Monday 9th August 2021
A lot of the stuff I’m working on right now is quite monotonous stuff. It’s the same task day in and day out as I work towards a distant goal, such as writing a novel.
Despite this being quite ‘boring’, it has allowed me to really get an understanding of my productivity. When most days are identical, it becomes easier to identify the variances.
And yes, I seem to be more productive on Mondays. Whilst I don’t think this is a particularly world-shattering revelation, I’d always attributed it to having a greater pool of tasks from which to cherry pick, having a weekend to relax, a good night’s sleep. I thought there were subtle differences in my environment, either physical or biological, that made Mondays more productive.
But after another blinding Monday following a working weekend, I’ve come to the conclusion that my Monday productivity burst is all psychological. And that’s massive.
Because, if it’s true that means a huge part of productivity is mindset.
Now, let’s be clear here. I’m not talking motivation. I am as motivated on a Monday as many other days. What I’m saying is that somewhere there’s a little switch inside my head that says “super-charge my productivity as it’s the start of a new week”. And I want to understand the psychological reasons why I have that switch.
And it’s not as if the rest of the days are unproductive. I’m not lazy the rest of the week. Writing still gets done, tasks are still ticked off… it’s just the big ticket items don’t seem to progress as much.
I recently decided that I want to add a new question on my weekly review right under the field for what challenged me for the week. It’s “what is the minimum thing you need to do to move this forward?”, the idea being that the way to dislodge big tasks that are just stuck there (waiting for time to do them, waiting for the right moment, etc.) is to break them down into the smallest possible component and get traction from that. But I now know that the best day to do that is on a Monday.
Currently my week is broken into my life pillars: Admin / productivity on a Monday, HEMA on a Tuesday, gaming on a Wednesday, Thursday is marketing and Friday is business surrounding writing. The idea is that tasks get batched to the relevant day and it gives me some focus. I still have my day to day tasks. However, this shouldn’t mean Monday is more productive than the rest.
Everything is set up to spread the load across the week, and yet there’s still something about it being the start of a new week that gives me a little added focus and determination.
I’m now thinking about my weekly review and what I do that could possibly be carried across into my daily tracker to potentially make a Tuesday as productive as a Monday.
There’s something huge here for me to unlock. Whilst it might not end up being the weekly review that I do every Sunday, that’s the only thing I can think of that is different going into a Monday compared to other days.
And whilst I realise that I’m not a machine, and my mental energy ebbs and flows with my health, being able to fit in a super-productive day on a Thursday or Friday would be nice.
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