Whether a matter of personal productivity or circumstance, which part of the week is best for your most personally productive work.
Please get into details of what makes you productive on those days โ whether it is how meetings typically stack up or otherwise.
Top comments (51)
not monday, nor friday
Acurate
minimalWage === this
I will be the odd one but I will say - Monday ! It is the first office day of the week (we have a hybrid setting) , and you still have energy from the weekend.
Same here! I generally fill my free time with other activities than coding, so on Mondays I am so hyped to finally get it started again ๐คฉ
The day that I have no meetings :D
No meetings? Does that even exist? ๐ฑ
Productivity must cluster in the middle of the week. Monday is for gearing up and by Friday I'm exhausted. Used to be I moved mountains on Thursdays, but nowadays it's the meeting day. Should probably change that.
I'll go first: We have "no meeting Fridays" which are pretty great for a certain type of productivity, but it's also a way to ease into the weekend, so I don't try to make those the maximally productive days.
By Wednesday and Thursday, most key communication is behind me โ as well as a lot of my "critical tasks" and I can usually get some good stuff done on more creative work those days.
Hmmm never thought about it before but definitely Thursday:
Sunday on a side project I really care about. Saturdays tend to be home chore days.
Friday.
On Monday I feel like I have a mountain of upcoming work.
But on Friday, I have that sense that 90% of the weeks tasks are finished. I can then enter Zen mode and work on things that I didn't expect to get to this week. I am way more productive when I can work in Zen mode.
I did some work for a business which actually had impressive data on not just their own but a few 100 other businesses across industries to measure "output". This may have been simply widgets produced (manual), to cases worked (e.g. request for pension payouts), to lines of code written (based on end of day commits through a period) through to sales ads approved etc. Super broad...
Regardless the data always showed Tuesday as the most "productive" followed by a Wednesday, approx 10-15% loss of output. Then Thursday and Monday was quite interchangeable dependent on the industry. Friday categorically dire.
There were lots of ideas as to the reasons and some are actually quite simple. If you map over the top the resources available, you generally see Mondays are a good long weekend or an easy sick day. Fridays are typically the half day, half pay and long weekend candidates also. The workforce that is available on a Monday typically talk about their weekends, get up to speed with their tasks for the week and when they hit Tuesday they've got themselves set up.
By Wednesday you're now losing productivity typically due to the output of a Tuesday surfacing issues / problems / meetings etc. Most businesses tend to schedule "events" on a Wednesday e.g. training, awareness (h&s) etc so you lose hours. "Mid week check in" as well as weekly reporting up through the business also becomes a drag.
For me, it's usually Wednesdays or Thursdays. Mondays are packed with meetings and management stuff, and on Fridays, I'm usually quite exhausted and we do sprint reviews each 2 weeks, so not the most productive for me.
Wednesday and Thursday I can get work done most of the day if I don't have too many PRs to review. On a good Thursday, I can get a straight 4h block of coding time at most (usually less)
It's been a while since I've had one of those coding days where you spend all day coding... I kinda miss those ๐
Regarding Tuesdays, I don't believe they exist xD
It's Thursday for me. I block off the entire day for coding. Still end up with meetings sometimes anyway though. It's not really preference, just Thursday was the day I have the fewest recurring obligations, so I chose it.
I don't like the first four days of the week, I'm quite productive on Friday because I know that I can work on some stuff on the week-end.
But mainly, I'm more of a night owl so: productive late a night. ๐๐ป
All the same. I try to treat every day the same Mo - Sun including when waking up or going to bed. Is much easier for the body. I love every day and I am so happy and blessed to work as a developer. Thanks
As long as the coding is goin smoothly i only stop for a coffee :) But i'd say the middle of the week is the best for me.
same here !
Tuesday - Thursday are the best days for me.
We do big house chores on weekends, so I usually take Monday and Friday a bit slow, like do some blog writing and watch/read tutorials with a little house chores in between ๐