One of my coworkers just informed us of the time shifting he does on Fridays. Referring to it as Friday Savings Time (great name), it means getting to work earlier than normal, eating lunch at his desk quickly, and being out the door in the early afternoon before traffic gets really nasty.
I really like that idea. When the flying season kicks in next year, I may just have to adopt something similar. Then I'd be able to get there before sunset on Friday.
Anyone else have a special schedule on Fridays?
Posted by jzawodn at November 05, 2004 04:05 PM
I have the "Four o'clock Friday" rule whereby I start nothing new after 4PM Friday, nor do I answer the phone. Email, Interweb, and commenting on blogs is ok after four ;-)
Heh, I start preparing on _Thursday_.
I'm a night person, most productive between 11PM and 3AM, so I work my weekend schedule around that.
Thursday: Go to bed early. 9:30 or 10PM.
Friday: Normal work hours.
Friday night: Ingest massive quantities of sugar and caffeine. Stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning.
Saturday: Wake up whenever, stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning again.
Sunday: Wake up whenever, stay up until 2AM (any later and it's hard to function on Monday.)
Monday: Go to bed at the normal time, resetting my sleep schedule.
That gives me almost three full nights at peak performance.
Going to bed early on Thursday is _critical_, though. If I don't, then I crash by midnight, and lose 5 hours of prime coding time.
Here in Atlanta, I'd need to leave shortly after I get to work (9 AM) in order to beat the traffic. Typically, I try to leave as late as possible to miss the frustration known as Atlanta traffic.
We at Texas Instruments India have a "Fridays at Five" initiative where the employees are expected to try leaving by Five on Fridays. Not that you are expected to arrive early becase of this, but we end up getting in early anyways. And if you have been to Bangalore, the traffic after six will make you feel that this is a great policy!
My "standard" work-week is proportedly 43.5 hours, but I usually work closer to 50-60 hours, in practice. Friday is my day, period.
I almost always "schedule" some bogus conference calls (which I can take from home), and do the following:
1) Grocery shop for the upcoming week
2) Pay bills
3) Work out
4) Ignore most requests, citing my "busy" schedule
5) Have lunch with various friends
6) Get my car washed
7) Do laundry
8th (and most important) - bar-hop and spend at least $50 on food and drink (not hard), as a way to decompress.
Almost without fail, I am home every Friday, which makes up for the 12-15 hour days I typically pull M-Thursday (yes, really).
I usually get about 70-100 e-mails/day M-Thur; Fridays, I get 10, tops.
I try to work out every day, and always am amazed at the number of people my age at the gym during the day. I am starting to question if anyone really works (in the traditional 9-5 sense, anymore).
The first time I worked out from 9:00am-10:00am on a weekday, I had visions of it being me and the "silver sneakers" 60+ crowd. In fact, no one over 50 was there, it was all "normal" people slacking - the gym was near capacity.
In fact, it's my honest hope that the US adopts a (4x10) work-week once the economy improves - it seems a large number of people in my area already practice it.
My boss, just to be a nusiance, occassionally calls staff meetings on Fridays, which almost no one attends.
Fridays rule!!!
I've been to Bangalore. The traffic is pretty insane!
We tend to have a 'wine-down' Friday or subscribe to the POETS rule (Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saurday). Around 4, 4.30, we all crack open a beer and a glass of wine by our desks, by 5ish we're all usually in one of the meeting rooms together planning the night ahead. We use it more as a group relaxing thing not to mention a social tool. Works fairly well with a relatively young (and thus family free, I'm afriad) staff.
Get up at 10, read email, lunch with friends, then a movie. That's my Friday.
I prefer the 4x10 week. Three day weekends rock.
Of course I'm on call 24x7x365 and I consult, so sometimes there's not enough hours in the 4x10 week, but then I bill hourly too.
Fortunately for me, my currently client has a strict 40-hour work week rule for consultants. So an extra thirty minutes here, and extra hour there, and I've got a 5 or 6 hour day on Friday.
Now I've got a great term for it: Friday Savings time.
I time-shift Fridays as well, but for a different reason. I've gotta make it home before the Sabbath begins and cook dinner. These days that's 4:41pm, so I've gotta leave work no later than 3pm.
We tend to take a 2 hour lunch on Fridays. I am not sure going home early is something I want to do since my wife is home with the kids. So we go kill time walking around the mall (our office is just a couple of minutes from a mall, and not much else is close). Sometimes we go to a sports bar or something.
And I tend to cut out thirty minutes early on Friday as well.
Yeah, I take Fridays off. I work 8am-6pm Monday through Thursday, and then have a three-day weekend.
If you get in late and take a long lunch, you HAVE to leave early. For proper balance...
I live in Sausalito. The worst weekly traffic on the GG Bridge/101 corridor through Marin, by far, starts around 2 pm Friday afternoon when those clever time shifters who weekend north of SF simultaneously decide to beat the commute ...
I just organised to take every friday off. Too much annual leave CAN be a good thing *grin*
