That Friday Feeling

For the past eighteen months, I’ve been either fully remote or working a hybrid schedule. Our teams have completely embraced Zoom, one result of which being that any meeting has a virtual option. As a communications professional, it’s a boon to be able to listen in to meetings that are tangential to my work, without having to carve out time for me to physically be there. It’s been fantastic to get insight into these kinds of meetings: I get a greater understanding of the overall projects I write about, I can chip in as needed, but I don’t have to be fully “present,” instead I’m a fly on the wall. A member of the media. I’m immersed but not forced to choose between work time and meeting time on my schedule.

I hope someone is already doing a study about this — about the simultaneous expansion and compression of our work week since the pandemic. Granted, there are some organizations that will go back to business as usual, with butts in seats every day, but the smart ones will roll with this opportunity and continue the virtual/hybrid experiment. I think we’ll find that the compression of our time, the expansion of what we can take in during a day, while excellent in so many ways, comes to mean that a full five days is now unsustainable.

During the pandemic, I’ve found that by Friday, my mind is singed and smoking from four days of intensity that we just didn’t have before. It makes sense: all week long, I’ve been at least half-listening to other meetings while writing or making graphics, as well as chatting through associated issues and questions with colleagues during larger meetings. Every experience is more immersive, more intense. No wonder I limp across the finish line each week.

I used to joke that “early in the week Brandi” vastly overestimated what “Friday Brandi” would be capable of, and it’s never been more true than now. My colleagues confirm it’s like this for them, as well. I hope we see some larger thought, research, and writing on this, so that we can adjust our collective expectations for ourselves and our teams and attempt to maintain a humane, productive work environment.

For now, I’m going to just lean back in my chair and stare out the window for a few moments.