IBM Research has recently started “Think Fridays”. On Fridays, instead of the usual routine of meeting, teleconference, meeting, teleconference, meeting, we’re urged to avoid meetings and 
.
To be honest, thinking isn’t all they want us to do — they want us to write, too. Code, patents, papers…all those things which get pushed aside when your calendar is full.
Many people have “Think Fridays” projects; mine is a Java-learning exercise which, when I finish it, will improve some of the ways I deal with Lotus Notes (in particular, it’ll help me visualize the people on a note or in a calendar item). I’ve already written a Python version, but it requires firing off an external process — it should be possible to use the Notes Java bindings to accomplish my task, and some day, I’ll get it done.
Not today, though. Instead, I had three meetings — only one of which probably violated the “Think Fridays” spirit. That one was on an ongoing project which will be presented to a bunch of people bright and early Monday morning — and I left the meeting with my brand-new d3 GTD TiddlyWiki crammed full of action items (some of which I dealt with later in the day — seeing crossed-out items is a good feeling!).
So I spent the rest of the morning dealing with that project (and even doing a tiny bit of coding in the process); then lunchtime arrived, along with my second meeting. This one was scheduled at my instigation — I spent lunch talking with one of our new RSMs and learning about his project (which I want to use!). Then it was back to my office to work on my project…except that I’d gotten e-mail from a colleague back East that they’d fixed up their system so I could tie it into the thing I was readying for Monday. So I spent the next couple of hours doing that.
Then it was time for my last meeting, where I served as an experimental subject for some of the Activities work being done at Almaden. That took me to the end of the day — again, it was interesting and possibly useful, but I never touched my Friday project. Maybe I’ll sneak some time for it on Monday….