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Another Monday is here again, a fresh week in a new month, making it the first Monday of the second half of the year. This means that it is an important day in many ways, and it presents us the opportunity to execute ideas, chase prospective clients, attend classes and prepare for exams and chase the newly set goals we have identified ahead of Q3. Mondays are absolutely great opportunities to advance ourselves in our careers, and academic pursuits alike, it is only those that approach it with every ounce of seriousness that ultimately makes significant progress in their pursuit.

A lot of people dread Mondays, and I believe that is because they don’t approach Mondays with a serious demeanour. I love Mondays for several reasons, that is because I plan for it and make sure Monday’s work hard for me, simply because that outcome of my Mondays, sets the tone for the rest of the week. It is hard to have a productive Monday, and have the remainder of the week ineffective and lacklustre. So Mondays are more important than we think they are, we have to learn how to utilize them effectively, and have them work for our own benefit.

Here are some things we can do to make our Mondays more productive.

Plan Your Day

With the use of a To-Do list or an organiser, highlight tasks you need to accomplish before the end of the day, ensure to itemize them based on priority levels, starting with the most important, to the least important. Make sure you list items that are very crucial to the success to the overarching reason you work or school, and it could be incremental phases that you can build on. For example, you might have collected a list of new prospective clients you want to contact, I would put contacting these clients as the number one item on my list because the outcome of this phone calls of a visit will shape the entire week.

Items, like checking and replying emails can come much later in the day, you are meant to start your day with energy demanding tasks, that will have a huge impact on your work for the day. Planning is nothing without execution, during execution, the lifeblood of carrying out pre-defined tasks is time. Time is of utmost importance, allot specific time frame for tasks, and be very crucial to how you spend your time accomplishing these tasks.

Only spend time on important tasks, tasks that will contribute to the overall success of your day, stolen moments can be spent attending to tasks of little importance, and based on the outcome, can be allocated to another time, further in the future.

Make Success a Habit

Habits are really powerful patterns that have a strong control over the way we behave, which explains why smokers and drinkers find it incredibly hard to quit such destructive habit because it is embedded deep in their subconscious. But positive habits are great on the other hand, they mean you get to do things that are actually fulfilling and rewarding. And if you keep repeating this pattern regularly, over time, they become part of you and then embedded into your subconscious. Say you’re a freelance graphic designer for instance, and whenever you execute a job, you value feedback, whether constructive or destructive, you appreciate customers feedback and you strive to always deliver high-quality work that your customers demand.

You notice over time, this designer will get better and better, because of his customer-centric approach to his job, he will get better referrals because he relates better with his clients; this will automatically translate to better pay and more success for him. And at the end of the day, you can easily say he has a successful habit.

References

Life Hack - Steps to Plan your Week

AFM - Weekly Plan

Thanks for you reading!