Are you more productive at the start of the week than the middle of the week? If you’re like me, I’ve found that I’m most productive during Monday mornings. The reason is simple: I know what I have to do (catch up for the weekend). After looking at what I’ve done previously, I thought I’d share some tips and suggestions on how to start the week off strong.

Start with micro-goals: What are the things you have to do this morning? For me, it’s straightforward — get to Inbox Zero on customer support emails. Do all the distracting things in one big sweep: There are always tasks that have to be done, even if they’re not immediately important or urgent. Getting these things done early helps me keep my clear my mind for more important activities during mid week. Set up an 30 minute event early in the morning: This could be a prioritization meeting, a forward weekly review, or a tactical alignment discussion. This gets you up and sets up an immediate time to start off the day. Right afterwards, you get to move onto your real work. Not setting a hard deadline risk you wasting time with trivial things that are unimportant. When dealing with emails, take an action to each immediately as you read them. Don’t just go through your list of emails without taking some sort of actions. The actions could be: reply, forward, create tasks, follow up, or ignore. Take one action and move on.

It’s always risky to catch up on your daily news. This leads to a “consumption” binge that will eat up your time without generating value.

Goodluck!

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