If our to-do lists were the final say, we might get all of our work done by Wednesday. But things pop up. Meetings get moved and deadlines get shifted. Author Laura Vanderkam fights this by leaving her Fridays wide open:

When a meeting runs long, you cancel another and then double book a time slot in the future. You stack new deadlines on top of each other, as if time will somehow magically expand beyond the 24 hours per day the universe grants us.

…

Having open Fridays, I decided, would let me bump projects there. My priorities wouldn’t have to roll over into the next week, which probably had its own deadlines.

I’ve long called Fridays my “mop-up” day, but I came across a better word for this concept while reading Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Sharif’s new book, Scarcity. The word they use for open space? Slack.

Read her entire essay here.

This article originally appeared on 99u.com.

Sean Blanda is the managing editor of 99u.com.

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