Stop scheduling meetings on Tuesdays and get to work
I might be the last person to know this, but Tuesday is the most productive day of the week. I was alerted to this fact by this blog post, which pointed to some research by Robert Half International. But then when I went to dig in deeper, Tuesday-is-the-most-productive-day-ever was all over the Internet.
This article says that in 2002, 1998 &1987 the data showed the same thing – Tuesday is the most productive day of the week at work.
Here’s a piece from 2002 talking about how Tuesday is the best day to get work done.
And then there’s this 1994 book: Office Biology or Why Tuesday Is Your Most Productive Day and Other Relevant Facts for Survival in the Workplace
I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical at first. I wasn’t really sure that Tuesday was my go-to day of productivity. Then I was reading a post by Steve Rubel on his Micro Persuasion blog about becoming an expert, and in the post, Rubel included a chart of his Google Reader reading habits. And then it dawned on me that I should check my stats in Google Reader to see what they showed.
I typically read RSS feeds from Google Reader at about the same rate every day, with the exception of the weekends. Or so I thought! Here are my trends for the last 30 days:
Those big spikes? Those are Tuesdays!
Here is the day of week chart:
And just for fun, here’s the time of day chart. Anyone who knows me well – or ever worked with me – will not be surprised at the early morning lull.
So what does all this mean? For me, it means that it’s time to take some deliberate action. If I am more produtive on Tuesdays, I’m going to be proactive about keeping that day as productive as possible. I am not going to schedule meetings on Tuesdays, for example, because meetings break up the flow of my day. And I plan to complete one major, sticky, important-but-difficult or important-but-boring project every Tuesday. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.
What do you think? And what do your *Trends* show? Is Tuesday your go-to day?
*If you use Google Reader, you can find this data by clicking the Trends link at the top of the left-hand navigation in Google Reader.
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May 8th, 2008 at 11:39 am
[...] The management science involved is knowing the design of the task you’re attempting to accomplish, and finding core tasks that are necessary, then postponing others so they don’t get in the way. This keeps people from inventing work, or from getting stalled on relatively inconsequential tasks when bigger tasks need doing. And then there’s this 1994 book: Office Biology or Why Tuesday Is Your Most Productive Day and Other Relevant Facts for Survival in the Workplace. There is a whole book about how Tuesdays are so productive. How could I have missed this incredibly important fact for all these years? ^ [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I’ve cleared all meetings and emails from next Tuesday’s schedule. This coming week, I’m going to make Tuesday count, and take Wednesday off. Great article!
May 9th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Does more Google Reader mean you’re more productive? It could just mean you’re procastrinating.
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Wouter,
That is a really good point. I did consider that when I was writing the article, and tried to address it with the statement that I generally use Google Reader at the same rate every day, but that was a pretty lame attempt, I have to say. I concede that using Google Reader as my gauge is not the best way to measure productivity – but it did show some interesting correlation to the “Tuesday” data, and I don’t typically use feed reading as a procrastination tactic…but still. Your point remains a good one. – Melissa
May 10th, 2008 at 2:18 am
[...] read an interesting article linked from Hacker News to 16th Letter which discussed different productivity on different [...]
May 20th, 2008 at 10:16 am
[...] couple of weeks back I wrote this post about productivity on Tuesdays. That realy got me thinking about my own productivity and what days of the week I am able to get [...]