How to Make the Most of Your of Mondays

Among the great dreads of life, death, taxes, and Mondays share something essential in their sense of mortal doom and inevitability.

Mondays mark the end of self with a kind of precision that’s almost poetic when you think about it. The boundary between the undivided and seducingly solipsistic “I” of the weekend and the salary-seeking, decidedly compartmentalized “I” of the working week, is as clear as a calendar reminder pinging at 8 a.m.

If we dislike Mondays, I argue that it's not because they start the week—it's because they reset who we are expected to be. But we can do more than suffer through it all. Jim Davis' Garfield, after all, turned his loathing of Mondays into a cartoon empire and mountains of lasagna.

Superperformers, the people around us who seem to somehow have more hours to each day than we have, do something similar by turning the dread into design. Instead of being crushed by the transition, they choreograph it to a T. The good news is that their approach is both learnable and surprisingly human.

In the Kitchen of Life, Preparation is Everything

Whichever woodsman gave rise to the often misattributed quote “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening the axe” was on to something.

A productive week doesn’t happen by accident. If you leave things to autopilot, you will fall to the level of your habits instead of rising to your aspirations. Even if your habits are atomic and entirely optimized, preparation still finds a way to magnify their impact.

Benjamin Franklin, the original all-American superperformer, understood this better than anyone. In his autobiography, he mapped out a daily structure that became the blueprint for countless time-management systems.

Each morning he asked, “What good shall I do this day?” and each evening he reflected, “What good have I done today?” That simple rhythm of intention and reflection created a feedback loop that made progress as inevitable as it became measurable.

Modern behavioral science agrees with what Franklin was intuiting his way towards. In a paper titled "Making the Best Laid Plans Better," researchers Todd Rogers, Katherine Milkman, Leslie John, and Michael Norton found that specific plan-making dramatically increases follow-through. People who visualized the where, when, and how of their goals were far more likely to complete them. Preparation, in other words, makes execution easier because it transforms vague desires into tangible steps.

Another stream of research supports this idea. Studies show that “implementation intentions,” or the act of linking a goal to a specific action and time, reduce procrastination and increase persistence. It’s not the size of the goal that matters but its concreteness. Superperformers don’t rely on motivation to strike, they rely on structure to kindle it by force if necessary.

So, what we need isn’t more advice about “getting things done.” What we need is to prepare like the people who actually do.

How to Prepare to Get Things Done This Week

If this Monday already feels spoken for, don’t worry, the week is long enough to turn it around.

Better yet, why not start tonight? Do what Franklin did and host an honest audit of your day with only yourself in audience. What did you accomplish, and what fell through the cracks? Which of those gaps actually matter? Write them down, because you're going to need them for the next step.

Before going to bed, write a simple note for tomorrow morning. Don't go for a lofty manifesto or a journal entry on your sentiments about Tuesday. Instead, opt for a simple, pared-down practical list. For example, an aspiring author and academician might have “Write Psychology Today piece on nailing Mondays” and “Remind Ph.D. instructor about supervision" jotted hastily on a post-it note. Simplicity is key, and each item should describe something that can actually be completed.

Now, let's outdo Franklin himself by channeling Pareto, who you may have heard about in economics class. The 80/20 principle, or the Pareto Principle, tells us that roughly 20 percent of our actions generate 80 percent of our outcomes. And while it remains a truism more than a fact of life, we can safely treat it as such here.

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Mark each item based on the impact they will have on your long-term success, and what moves the needle the most will be your number one. Begin there tomorrow, and keep the flame going until its done. Momentum is built from progress, not from wishlists.

To increase your odds, borrow a technique from software engineers known as task sizing. Agile teams use “t-shirt sizing” (small, medium, large) to estimate effort and allocate time. You can do the same by assigning each task a rough size, something that helps you see what fits where.

Then, create deep-work blocks for each task that you protect like sacred ground, not least because of how Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow teaches us that people are happiest when fully immersed in their tasks.

Turn off your notifications and close your browser tabs if you have to. When interruptions happen, as they always do, don’t let them erase your plan. Let unfinished work spill over to the coming days, and write it on a new line or stick a post-it on your laptop. The goal isn’t perfection as much as it’s continuity.

You see, superperformers don’t need perfect days—all they need are unbroken chains of progress. So, as the next Monday looms, and as the going one unfolds, remember that what feels like an ending is actually an opportunity for recalibration.

Take control of the week before it happens, and soon enough you'll find yourself stepping into a rhythm instead of the grind.

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