I know Mondays have gotten a bad rap over the years. The weekend is over, it’s the start of the work-week and its endless to-do lists, frantic running around and feeling like your time is no longer your own.
(And, if you don’t like what you’re doing for a living, all those overwhelm feelings just got amped up.)
But the real problem is if Monday is lousy, that just sets the rest of your week up to be lousy too. So, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could start your Monday off feeling great about yourself and the week ahead?
What’s helped me to do exactly that is a combination of mindset/inner game habits along with good old-fashioned time scheduling.
For the mindset part, I always make sure I start my week off with my daily success habits that include a morning meditation and a walk with the dogs. (Some sort of combination of exercise/moving your body with journaling or meditation or a visualization is really good self care practice to start your morning off.)
I also make sure I take a moment and organize my week. Sometimes I do this the Friday or Sunday before, but even if I put it together earlier, I always review it Monday morning.
So, how do I organize my week? Well, along with getting all of my to-do’s written out (along with my phone calls and meetings) I also make sure I have tasks that are in what Stephen Covey calls “important but not urgent.”
Those are the tasks that could really move your business and life forward in a big way, but they have no deadlines attached, so they tend to never get done.
Think of things like finishing your book, making some time for your creativity (I know for myself, every time I allow my creativity to come out and play, my energy and “getting stuff done” just goes through the roof), working on a new product or program or maybe even something bigger like working on your core message or a rebrand.
I also will do a quick review of my big goals for the year to see if my current weekly to-do list is supporting getting those goals done, and if not, then why not. (Sometimes there’s a good reason, like I’m traveling a lot that week, but if there’s not a good reason then I take a moment to check in and see what’s up).
I will do daily to-do lists as well based on what I laid out for the week. The daily to-dos are typically 5 minutes or less in the morning to just make sure I’m still on the right path, and if I’m not, then I can start course correcting.
