The best working from home day

If your boss now allows you to split your working days between an office cubicle and the comfy couch at home, chances are you have become obsessed with trying to discover the best days of the week to be out of the office.

When workers were given the green light to return to the office, many headed back to the workplace with the enthusiasm of a food critic arriving at a fast-food outlet.

Working from home (WFH) has delivered a buffet of benefits including an environment devoid of overbearing bosses and sniping colleagues and without the relentless daily commute.

Deeply concerned with workers’ hesitancy to make their way back into the office, some bosses have offered a compromise that combines the best of both worlds.

And so the hybrid worker has become a prominent feature of our reset workplaces, with many full-time staff choosing to be out the office for a single day each week.

Although this new style of working has been warmly embraced by employers and employees alike, the question of which day to be out of the office is not easy to answer.

Take Monday, for example, which typically is a day of panic, pressure and meetings as the new working week begins.

It is most likely the day you would prefer to not be in the office. Not being there, however, may make it difficult to get the working week off to a much-needed positive start.

Besides, taking Monday out of your office mix may inadvertently give the impression to the boss and colleagues that you need time to recover from a big weekend.

Tuesday could be better, though the problem with this day is that you will be partitioning the working week into uneven chunks – a day in followed by a day out and then another three in.

For those who like order and uniformity in their working lives, having Tuesdays out of the office is almost certain to create a sense of imbalance.

Then there is Wednesday – hump day or the midpoint of the regular working week.

It is hardly a surprise the so-called worry-free Wednesday has become the day of choice for WFH or working from a library or café.

Hump day breaks up the working week into two neat chunks. But it also permits mid-week relief from a tiring commute and those pesky colleagues who test your patience.

Wednesday out of the office allows for the perfect balance of two working modes.

Two days of planning with your colleagues early in the week and a productive “head down bum up” Wednesday WFH, followed by two days of collaborating with colleagues in the office to wrap up the working week.

Those opting for out-of-office Wednesdays regularly report that they return on Thursday feeling recharged and reinvigorated to tackle the remaining two days.

And unlike Monday or Friday, Wednesday is sufficiently removed from any lingering stereotype that you are trying to stitch up a long weekend.

Thursday flies under the radar as an excellent day to work from outside the office.

Choosing this day will provide enough solitude to meet looming end-of-week deadlines so you can fully enjoy a more relaxed Friday once back in the office.

Friday is the most suspicious choice of all. Choose the last day of the working week and without doubt some of your colleagues will consider your absence to be a waterslide straight into the weekend.

Besides, why choose Friday when it already has a reputation for being the most relaxed working day of the week?

Fridays remains the day of long lunches and afternoon drinks. And it is also the day the boss is least likely to question your absence from your cubicle at 4.02pm.

Give up Friday and you will be denying yourself the one day in the week where there is a chance to let your hair down while in the office.

While no one day is necessarily ideal for being out of the office, if we do get to choose then we will need a strategy that maximises visibility in the office at the same time as minimising our stress.

And spare a thought for those who have to choose two days each working week to toil away outside the office.

Picking the right combination of days is extremely challenging though a remote Wednesday-to-Thursday option seems to hold some promise.