The blog

Have you too expe­ri­enced arriv­ing at work Mon­day morn­ing, skimmed through what you’ve got to do this week and felt so over­whelmed that you’ve felt com­plete­ly blocked out? ??You can’t get start­ed and you get noth­ing done, and this in itself doesn’t exact­ly improve things.??If this is the case, you’re not alone.

It’s in moments like these we need a firm and sim­ple way to address this Mon­day-dead­lock, when­ev­er it may occur dur­ing the week.??Let’s face it, the last thing you need when you’ve got a lot to do is to waste time. The soon­er you get start­ed, the more you’ll be able to com­plete, the less stressed you will feel and your are less like­ly to feel blocked again.

For exam­ple, do this

For me, it feels very good to have a ​“1 – 2‑3-tech­nique” to use in sit­u­a­tions like these. Here is an exam­ple of one: ?

1. First of all, look through today’s sched­ule and see when you’ve got the next meet­ing. This is to know if there’s any­thing you need to do right away, in order to pre­pare for the meet­ing, despite that you’re feel­ing blocked. Let’s say you’ve got at least half an hour before you need to do some­thing else. Alright, then you can exhale, at least for the moment.
2. Turn off your phone, so that you’ll remain undis­turbed. Sure, an impor­tant call might need to come through, but if you spend the first day of the week stressed, you’ll do a worse job than if you worked with peace of mind and the feel­ing that you’ve got every­thing under control.
3. Look at every­thing you have writ­ten down that you have to do this week. Trans­fer any­thing you just as well could do next week to the next week in the agen­da. Alright, now you know what you’ve got to play with.
4. Make a quick pri­or­i­ty and choose a to-do task to start work­ing with. Pri­or­i­tize by putting each thing you’ve got to do in rela­tion to your and the busi­ness’ long-term vision and short term goals. You can also take into con­sid­er­a­tion which to-do tasks that are both impor­tant and urgent to get done. The task that would feel the best to get rid of can also be prioritized.
5. Write down the task with the high­est pri­or­i­ty on a post-it note and put it some­where where you’ve got it right in front of you while working.
6. Set aside, close down, or hide your to-do-list (select the verb your­self that best applies). The Mon­day-dead­lock orig­i­nates in that you feel over­whelmed by every­thing you have to do this week. If you now have cho­sen which the most impor­tant task is, you’ll only be dis­tract­ed if you sit and look at every­thing you don’t intend to do right now anyway.
7. Do the to-do-task that you’ve chosen
8. Crum­ple up the post-it note, throw it in the trash, enjoy the feel­ing of com­ple­tion and choose a new task, repeat­ing step 4.

?After a while the dead­lock will loose it’s grip and the work will flow by itself.

Vol­un­tary option

For even bet­ter results, process all e‑mail in your inbox so that it once again becomes empty. 

How do you do it?

How do you do to get start­ed with this week’s work on Mon­day morning? 

Feel free to leave a com­ment below.