Are you using your Monday to its best effect? Don't worry, I'm not trying to make you do more on your Mondays, possibly less!
It's possible whether you are a full time employee or independent. It might not be overnight but it's definitely possible. According to Laura Vanderkam, Friday afternoon is the ideal time to plan your week ahead.
Not Sunday night, and certainly not Monday morning - that's when we want to hit the ground running with our most needle-moving tasks! (I'm still scarred from a Monday morning large team meeting in one of my earlier roles*)
I've been following some of these rules of thumb for optimising our week for well over a decade now. One of the most important, in my opinion?
Powerful Mondays.
Long before the pandemic, Monday + one other midweek day (and definitely not Friday, as a team leader!) was my core work from home day.
Now it is a meeting-free day wherever possible.
I enjoy the peace after a kid fun filled weekend and I am also rested enough to tackle hard tasks. I get a gym workout in early afternoon, and by late pm, hopefully have the space to do the really fun stuff - in my case make podcasts.
For me, this day is just as it should be, and has that sacred status. And, as much as I love a Bank Holiday, I also feel a bit back-footed during those weeks where I've not been able to get a major leg up on on all my needle-moving work.
Whilst I have more autonomy now, this Monday is not a completely different world away from my employed Mondays.
If you are enticed, but a little sceptical, about the extent to which you can design your Monday, you might like this live coaching episode I did with my award-nominated client Kyrene Darko about her ideal Monday. She's a full time employee with side hustles and young kids.
The spoiler - her ideal Monday turns out not to be as distant a dream as we initially thought!
In any case, if you want to start thinking more intentionally about your Monday, you probably want to do so a little ahead of the day itself! So take some time ahead of this Monday to jot some ideas down.
I truly believe that powerful or sacred Mondays are a key ingredient in reaching our bigger goals and ambitions.
Let me know in the comments or on LinkedIn what would be, or is, part of your ideal Monday!
p.s. if you've realised you are not using your Mondays strategically because you're not clear on those bigger goals and visions, you might like this conversation I had with Anita Anello : https://youtu.be/Z52979uHjls?si=w1yZwpPBqq3ffAdu
*the Monday morning meeting from hell: we were a huge team and it would take forever to go around the room and hear updates which could have been better put on email. And we were a group of self motivated self starters! - we did not need a classroom vibe to start our week - we could have used that time for the best hour of deep work for the week - and used Friday afternoons for this type of interaction. All hours are not created equally. You never get that Monday morning Golden Hour back!
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