A Sunday Night to Prepare for a Better Monday

CEBU, Philippines – I feel sorry for Monday. It gets a bad wrap. Even though it is technically the second day of the week, it is the first day in the school and work week. While everyone looks forward to the weekends and celebrates “Hump Day,” Mondays are the butt of jokes and is made fun of on posters.

Most people begin to dread Sunday nights because of Monday mornings. But, if your Sundays were more productive and enjoyable, perhaps your Mondays would be better.

Like most people, for years Monday used to haunt me like a poltergeist. Sundays were good but would get progressively worse as time passed and the reality that I would have to get up and face another Monday.

Then when Sunday night came, I tried to avoid the fact that my Mondays would be filled with email checking, traffic jams, and the wishing I had one more day to relax and rejuvenate. It wasn’t until I realized that Mondays were not the problem. It was my preparation for Mondays that left me feeling that way.

Understanding that I couldn’t control what happened on Monday, but I could prepare for it on Sunday, gave me new resolve. I have always thought of Sunday as a day of rest and refocusing, but it seemed like I neglected that fact for so long.

Mondays are tough because we are expected to start the week at high speed when we just came off of one or two days of relaxation. That’s like having competitive sprinters sleep on the track and then fire the start pistol and expecting them to run full speed towards the finish line. It’s really not going to go well.

Sunday night is the warm-up. It gives you an opportunity to think about, and prepare for the things that make Mondays unpleasant. Let me show you some specific ways that you can use on Sunday nights as a warm-up to Mondays so that you can handle the dreaded day better.

No TV after 7:30 p.m. When I first began to create a productive Sunday night one of the first things I did was to have a cutoff time for TV and movies. Later, I would kick the TV habit, but that’s another story altogether.

Television stations know that most people are planning to be parked in front of the television Sunday night so they try to schedule programs that are hard to say no to. But, if you don’t mind missing “The Simpsons” or “Sunday Night Football,” you can help your week become better.

Now that there is no great TV show to distract you, you can do several things to help you grow and make your Monday easier. Television tends to attract and consume the viewers’ attention more so during the evenings. It’s easier to watch hours of television at night because there is a lot less going on at that time.

Set the theme for the week. Whenever I visit a new restaurant, I always look around to try to define the theme. I also try to do the same with my week. But instead of looking around to figure it out, I try to set the theme for my week on Sunday. I try to set a tone and consistent focus so that I can pull from it when I need to.

Whether its financial, physical, social or spiritual, I set a theme to follow so I am clear on how I want my week to turn out. But, in order to do that, I have to create a progress report.

The theme is the “why.”  It is the thing that you can revisit whenever you feel you are getting off track.  Before a restaurant will add a new menu item or update its dinning room, it will evaluate how that all fits in with the theme of the restaurant.

You can use the theme in the same way.  Before making a decision throughout the week or even before you spend a large amount of energy and time on something, think about how it all fits in with your theme that week.  You will find that the unimportant things will begin to disappear and you will experience a less stressful week.

Create a progress report. As a kid, I always preferred progress reports to report cards. When I was small and the schools gave progress reports, I was never nervous. It wasn’t because I was the smartest kid in the class; it was because no matter what the grade was, I felt as though I always had time to change it if it was something I knew my parents wouldn’t like. What have you been wanting to do this year? How far are you from getting there? Not sure? Then take some time on Sunday night to create a progress report of how far you’ve come and how far you still need to go.

Look at what you have done last week. Set some time aside to review the previous week. If you are having a hard time coming up with things to review, consider: What did you do? Who did you meet? What did you accomplish? What was left undone?

Sleep earlier. One of the most popular reasons most people dislike Mondays is because they have to wake up earlier than they did on the weekends. Waking up early is usually harder to do when you’ve spent a couple of days staying up and sleeping in. That is why going to sleep an hour earlier than you do on the weekdays may help alleviate the pain of waking up early.

When you go to bed earlier on Sunday night you are helping ease your Monday mornings in two ways. First, you are getting enough sleep. Sleeping for the full duration of the night will at least avoid being groggy throughout the day. Second, it will mimic a weekday night where most people sleep earlier anyway.

Grab a whiteboard. I have a few whiteboards where I keep my goals and reminders. But there is one that I am constantly changing. I write down things that seem to be a theme for me at certain times in life. There might be a quote, proverb, or accomplishment that I want keep in the forefront of my mind.

Use Sunday night to find and post this reminder. Once you know what you want to accomplish this week, write down on your ever-changing whiteboard the thing that is going to keep you focused on your goal.

Take an hour of reading. There are several smaller, shorter books that most people can read in a few hours or less. There are a number of books like “Who Moved My Cheese?” and “The Richest Man of Babylon” that are short and sweet. If you don’t want to start a long book, you can read a shorter one, and build a weekly habit of it.

Grab a stack of books that you would like to read and place them wherever you do your reading. Have a different one every week. Once you’ve gone through your stack of shorter books, begin to add books that are a little bit longer. Before you know it, reading every Sunday night is your new success routine.

If you hadn’t had time to do some meaningful reading during the week, a quite Sunday night is a great time to do that. Stay away from reading anything online because of the chance of distraction from your reading.

Prepare for priorities. Starting the work week off the right way can make the difference in your entire week. There are usually a few specific things that we don’t like. Maybe it’s the busiest work day or the day that traffic is the worst in your city. Whatever it is, make it easier on yourself by mentally preparing yourself for it.

From there, prepare yourself in other ways. Clear and check all emails and catch up on social media so that you do not get caught up doing that on Monday.

Usually it is the little things during Mondays that made them harder. Early morning meetings were easier when I knew exactly how to prepare for them. Leaving a few minutes earlier than usual made my commute stress-free. Take the time to do the little things on Sunday that relieve the stress of Mondays. (potential2success.com)