until Monday morning. Only two and a half hours left until you can clock out, and that beloved weekend finally welcomes you with open arms. It’s so close, yet so very far away.

You are desperately seeking to kill time. You check all of your social media accounts. No new notifications in the last eight minutes. You head over to your favorite news website and quickly run down all of the articles. You refresh your email account. Nothing. You check the clock.

2:35 PM. Ugh!

Does this sound familiar? Don’t panic! You are not alone. We have all been there.

Let’s explore some ways that can help you increase productivity during when everyone’s stopped working on Friday!

Create a To-Do List for the Following Week

A slow Friday afternoon presents the perfect opportunity to create a to-do list for the following week. Creating a to-do list will make the following workweek less stressful. When you write down your upcoming tasks in the form of a to-do list, you reduce the chance of disturbance in your cognitive processes. Committing to project plans in advance and planning incremental goals means you can focus better on completing each task.

When you create your to-do list, remember to:

• Prioritize your top three tasks for each day.
• Use action verbs at the beginning of each task.
• Describe the step-by-step process in which you will complete each task.

Exercise

Stress is a common factor that plays a role in all of our lives. Right now you are probably stressed about something that happened at work or in your personal life. Stress is often accompanied by many health risks.

Sitting down at work all day can also present some health risks. The human body just wasn’t designed to sit for hours at a time.

Use this time on Friday afternoon to exercise and reduce the health risks that are caused by working. Going for a quick walk, pulling out a yoga mat in the office or doing some simple breathing exercises can all benefit your health. Exercise can also increase your brainpower, which will help you push through the rest of your day.

Organize Your Work Area

Do you ever stop what you’re doing and take a look at your desk? Do you realize you wouldn’t be able to find a specific item, even if you had a GPS?

Your work area can get messy as the week develops. It’s hard to think with all the shuffled paperwork, scattered post-it notes and your favorite bobble head planted face-first.

Organization plays a big role in your productivity. A messy workspace is distracting, and you’ll be more concerned about that pile of unfiled meeting notes instead of the task at hand. It’s important that you clean up your work area and have it ready for the following week.

Clear Your Emails

Your email inbox can certainly be a scary sight as the workweek progresses. As assignments pile up, the number of unread emails can quickly creep up to a number that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.

Friday afternoon is the perfect time to go through these emails!

Imagine walking into work on Monday, sitting down in front of your computer, and seeing an inbox with almost no outstanding messages.

Do you feel that? That’s the miraculous feeling of relief that’s currently surging through your body. Go ahead and take that sip of coffee. You deserve it.

Big projects won’t be assigned near the end of the day on a Friday. Therefore, you will have some down time to navigate your way through any smaller, overflow tasks from earlier in the week.

Don’t Waste Your Friday!

You can get ahead of the game by making the most out of your Friday. It’s important to utilize this dreadfully slow workday prepared for the following week. Now stop staring at the clock and get some work done!