No More Fridays!

I am not working on Fridays anymore. I’m just not doing it. Period. Why?

Well, lots of reasons, I suppose, but mainly because I don’t want to anymore. I want to have more leisure time. Don’t we all? I want to spend more time in the garage, or on my motorcycle, or maybe cruising around in my Cutlass. I also want to get in better physical shape, spend more time taking the dogs to the park, hanging out with my wife, and volunteering, either with church, or Malachi’s storehouse, or Atlanta Humane Society. Do I sound like a slacker? Maybe I do. I’ll own that. It’s cool. But honestly, what it boils down to is simply that I don’t need to work on Fridays anymore.

To be honest, Fridays have been light for quite some time. Fridays have never been a good day to push Salesforce changes to Prod, because if you put something in Prod and then walk away for the weekend, you open the possibility for something to be broken all weekend. Fridays have also never been a good day to make Salesforce changes in a Sandbox, because then you have to come back on Monday and try to remember where you left off. Fridays aren’t good for meetings, either, for the same reason; whatever you discuss will get lost in the flurry of things that happen over the weekend. For those reasons, I haven’t had full, productive days on Fridays for quite a while. I don’t think this will affect my overall pace or my workload, because there’s not as much overall work as there was 3 or 4 years ago. I’ve had a few clients slow their pace or change to other platforms, and I purposely haven’t tried to replace them, because I want to be able to have a sharper focus on the clients that I do have. But because of my weird work ethic, I’ve felt like I have to sit here at my desk and continue to push this mouse around. So I’ve been doing Trailheads (almost a triiple-star Ranger!) and Partner Training courses (learning more NPSP stuff). More recently, I’ve been looking at AI and Agentforce stuff, building a plan to skill up in those areas, as well. Those efforts aren’t wasted, but there are also plenty of other things I could work on that are more personal. For example, I upgraded to a Harley a couple years ago, and I haven’t even put enough miles on it to warrant an oil change. That’s sort-of depressing. My dogs are so happy when I come downstairs at the end of the day, because they know it’s time for a walk, and I realize that I have missed their joy all day long. And sometimes I also realize that I’ve been sitting in my chair for hours, barely moving, and I have to make them wait a few minutes so I can get my legs under me again before we can go check out the neighborhood. That’s not healthy. I’ve also got stuff around the house that needs to be cleaned up, like this bookcase full of old computer hardware and game CDs.

Anyway, the point is that there are other things that I could and should be doing rather than just sitting here at this desk, and unless I tell myself that it’s not a work day, I won’t do it. So I’m now telling myself (and whoever’s reading this, which is probably nobody) that Fridays aren’t work days anymore. They haven’t been productive work days for quite a while, anyway, so I am really just admitting that to myself and announcing it to you. But I honestly don’t expect this to change much, if anything. If I’m working on something for you that’s high-priority, I am going to continue working on it rather than letting lt sit there idle all day Friday. If you make an appointment with me by EOD Thursday for Friday, I will be available for you. And if you have something urgent come up on a Friday, I will do whatever I can to make myself available for you, just as I always have. The only real difference is that if a Friday is the first time I hear from you about something, then you will probably not hear from me until the following Monday. And let’s be honest, we all know I will have my phone on me, and I’ll probably be close to home, so I will see your request, and if it sounds like it’s important for me to respond or work on something right away, I probably will.

Let me know what you think about all this. I am truly interested in hearing what you all think. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and for being one of my awesome clients!