Coping 4: Wednesday focusday

As with most of my coping methods, this one isn't very novel, but it works. I'm lucky enough to have reading and writing as part of my job description. On the other hand, because these things are part of what I do, I need to do them. Doing them, within working hours, isn't always easy. Work has an awful lot of meetings and an awful lot of emails. How, then, is it possible to balance the demands of contact-based work with the need to do focus-requiring work? This is what Wednesday focusday is for.

There's a bit of a norm in Dutch working culture for parents who work less than five days a week to take Wednesday off. This is because the school day is shorter on Wednesdays. So it becomes a de facto family day for a lot of people. I ride on the coattails of this norm by making Wednesday a day for no meetings and no emails. It gives me one reliable day during the week when I know I can have a whole day to do tasks that require focus. Because it's always on the same day, it's easier to normalize it and make it a strict rule, rather than something that gets nudged aside. I've heard over the years of organizations that institutionalize this idea: one whole day a week when no one schedules meetings, so that everyone can have a head-start at being able to get done the things that need a bit of undisturbed time and attention. For me, Wednesday focusday serves that role, and slots into a soft cultural norm that was already there, waiting to be used.