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Seven Habits to Beat Monday Morning Blues

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Ring. Ringggg. RRRRRRING. It is 6:30 on a Monday morning. Your alarm clock goes off. You can’t bear the thought of getting out of bed and going to work. You suddenly remember that you promised your boss an important status report by noon and realize you are yet to begin a test to gather data for the report. Perhaps, you partied all weekend with family and friends, and dread going back to your uncooperative co-workers and a cold boss. You wish you could stay at home and escape from your commitments. You push the snooze button yet again as you cover yourself with your blanket.

Does the above experience sound familiar? If it does, you probably suffer from Monday morning blues. In other words, it sounds like you have the “Case of the Mondays,” to borrow a phrase from the movie ‘Office Space.’

Mondays are a bit of a drag for many of us. We feel our weekends are inadequate to accomplish everything that we want to—we tend to over-plan and underachieve. We wish we had relaxed more, completed more errands and spent more time with family and friends. When we return to work on Monday, we are hung-over from the out-of-work rhythm of the weekend.

Here are seven habits to beat Monday morning blues.

Habit 1: Prepare for Your Weekend

  • Plan all your weekend activities after consulting family and friends. Be realistic in what you can achieve; do not over-plan.
  • Before leaving work on Friday evening, clean and organize your desk and prepare a to-do list for Monday morning.

Habit 2: Have an Organized Weekend

  • Enjoy a stress-free, relaxed Sunday by planning entertainment and fun activities for Sunday. Spend time with family and friends–go shopping or walking or take your children to the science museum. Or, just be lazy. Focus on recreation on Sunday.
  • Complete your home projects and errands on Saturday. This will enable you to unwind on Sunday, before you start your workweek. Instead, if you relax on Saturday, you will realize on Sunday morning that you will need to complete all your household tasks by Sunday night. You will then hurry through Sunday and feel tired by Sunday night: you will not feel well rested on Monday morning.

Habit 3: Maintain a Regular Sleep Pattern

  • During the weekend, we tend to go to bed late and wake-up late because we are not required to be at work by 8:00am on Saturday or Sunday. With our sleep out-of-rhythm during the weekend, we find it difficult to wake-up promptly on Monday morning. Maintain your wake-up time on Saturday and Sunday mornings. If you desire to ‘catch-up with sleep,’ get to bed earlier on Friday and Saturday.
  • Try not to nap on Sunday afternoon—you will be able to get into sleep early on Sunday night and prevent drowsiness on Monday afternoon.

Habit 4: Prepare on Sunday Night

  • Pack your bags, prepare your clothes and setup the breakfast table on Sunday night. If you brought work home, pack-up and organize your workbag. You will not feel hurried or leave important papers at home on Monday morning.
  • If possible, review your agenda for the rest of the week and your to-do list for Monday morning. Reviewing your commitments will make you more conscious of your plans for the week ahead.

Habit 5: Relax as you Prepare on Monday Morning

  • Go to bed early on Sunday night and wake-up early on Monday morning. You will be able to relax as you wake-up, get prepared and have your breakfast.
  • Start from home early. Beat the traffic and listen to good music during your drive to work. By coming to work early, you can concentrate and get high-priority work done with fewer interruptions or before your co-workers stop-by your cubicle to discuss their weekends and developments from across the world.

Habit 6: Choose Work You Enjoy for Monday Morning

  • Having a productive start-of-week is critical to having a great week ahead. If you prepare your to-do list on Friday evening, you can start working as soon as you reach your desk on Monday morning. Firstly, choose the kind of work you enjoy doing for Monday morning. For example, if you like preparing illustrations, work on a presentation of your new proposal for the project workflow.
  • Secondly, avoid negative interactions that may make you feel glum at the start of the workweek. For example, avoid meeting people who may have counterarguments on your project plans or avoid working on emails or memos with arguments against your idea. Experiencing positive interactions will make you feel good about yourself and your work.

Habit 7: Organize the Rest of the Workweek

  • If possible, do not have important deadlines or schedule update meetings early in the week. If you have a major project deadline on Tuesday or need to meet your boss on Monday afternoons to discuss test results, you may not feel relaxed during the weekend. On Sunday, you will be concerned about how you will prepare for these commitments. Instead, schedule important meetings for the later part of the week. You will feel good: you have the early part of the week to prepare and you can enjoy the weekend with a sense of accomplishment.
  • Plan for fun on Monday evenings: plan on watching a movie or eating-out or taking a walk along the beach on Monday evening. You will have something to look forward to throughout the day on Monday.
  • Take a mini-break during midweek. See my earlier blog article on taking Wednesday afternoon time-offs: leave early on Wednesday and do something out-of-your-routine and relax.

Concluding Thoughts

The key to beating Monday morning blues is organizing your work for maximum leisure during the weekend. By following the above seven habits, you will enjoy relaxed weekends and prepare yourself for a week of action when your alarm clock goes-off on Monday mornings.

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How Hard You Should Work

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People are surprised when I tell them I put in 70 to 75 hours of work every week and get about five hours of sleep every day. The typical responses are “Your Company makes you do that much work?” Or, “Doesn’t your boss realize that is a lot of work?”

The New World of Work

We live in a world characterized by intense competition, globalization, greater volatility than before, and demands for higher personal effectiveness. To be successful in the new world of work, we cannot stipulate the specific number of hours we should put in every day. Our accomplishment in these hours, not the number of hours, is the yardstick of our performance assessment. In fact, a 65 to 70 hour workweek has become the norm for getting ahead in leadership roles.

What Works for You

My guideline for how long you should work is, “Work as many hours as you think you need to achieve your goals, realize your aspirations and be happy.”

Note the emphasis on individuality in the above statement. Not everybody faces the same kind of demands; not everybody is equally productive. Nor does everybody have the same kind of aspirations. The number of hours you should work should depend on the opportunities you face and what you intend to do with them. It is a choice you have to make—a choice between components of your personal and professional lives.

If you are an entrepreneur, you may need to work 80-90 hours a week developing your idea; this involves sacrificing out-of-work activities. If you have an eight-to-five job, wish to spend lots of time with family and attend all of your son’s football games, you may work as little as forty hours a week, the minimum expected at your workplace. However, this may involve slower job growth. If you are a stay-at-home mom, and would like to put your engineering skills to good use, you may find a job that will allow you to work out of home. Make the appropriate choices and chart your life course on what works best for you.

Links

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Everyday Reflections for Effective Time Management

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Our everyday-time stresses are usually caused by having too much work to do in a given amount of time, or by using available time ineffectively. One critical aspect of effective time management is the discipline of analyzing how we utilize our time.

Below are a few practical questions to help reflect on how we spent our days.

  • Did I start my day with a clear plan on how I would use my time during the day? Did I prepare a to-do list and assign priorities to tasks on the list? Did this plan give me a sense of control over my time?
  • Did I work on the most important tasks at times when I tend to be most focused and productive?
  • Did I concentrate on my priorities? Did I feel rushed? How much unplanned time did I spend on pressing problems that demanded my immediate attention or added little value in the context of my goals?
  • Did I examine my schedule and priorities before committing to new assignments?
  • Was I effective with the use of my time or was I just efficient in the tasks I completed? Did I do the right things to meet my organization’s, team’s and personal goals?
  • How will my accomplishments help me progress towards my short-term and long-term goals?
  • Did I delegate responsibilities and tasks well? Did I use my associates (administrative assistants, subordinates, subject experts, and other resources) effectively?
  • How well did I use my buffer-times: time when waiting for the dentist, time during the train-commute to work, etc.?
  • What interruptions and time-wasters did I encounter? Did I attend unimportant meetings or get non-critical telephone calls and email? How could I have avoided these time-intrusions?
  • Did I spend too much time deliberating over minor decisions?
  • Did I spend enough time with family and friends? Did I spend enough time on my fitness, leisure and spiritual activities?
  • Did I accomplish everything I had hoped to accomplish? How many tasks do I carry forward to tomorrow’s to-do list?
  • Did I complete a list of things to do for tomorrow and assign priorities to them? Did I leave my workplace, desk and other personal spaces organized?

Ask these questions at the end of each day. Seek what you can learn from the experience of the day and what you can do to make every next day better than the previous day.

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  5. Avoid Mundane Tasks Like Richard Feynman