Mondays are hard!
Coming right off from the weekend with that low energy, who wants to do anything?
But you have to keep going.
It looks like this is how the entire week will continue — slow, lazy, simply-looking-forward-to-Friday.
For many, Monday is the least productive day and it comes with a lot of guilt that sets the tone for the entire week.
It is easy to think that your Monday's attitude should be "Yeah! New week! New me! New possibilities!" But instead, it's more like "New week! Ugh! It's sooooo long until the weekend!"
Your weekend was too short.
You had this feeling last week.
You're having the same this week.
And at this rate, it'll happen next week.
I find this breakdown by Jeremiah Dillon, previously Head of Product Marketing at Google for 9 years, to be super helpful.
At Google, Dillon pushed for employees to set aside more time for Maker Time — our creativity and thinking time — instead of having endless busy times, back to back.
Instead of fighting against slow Mondays, the idea is to use that day to set the tone for the rest of the week.
The key takeaway is to align your days throughout the week with your energy level.
Monday: Energy ramps out of the weekend — schedule low-demand tasks like setting goals, organizing, and planning.
Tuesday, Wednesday: Peak of energy — tackle the most difficult problems, write, brainstorm, schedule your Make Time.
Thursday: Energy begins to ebb — schedule meetings, especially when consensus is needed.
Friday: Lowest energy level — do open-ended work, long-term planning, and relationship building.”
The example details of each day focus on people who manage others. But you don’t have to be a manager to follow the high level principle.
You can adapt it for:
• Software developers
• Entrepreneurs
• Writers
Maybe for you, Mondays are not slow.
It could be Tuesday or some other day.
The most important takeaway is that you should chunk your activities by different days of the week and align them with your energy level.
That way, you'll feel more balance and control in how your week goes.
If you have any questions let me know in the comments. I wrote the same version of this as a Twitter thread but with a few images. If you are on twitter and you’re feeling generous, do like and retweet. It may seem trivial but it does help :)
Thanks for sharing this, I really like the idea. IT makes so much sense to put the most difficult tasks on the days ou have more energy. The problem for me is that each week is different. Some weeks I'm super motivated and active on Monday, others it's a Thursday. There is a lot of variables, like how well you slept, how stressful you are etc...
What I do each week for sure, is to try to plan it in advance, set my priorities and define some tasks that I want to complete. I don't specify which day I'll work on them, I just list them and every morning, depending on how I feel and what I like to do, I choose one.
I've built theLIFEBOARD mainly focusing on this principle 😉
Thanks Antonio. I checked out theLIFEBOARD and right off the bat, solid landing page. Quite engaging.
To be honest, I'm not clear too clear on the value prop. I kept trying to compare it to other tools I know. Is it a todoist? An evernote? A smarter calendar? Or a semi-coaching tool. Not criticizing, just thought to provide some feedback that may be useful :)
Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it.
We're not trying to build a specific to-do list or smart calendar or coaching tool but at the same time I'd say it a mix of all 😅
The main value proposition is that by planning and reviewing your weeks, which is the core principle of theLIFEBOARD, you'll stay focused and progress towards your goals while keeping yourself motivated.
You'll define tasks related to goals, so in that regard is kinda to-do-list-y, but we also provide curated resources about productivity, habits, motivation, organisation, rest, etc so we're trying to help users as well, and not leave them on their own with the app.
We'll review if we find a better way to explain that in our landing page.
Got it. The grind continues 💪