At 2:58 last Friday, I closed my laptop, turned off every notification on my phone except calls and carried a library book and a glass of sweet tea out to the back step under the oak. It was 91 degrees. I lasted forty minutes outside before I moved to the couch under the ceiling fan, and I read for another hour and a half without anybody needing anything from me.
That's the plan for this summer: every Friday from Memorial Day weekend until school starts in August, the laptop closes at 3, and the afternoon is mine.
Fridays are already one of my two home days, which makes this possible. It didn't make it automatic. Here's what it took at work and how the first month went.
What it took at work
I'm a project manager, and Friday afternoon is a popular time for other people to discover problems. So I did four things in May.
- I start at 7 on Fridays. No commute, no lunch walk, a sandwich at my desk at 11:30. Seven to three is a full day.
- I moved my weekly status report to Thursday. It had drifted to Friday afternoons over the winter. Now it goes out Thursday by 4, which our director told me is more useful anyway, since it lands before people plan their Fridays.
- I moved two recurring meetings. A Friday 3:30 schedule review now happens Thursday at 2. A Friday 4:00 check-in with a contractor became a short Thursday email.
- I asked my manager directly. Here's what I said: "For the summer, I'd like to start at 7 on Fridays and sign off at 3. Everything for the week will be wrapped by Thursday, and I'll keep my phone on for calls if something truly can't wait." The answer: "As long as Thursday's report is on time, I don't care when you stop on Friday."
From the HR side: flexible arrangements that get written down survive, and the ones agreed to in a hallway tend to die the first busy week. So that same afternoon, I sent my manager a two-line email confirming what we'd agreed and the end date, August 7, the first Friday after school starts. It felt formal. It also means nobody has to remember the conversation.
On my calendar, Fridays from 3 to 5 now say "Offline," and the block is set to decline new invites automatically. That one setting has done a surprising amount of the work.
The scorecard so far
- Friday, May 29: quiet. I read half a mystery and fell asleep on the couch for twenty minutes.
- Friday, June 5: quiet, mostly. I got a call at 3:40 about a schedule question, answered it in six minutes and went back to the book.
- Friday, June 12: not quiet. A customer review slipped from Thursday to Friday at 3, and it was mine to run. I ran it, then took Monday afternoon instead, which I'd never have thought to do before.
- Friday, June 19: doesn't count. We were in Gulf Shores.
- Friday, June 26: quiet, sweet tea, 91 degrees, the oak.
Three out of four working Fridays. I'll take it.
Where the afternoon goes
The library downtown is doing most of the heavy lifting. I keep three holds going at a time and pick them up on Mondays, so by Friday there's always something waiting. So far this summer: two mysteries, a memoir by a woman who restored an old farmhouse and a novel I'd had on my list since 2023. Four books in four weeks, which is more than I read in the first four months of the year.
Harper's summer has been a mix of day camp weeks and home weeks, and in July she has her two weeks of camp grandma in Florence. On camp weeks I have the house to myself until pickup. On home weeks she reads too, usually at the other end of the couch with Moose wedged between us. Last Friday she looked up and announced that this was "the second-best part of summer, after the beach." From an eleven-year-old who just finished elementary school, I'll accept that ranking.
What it took, in the end, was less courage than I expected and more logistics: a 7 a.m. start, one report moved, two meetings moved, one email and a calendar setting. The quiet part was easy. I just had to stop scheduling over it.
