Here's an idea: "roller coaster week" Monday: 4 hours Tuesday: 6 hours Wednesday: 10 hours Thursday: 6 hours Friday: 4 hours total: 30 hours Ho

Here's an idea: "roller coaster week" Monday: 4 hours Tuesday: 6 hours Wednesday: 10 hours Thursday: 6 hours Friday: 4 hours total: 30 hours How it works: - Monday: The second half of your day is work. Your morning is open to sleep in, get chores done, run errands, eat brunch with friends. Second half of the day should be meetings to plan the work for the week, and catch up from the previous week. - Tuesday: Very few meetings, planning and gathering items to work on for Wednesday. - Wednesday: Heads-down work, no meetings allowed, period. Turn off all communcation; this is "productivity day". You've had 2 days to get your "mise en place", and now you have 10 hours uninterrupted to churn away. - Thursday: Shorter day than wednesday, wrapping up what you didn't finish. - Friday: The first half of the day is work. Meetings to recap the week, complete any last minute details, documentation. Second half of the day enables you to get more errands done or get an early start to your weekend. The time you save allows you to rest your brain, ruminate, get more sleep, exercise, pursue a hobby. This rest time recharges your brain to enable it to do more work when you are working. The roller-coaster nature makes you think the week is pretty easy most of the time, but you know you've prepared for the hard part and can tackle it in one go. Because of the forced planning and dedicated work time, you'll be more productive than if you only got drips and drabs of interrupted work done for 5 days.