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I have always wanted to work a four day week, and although sometimes I manage to accomplish this, overall what usually happens is quite the opposite and I end up working the weekend too.

But I came across this post from the very, very clever people at Signal37 where they explain quite clearly why working a 4 day week actually works out better for all concerned.

So, from today, on Fridays I don’t work. To clarify, that does not mean that I will not be online. I will probably even check my email. But I will not reply, unless I deem that the world would collapse if I ignored a crisis. And I will probably do a lot of writing, but only if I feel like it. But overall, Friday will be MY day, and to share it with me you have to be invited :-)

It will be an interesting experiment, but a worthwhile one I think. In order for it to be a success, I need to make up the 8 hours in the remaining 32, which translates into making each working hour more productive by working harder and smarter.

Some ways to do that:

• If I don’t keep a schedule, it is possible that I could double my productivity. This is taken from Marc Andreesen’s suggestion to simply not schedule any meetings. At first it sounds insane, but when I think how often I have had to break my work flow to reluctantly go to a meeting, it starts to make sense. Marc’s explains it like this”

When someone emails or calls to say, “Let’s meet on Tuesday at 3″, the appropriate response is: “I’m not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can’t commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I’m available, I’ll meet with you.”

• Switch off email during the bulk of the day, so I can focus on task at hand fully. I cannot follow the 4 hour work weeksuggestion of only checking email once a week or so, but I can definitely live with only checking my email at the beginning and end of the day. I’ve heard it is also a good idea to “only touch an email once” ie deal with it immediately. All this will surely help me focus and save me time.

• Ignore the twitter stream I don’t think I am strong enough for this one!

• Stop chit chatting and taking unnecessary 15 minute coffee breaks. I do these to relax, but the whole point now is that I should stay focussed so I can relax properly on Fridays. Of course, I will still coffee, but not while taking a break. Simply sip it while I type.

• Log all time spent on each task for a week, and identify inefficiencies. This will probably be an eye opener.

• Outsource more. This is a big one. I already outsource some of my more mundane tasks to India or somewhere, and this has had a huge boost on time saved. In fact, I think I should write a separate blog post on this, because proper outsourcing can really change your work style, your productivity and - most importantly - your bottom line. However, I want to focus more attention to outsourcing work to companies “down the street”. This way, I can delegate work that I still need to keep a good eye on, without having to hire more staff.

• Make better use of productivity tools and principles, like Remember the Milk, Highrise, Get it Done etc. The learning curve on these is high, I think, but they work for so many people that I should start taking the plunge and making a more formal commitment. On the same note, I need to save time “for the future” by taking time to organize my work space, my filing system (especially delicious bookmarks) and improve my document naming habits.

I have a feeling that once I apply a more disciplined attitude to work, I will realize that not only can I take Friday off, but I can do more in the four day week than I did in the five day one.

I’ve been active online for 14 years now, but it was only about 14 months ago that I really got interested in social media (with thanks to Mike Stopforth and Vince Maher who gave such compelling presentations at that First Tuesday breakfast that sparked my interest.)

I have watched, analyzed and strategised from the sidelines. In the meantime, I have had great pleasure (and some success) in helping SMEs active in the online space to up their game, and reap the benefits. But I was involved in other “real” businesses, and couldn’t really make a full time commitment to play this game myself with full vigor.

Until now. I have handed over the reigns of all other commitments, and I am dedicating myself full time to the online space(yes, I know that in this space full time means 80 hour work weeks). Relatively speaking, it was an easy decision to make. It is where my passion lies, and it is something that I look forward to doing for a long time to come.

What wasn’t so easy was deciding where to focus the effort. I have two ideas for online applications brewing strong in the back of my mind, and I would love to see them come into fruition. But for now, I am going to combine my passion for online space with two other activities that I particularly enjoy: thinking and writing. So, by throwing it all into a mixing bowl I come up with the rather obvious concept of thinking about the online space, and writing down my conclusions. There you go. Full time “Web Strategist” it is :-)

I am going to focus on the educative side of writing. In other words, I am going to prefer to “speak to many”, rather than consult regularly on individual projects. Unfortunately, fun as all this may be, I still need to make a good living out of it, and there are not that many channels that accept web strategy ponderings for a good fee. So guess what? I created some.

I have other projects on the sideline, to which I now have a renewed commitment. The main one is the Thought Leader blog, for which I enjoy writing because of the sophisticated level of the audience it delivers. I will also continue to write for BizCommunity (if they will continue to have me!). I also intent to spend more time on Digital Garage, which I am ashamed to say has been taking a back seat of late.

This blog is going to be like a secret affair from all of the above. It is where I will post stuff that needs to be said (as judged by me), but not in any of the other forums. It will be a diversion. The topics will vary, and the range will be wild. There is a lot that goes on in that mind of mine, and it really, really needs an outlet. Watch this space, I guess.

All of this amounts to A LOT of writing, which I am actually quite happy about. The one thing that that is great about writing is that it can be done from pretty much anywhere there is a power point (as a caveat to recent SA developments, that power point obviously needs to provide power!). I will see where the road will take me.

(Oh, I also own the www.bigbrother3.co.za domain, which is going to come in handy soon when the next Big Borther Africa starts (August). The South African version of Big Brother is apparently also being discussed, so the domain can do double duty. No idea what I am going to do with the domain, but whatever it is it will be a fun exercise in Social Media.)

So, to Eric and all the others who have been asking me what it is exactly that I do … now you know.

Or think you do ;-)