It’s Monday. Again. The worse of all days, Mondays are the days where we are most likely to skip breakfast and rush out the door with two different socks on our feet just to be caught in a traffic jam yet again.
And the misery doesn’t just end there oh no, as soon as we get to work (or classes because let’s face it 8am lectures are a real thing) fifteen minutes late, the day seems to drag on longer and slower than usual as we continue to slog along unproductively. Despite our best efforts to concentrate and will our minds to focus, our hearts are far away dreaming or counting down the days to the weekend
(Image from quotesgram.com)
I say it is time we say no to a string horrible Mondays. If you’re tired of having the Monday blues, and want to start seeing a change in your Mondays, below are three steps you can take to maximize your Mondays to make the first day of the work week just a little bit more bearable.
1. Don't sleep in on weekends
I know you may be screaming in your head
‘But that’s what my weekends are for!’
But how many of us could actually sleep in without unwillingly waking up at 6am on a Saturday Morning? Yep I don’t see many hands going up. And that is because our bodies can’t differentiate between the days and it automatically does things according to a preprogrammed system controlled by our body clock.
Sleeping in on weekends resets our body clock to wake up later, and when we force ourselves to wake up earlier on Mondays our body starts to rebel and it refuses to get up because it needs more time to properly wake up and be fully functioning.
I understand that weekends are meant for relaxing and resting but that does not mean you need to sleep in. Instead what you could do is wake up and make yourself ( or just buy yourself) a good breakfast to start the morning on a high note.
Go for a jog ( I personally don’t do this but I hear loads of other more disciplined people do this), play video games or simply schedule things that make you want to get out of bed and maybe just maybe waking up early on the weekends won’t be such a chore.
But on a more serious adult sounding note, waking up early also means having more time to do more things, use that extra time to also do chores and run errands ( that you've probably been putting off since early February this year).
Choose to be a grown up for once, this will do wonders for your Monday morning to come as your feel less guilty and more accomplished going into work.
2. Make Monday's exciting
Another thing that you could try is to make your Mondays more exciting. Plan for exciting activities like office lunches or weekly huddles where you get to interact with other members from your team to update, regroup and support each other for the week to come.
Start Monday differently than all the other days. Instead of getting the big stuff out of the way first and dreading the amount of work you have to do, get one small simple task done first. And I know this goes against the grain but we can make this one exception for Mondays.
This small task can be clearing out your mailbox, it could be replying to a customer or it could be writing a note to one of your colleagues’. It could be literally something simple so long as you just get something done.
After you’re done with that small tasks put that into your done list to keep the ball rolling and get your motivated levels up. Alternately you could also plan other things that are not work around your Mondays like maybe go for dance classes after work to trick your brain into thinking that Mondays are days where fun things happen.
3. Put an end to complaining
I know as soon as Monday morning comes by each week you could just feel that
And we may think that complaining can help let the load off and make us feel better about going back to work but the reality is that it does not. Complaining sets precedence in our minds that we are heading towards a negative situation and what worse way to start the already bothersome day by branding it as a bad thing.
Complaining needs to be avoided at all cost. Instead of complaining try to shift your focus to something else each time you get the urge to complain. We –very much like a goldfish, have short attention spans, we only need to distract ourselves with other things (that are more productive) long enough for us to get out of the ditch we fell into.
And remember if all else fails we have next monday to try all over again! We can do this adult thing we just need a little bit of practice.
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