Monday, 7/26/21: Talking about managing a crazy work week and new product finds from Tik Tok
Happy Monday!
It’s a new week, which means it’s time for your next Monday motivation newsletter. Read on below for some steps to a happier Monday, a short story and a roundup of positive thoughts to get your week started.
Three Steps to a Happier Monday
Each newsletter starts with three prompts to inspire gratitude and simple intention setting. Take a moment and jot down answers to these three questions. To give an example, I share my answers below.
Step 1: What are three things I appreciated from the weekend?
Step 2: What is one thing I can be excited about today?
Step 3: What is my intention for this week?
GRATITUDE: From my weekend, I’m thankful for a fun Saturday with friends (did the rosé wine tasting that’s on my Summer Fun List!), a long, luxurious walk on Sunday, and the amazing update I got from one of my best friends!
TODAY: I’m most excited catching up and chatting (virtually) with one of my co-workers.
INTENTION: My intention this week is to have two or three no-spend days.
Okay, your turn! And if you want to share your three steps, I am all ears. 🙂
Meaningful Musings: Three Questions I Ask Myself During a Crazy Work Week
Coming off a week with multiple work projects requiring the majority of my energy and a fun weekend filled with some much-needed social interaction, I found myself needing a bit more time to recharge so I can give this week my all too. So today, I’m actually recirculating an essay from a past newsletter because I found it was a reminder I needed again today. Hope you enjoy and will be back next week with new thoughts. Happy Monday! 🙂
This essay originally appeared in the Monday morning newsletter on 3/9/20.
Last week was craziness. For a variety of reasons, multiple deadlines shifted and landed on the same date. I did my best to prep and plan, but no matter how many early morning/late night hours I put in, I just felt like I was making no progress. I felt off.
Have you had a week like this? How did you handle it?
I hope you did better than me. I chose to let the stress seep in, sit in self-pity and abandon my routine.
I thought allocating any extra time I could to working more would mean more work would be produced.
Spoiler alert, it didn’t happen. By Friday, I was irritable and not acting like myself. I reached for junk food when I normally would not. I had trouble concentrating and contributing in a 10 a.m. meeting because my brain had already been in work mode nonstop since the night before.
Exasperated, I looked to social media for an escape. While scrolling Instagram, I saw a post that triggered memories of two other similar messages seen/heard elsewhere. I recognized that this post was my third message on the topic. (Remember my rule of three? If I hear something three times, I know it is a sign that I need to lean in.)
The three things all had to do with the misconception that working ourselves harder makes us more productive. Check them out below:
- This pie chart about what actually makes you productive.
- Lauryn’s list of things that boost her productivity.
- Kelly’s advice about the correlation between exercise and productivity. (at 27:25).
These messages made me think about a bike’s tire. The tire’s movement is supported by a bunch of different spokes. If a few of the spokes are missing, the tire is not going to move forward as smoothly. Sure, you can still eventually get to the destination, but the output produced by the tire is going to be inefficient and low in quality.
What are the spokes you need to be productive? A few of mine are a willingness to work really hard, sleep, exercise, healthy food and time spent connecting with others.
Now, let’s be real. The goal here is not a perfectly balanced tire. Depending on your season of life, your week, even your day, some spokes are going to be more of a priority than others. But I do think a goal of striving for a majority of the spokes to be balanced is attainable. A goal of not going all in one spoke, like I did last week.
So, how would I have approached last week differently? In hindsight, I would have asked myself three questions:
- What spokes are realistically attainable? For me last week, hard work is an obvious choice. And then knowing I wasn’t traveling or in a unique set of circumstances, my second choice would have been healthy eating. This could have manifested with me prepping something at home the night before or deciding I was going to order in a healthy dish for lunch and dinner.
- What spokes do I need to modify slightly? I would have picked sleep and exercise. Not the priority this week, but also not unimportant. Instead of traveling to and from a full-length exercise class, I could stream a 15- or 30-minute workout from home. Or, I could choose to do a mindful activity instead of working out. On the sleep front, I would acknowledge that I’m going to get less sleep. But I would still make an effort to get to bed early, allowing myself to wake up a bit earlier because I do my best thinking in the morning.
- What spokes need to take a backseat this week? Again, we are not striving for a perfect balance. Some weeks the pendulum is going to swing in one direction before boomeranging back. For me last week, time connecting with others took a backseat. It was an easy choice because I know I’m getting an abundance of time with others with a few fun plans and a trip on the horizon.
Wow, I bet I would have been so much more productive (and enjoyable to be around) if I asked myself these questions at the beginning of last week. But that’s the magic of Monday… 🙂 We are presented with a new day, a new week and a new chance to get these spokes balanced and strive for our best.
On My Monday Radar
Sometimes we just aren’t ready to jump into our Monday to-do list right away. In case you want some content to procrastinate with, here is a roundup of a few positive things on my radar:
- I am lovingggg this podcast series. I mentioned this series of episodes in a previous newsletter at the beginning of this month, but I am just now getting around to listening to them. If you’ve read Brené Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection (which I also highly recommend!), you will love listening to her and her sisters discuss each of the guideposts covered in the book. Yesterday I treated myself to a nice, long walk outside and listened to all five episodes – perfect Sunday in my book!
- Enjoyed reading the tips in this article about dealing with emotional contagion. It’s proven that emotions of all kinds are highly contagious, but it’s also possible to help others when they’re sad without sacrificing your own good mood (and vice versa!). I found the tips within thought-provoking and deciding they are definitely things I want to keep in mind this week as I give off energy and feed off other’s energy myself.
- Great list of 18 books that will help you relax and unwind. I find myself typically reading multiple books at one time so that I always have the right book for my mood. Do I want to learn something? Do I want something super captivating and distracting? Or do I want a book that is just comforting? Filing this list away for when I need something in that last category. The Beautiful Ones and Ladies of the House look great to me!
- Two fun, recent beauty finds: glow drops and shower aromatherapy tablets. (And a thank you Tik Tok for both of these finds!) I recently bought these “glow drops”, which are just perfect for summer. You can wear the product alone or mix in a few drops to your moisturizer or sunscreen for little subtle glow. The superfine, light-reflecting pigments somehow smooths everything out while enhancing your skin’s natural glow. Loving it! And then, I thought these tablets seemed like such a neat idea: you simply place a tablet on your shower floor and as it dissolves, the aroma will release the scent and extracts for a spa-like experience. I just ordered some online to try and can’t wait for them to arrive!
That’s all for today! I hope you found something in today’s newsletter that sparked motivation, made you smile or inspired a positive Monday thought. Don’t underestimate the power of starting small… a fulfilling week starts with just one fulfilling day. You’ve got this!
Let’s make it a great Monday!
Megan
Want to receive a note like this to your inbox every Monday at 6 AM EST? Sign up here! If you don’t receive the email, please check your spam or junk folder.
Have feedback, thoughts or a question you want addressed in an upcoming newsletter? Drop an anonymous note to my mailbox here!