Monday Makeover

Today, I’m pleased to introduce new content partner Nataly Kogan, a Boston mama and co-founder of Work It, Mom! Nataly will contribute cross-posts that are relevant to working moms and life/work balance. Welcome, Nataly! And here are her 5 tips for better Mondays:

“I don’t know many people who love Mondays. But I do know a lot of working moms - and dads - who like something about their Mondays. [After reading responses from our readers] in a Q&A about Mondays and what fellow working moms liked about them, [I was] inspired to create a list of 5 tips for better Mondays:

Treat yourself to a special meal. Make it the day you go out for lunch. Splurge on the overpriced Starbucks latte. Make this the night your family orders in instead of cooking. There’s nothing wrong with being motivated by food!

Make a very short to-do list. Whether you work outside the home or in your kitchen, Mondays involve a lot of catching up on things as well as with colleagues and clients. I personally tend to get less concrete tasks done on Mondays than on other days because of this and to reduce frustration, I’m trying to be reasonable about my Monday to-do list.

Start off the day by doing something you enjoy. [A reader] posted recently about needing a certain amount of “flaking out and blog walking” in the morning before she got productive and many members shared that they do the same. I think of this as work warm-up–procrastination that prepares you for diving into work. One tip–set a time limit for yourself if you do this.

Get at least one big item done from your weekly to-do list. Personally I hate when it’s the middle of the week and my big to-dos are still sitting there, waiting for me to get enough guts/energy/time/focus to do them. If I get one done on a Monday–say, writing up a design spec for a certain part of the site (a long, tedious, and very unglamorous part of my job)–I feel less burdened and more productive the rest of the week.

Limit the number of meetings. Meetings can be great, but many are too long and unproductive. Pack your Monday full of these and you have a lot less time to get things done. Of course, you can’t always control when meetings happen, but if you have a choice, don’t do more than two on a Monday.”

For more from Nataly, hop over and visit her at the Work It, Mom! blog.