Monday, 8/30/21: Talking about your tips for making work lighter and brighter and what I’m watching on Netflix

Happy Monday!

What a weekend… thinking about everyone in the path of Hurricane Ida and about those who have loved ones in the path. But alas, it’s still 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 time to relax, being able to do a long run on Saturday (felt so good even though I paid for it after 🙁 …) and for the surprise gift card my friend sent me last night to my go-to newsletter writing spot (the nicest surprise). 

TODAY: I’m actually taking a few hours off work this morning to get organized and then logging on in the afternoon, so I’m most excited for my relaxing morning!   

INTENTION: My intention this week is to make my to-do list in advance for the next day (inspired by the tips below!)  

Meaningful Musings: Your Tips for Lighter & Brighter Workdays 

It’s the last Monday of the month, which means it’s time for the next installment of the Lighter & Brighter series. The Lighter & Brighter Series is like a monthly book club discussion… but sans books and with simple “happiness hacks” instead. If you’re interested in more, you can read past discussions here (we’ve covered Mondays, budgeting and taking care of home so far this year!).

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how even though my days of following an academic calendar are over, I still find myself leaning into that new-school-year feeling when September rolls around. And this year, I’m definitely feeling inspired by the fresh start because I’ll actually be starting in a new position on Sept. 1! The new role is with my current company, but I’ll officially be in a different department that specializes in the work I’m really interested in. I’m SO excited. 

Over the past month and as my start date approaches, I’ve been thinking about my work habits and asking you all for tips on how you make work/getting things done more enjoyable. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted ideas and thoughts! I absolutely loved reading the submissions and I’m thrilled to share them in today’s newsletter.

I’m so interested in how people spend their time, and specifically, how people spend their time at work. So, I hope you enjoy these tips as much as I did. I know there’s a few I definitely want to try out! Even though we are once again facing an uncertain fall, maybe something from below will resonate with you or inspire a shift in your day-to-day routine (whatever that may look like right now).

Here’s to getting re-energized around our approach to work and to how we get things done during these last couple months of 2021! (Wow, that felt crazy to type.)

Lighter & Brighter Series 04: Your Tips for Working and Getting Things Done 

Planning tips

• Plan at the macro level for the week on Sunday, looking at the big deliverables with the perspective of the total week. This lets me plan for the big meetings, ensuring I go into them with data and opinions to explore. 
• Whenever I make a to-do list for Monday before logging off on Friday, I’m always SO glad I did. It helps Monday morning to run much smoother.
• When I make my to-do list for the next day in advance, I find I’m far more likely to jot down the bigger, more important priorities rather than letting my email inbox rule my schedule. My drafted-in-advance list reminds me of what I actually want to focus on. 
• I don’t miss sitting in traffic, but there are things I miss about my commute. I would always use the time to think about the first task I wanted to do when I sat down at my desk. Without this commute/reflection time, I sit down to work and feel like I’m already running behind, which makes me feel anxious. So, I’ve tried to incorporate some kind of reflection time into my morning routine. For example, I’ll think about my day as my coffee brews or as I brush my teeth. It definitely helps! 

Automation/managing energy tips 

• Make anything routine automatic to eliminate the amount of decisions you need to make. For example, I eat the same couple of things for breakfast and when my kids were young, I had a weekly printout of what went into the backpack and what came out every day (i.e. PE clothes, snacks for aftercare, etc.). Eliminating the amount of decisions or thinking needed on these things helps me balance. 
• I unapologetically wear the same outfit every Monday. There’s freedom in taking just one decision off my Monday plate. 
• When I make my to-do list, I use a coding system to indicate if a task is mentally-demanding (like creating a presentation, drafting a proposal) or more routine (like an expense report). Nothing ever goes completely to plan, but when I do have that opportunity to select what task to work on next, I can pick something that matches how I’m feeling. 
• Whenever I get a new request or task, I pause and ask myself two questions: 1) how could this be easier? And 2) what does “done” look like? Since I’ve started asking myself this question, I’m confident I’ve saved a ton of time and energy.

Email tips (BTW, love the two contradicting opinions below… shows that everything is subjective and the opposite of what works for someone might be what works for you and vice versa!) 

• I try to do one important task in the morning before I even open Outlook. This ensures I’m starting my day pursuing my own agenda instead of reacting to the messages in my inbox. I know the possibility of this varies depending on your line of work, but I think others could find it helpful to experiment with working on something and waiting until 10 am… or 9 am… or even 8:30 am before opening their email. 
• We’ve been warned repeatedly that it’s a bad idea to start your day by checking email, but for me, scanning my email is my preferred way to start my day. When I’m mentally the clearest, I spend my first 20 minutes of the workday responding to the more complicated emails. Otherwise, I delay these emails again and again because by the time I go to respond, I’ve run out of steam. 
• If you have Microsoft Outlook, you can set up a “focus plan,” where Outlook automatically finds dedicated focus time in your calendar. During the blocks, your presence state in Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business is automatically set to “focusing,” allowing your team members to know you are heads down and working. And like any other appointment in your calendar, the time can be canceled or adjusted to a more convenient hour simply by clicking on the event.

Miscellaneous tips 

• Throughout the week, small administrative tasks pop up. I corral all these non-urgent, yet important, tasks into a folder in my email titled “Friday.” I’m admittedly not as motivated or productive at the end of the week as I am earlier in the week, so I’ve found batching these more mindless tasks to be a good use of my time on Friday. Plus, having a designated place to “put” them  allows them to stay out of my mind and off my to-do list. Alternatively, if you don’t want to wait for a specific day, you could decide to batch these tasks on a daily basis.. I could see it being really helpful to jump into one of these tasks right after lunch to get you back into your working groove! 
• Become OK with letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll spend your whole day putting out fires and never have time to up level your skillset or make room for life-changing big things. 
• After many, many years of working at this, my biggest lesson/advice is to get clear on what work/life balance looks like for YOU and then articulate it to those who need to know. This opens up the opportunity to say no without having to explain over and over, and lets your manager/peers help you to solve (which almost everyone wants to do if you can tell them what the solution looks like for you!).

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:  

• Looking for a nonfiction book for September? Check out this roundup of new leadership books. I love Adam Grant’s seasonal lists and always end up adding multiple new titles to my “To Be Read” list. The book I’m most excited to read from this list is Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. According to Grant, it’s “the most important book ever written about time management.” What an endorsement! The wait at my library is currently six months, so I might just end up buying the book because I can’t wait to read it.
• I recently added this journal to my morning routine and am loving it. I’ve written about journaling before, but I have to admit that I majorly fell out of my routine with it this summer. Just like how sometimes new workout clothes motivate you to go for that workout, I purchased this journal thinking it might help jumpstart my routine.. and so far, it has! I love the prompts and that there’s an accompany lined page for free-writing. It feels so good to once again get my jumbled thoughts out of my head and onto paper.
• Finished the book Deep Work by Cal Newport last week and while I didn’t agree with every word, I did pick up some new strategies. In the book, Newport’s main idea is that the ability to focus for extended periods of time on important work is a valuable skill. Yet, it’s one that few people develop. Therefore, he suggests, people who can master doing “deep work” will have a competitive advantage. It was an interesting read and I’ve already implemented some of his tips (specifically the idea of time blocking). I’m definitely someone who can easily fall into the trap of “busyness as a proxy for productivity,” so making sure I’m spending focused time on the big, thought-provoking things is something I’m working on. I didn’t agree or relate to absolutely everything (if you’ve read, did you notice that out of all the examples featured of people doing deep work, only three were about women? Interesting?), but like anything else, you take what does resonate and leave the rest. 
• Has anyone else started the show The Chair? Pretty sure I could watch absolutely anything with Sandra Oh in it, but I started this show this weekend and am liking it! Oh plays Ji-Yoon Kim, the new chair of a fictional university’s struggling English department. The show depicts the trials and tribulations of Kim’s journey as the first woman to head the department while touching on heavy topics such as sexism, ageism, interracial adoption and more in a real (but also somehow necessarily comical at times?) way. I also love that the episodes are under 30 minutes.
• Wahoo! College football returns this weekend! Whether it’s because I was raised by two college football fanatics or because of attending an SEC school, but I absolutely love college football season. For the past couple of years, I’ve been listening to this podcast’s preview and recap episodes to get me ready for the games of the weekend. Not only do I score points with my brothers when I drop something I heard, but I find watching games to be so much more enjoyable with some knowledge of which players/teams to watch, etc. Plus, college football makes for a great conversation starter with almost everyone!

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

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