Do These 3 Things On Friday To Make Monday An Easy Day!
Yes – it can be by kicking off the week with the right amount of caffeine, but I actually have some other cool tips for you, in search of productivity advice!
Mondays have a bad reputation, and they’re inevitable.
Often, Monday rhymes with going back into the whirlwind of meetings or endless Zoom calls if you work from home. Whether you can protect your weekends from work or not, we all know this feeling of rushing into the office on Monday at 8am with already a million tasks in mind, and the picture of all the great things you know you’ll want to do. The week has barely started and your mind is already spinning of ideas, obligations and notifications of all kinds.
Fortunately, you can improve each week before it even begins. So here is how 30 minutes wisely spent on Friday will make your Monday 30 times easier!
1. Spend 10 minutes to reflect on the week that just passed
Before switching off and calling it a week, take some time to review your week. If just like us at KosmoTime you practice time blocking, look at your calendar and observe all the work you have accomplished in the past five days.
In order to take the temperature of how the week went and to acknowledge where you are at in your progress, you should ask yourself three questions:
? What’s delayed and needs to be taken care of as a top priority next week?
? What’s recurring and needs to be followed up next week?
✅ What did I complete? Celebrate your achievements!
2. Talk with your team for 10 minutes before the weekend kicks off
Once this is done, have a 10 minutes break with your team and briefly discuss the achieved goals, burning topics and top priorities. It enables you to understand how you are evolving as a team, and also creates more bonding and maintains a team spirit. As we all tend to go head down during the week, those few minutes can be a real opportunity to celebrate wins and new learnings.
At KosmoTime, we have our weekly team meeting each Friday afternoon; it’s a nice way to get a quick update from each department and hear a word from each team member. Especially as a distributed team where each of us is spread out between North America, South America and Europe, this connection and digital high five truly matter!
3. Devote 10 minutes to organise your calendar
Last but not least, the final step will have a positive impact on your personal and long-term productivity. Monday blues don’t have to be and this will help you start off the following week on the right foot.
Two words: Time Blocking!
As briefly mentioned above – and also developed in a previous dedicated blog post “How To Get The Most Of Your Days: The Time Blocking Strategy” – time blocking consists in blocking time in your calendar for each task (or group of tasks) that you intend to complete.
After reflecting on the week that passed, and catching up with your teammates, make sure you stay away from any distraction and sit down in front of your online calendar: list out and schedule all the tasks that need to be done the following week in order to reach your goal(s).
Time blocking is a simple but yet effective way to make yourself accountable and protect your time from others and external interruptions. To make this process effortless, I advise you to use a time blocking app. Nowadays, the productivity apps market is huge, and it’s easy to feel lost.
KosmoTime is a time blocking app, a 3-in-1 productivity tool, that will help you plan your week:
– It’s a calendar app that integrates with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook,
– with a Tasks section that replaces a standard to-do list,
– and enables you to either drag & drop or create and edit your tasks directly in your calendar.
✨ BONUS ✨
While I was browsing productivity content from LinkedIn, to Medium, to Reddit, to Youtube, there I stumbled upon this video about Elon Musk – a role model for many entrepreneurs and productivity enthusiasts, also adept of time blocking!
In this video, Elon Musk shares the struggles he had to face and his take on entrepreneurship, and makes the confession that ‘working 25 hours a day’ is nothing to be proud of:
“No one should put this many hours into work. This is not good. People should not work this hard. This is very painful”.
Just block 10 minutes of your time in your calendar next week and make sure you give it a watch ? ?