4 Steps to Marvelous Mondays

4 Steps to Marvelous Mondays (for Business & Sales Leaders)

If you’re anything how I used to be, you dread Mondays. Sundays were always stressful because I knew in 24 short hours, I would be inundated with project status meetings, sales forecasts calls, long to-do lists, and dealing with cranky teammates that hated Mondays just as much as I did. Well thankfully, I later discovered steps I could take to make my Mondays less dreadful. And with these steps, you can also get each week off to a better start.

1. Shift your focus. Focus on outcomes. One reason many

people hate Mondays is because they often think of the many to-dos for the week. Take your focus off the to-dos and focus on the outcomes you want to achieve for the week. For example, setting a meeting with a new contact within a customer account. Or, identifying $100K of new opportunities. Or,

spend at least 30 minutes coaching each of my employees in career development. If you focus on the outcomes, you can begin to spend time completing tasks that lead to those outcomes and reprioritizing the mundane tasks that get in the way of your productivity during the rest of the week.

2. Grow your relationships. Maintaining positive relationships is a needed skill for all business and sales leaders. Whether they are customer, partner, or colleague relationships they are important for success. Use Mondays to be intentional about growing those relationships. One way to do this is to learn something interesting and new about every person you have a meeting with on Monday. This will help strengthen your network and also provide an

interesting spark in an otherwise dreadful day.

3. Give yourself something to look forward to. Make Monday special by sprinkling a little cinnamon in your coffee or wearing your favorite brooch. Bring in a flower from your garden to display by your phone. Or schedule a special break for Mondays where you have a special snack or do something different than what you would do on the other days of the week.

4. Schedule tasks for when you're most efficient. I don’t know about yo

u, but I am most efficient in the early morning. So, I’ve learned to schedule the more demanding tasks for when I’m most efficient. I encourage you to work with your own rhythms. If you're an early bird, get cracking right away. If you know that you perform better after you've had some time to warm up, save the heavy thinking for later in the day.

5. Look forward to the weekend. Monday lasts for only 24 hours. Give yourself a boost by getting theater tickets or inviting friends over for next weekend.

You can make friends with Monday even if you still like Friday better. With a little planning and some positive thinking, you'll banish the Monday blues and become more productive and less stressed.