How to Make Mondays Not Suck
Alright so let’s talk about Mondays. I’m gonna be honest – I LOVE Mondays…but if you hate them, don’t worry, I used to, too. There is hope for you, lol. Mondays tend to get a bad rap and I think it’s because a lot of people kind of barrel into Mondays without a game plan, just hoping for the best, after spending the majority of Sunday night battling the Sunday scaries.
Let’s talk about Sunday scaries for a minute, just in case you haven’t heard of them.
So, I googled, “What are Sunday Scaries” and this is what came up:
“The Sunday Scaries are the heavy sense of anxiety and dread that sets in on Sunday afternoon or evening as you look toward the workweek ahead.”
I can’t speak for everyone but I know when I used to work in the corporate world and in the classroom, there were seasons of my life when the Sunday Scaries hit me HARD. Thinking back, it was usually during the seasons when I didn’t make planning a priority. When I got more into strategic scheduling and creating routines that support me, I had more control over how I felt heading into Mondays.
Here’s the thing – it’s very easy to fall into a victim mentality. Like I’m not trying to make you feel bad but I am here, as your productivity BFF, to call you out and up. To let you know that there is a better way, okay?
I’m not saying that these tips I’m gonna share with you are some magic fix and that Monday is going to become your favorite day of the week. But don’t surrender your power to a woe is me attitude. You have more control over your life than you realize. You’ve just got to be a little bit more intentional about the words you speak, what you consume, and your actions.
01. Do your weekly prep meeting ahead of time.
A few weeks, ago, I was chatting with someone in Instagram DMs (shoutout to Courtney if you’re reading this) and she said that my message of schedules and routines being tools, not chains, and creating them to support YOU as a unique individual helped her realize that prepping for her week on Sundays just was not working for her. That is the most common day that people set aside to prep for the week but to be honest, I am not a fan of it either, especially when I was working in the corporate world. I liked my Sundays to be as peaceful/restful as possible to help me gear up for Monday and when I prepped for the week on Sundays, it used to stress me the heck out!
So I switched to planning and prepping for the following week on Fridays and it worked SO much better for me. Think about it – Fridays have a good energy about them already, right? You don’t need help getting pumped about Fridays. So why not funnel some of that good energy into planning for the following week? You’re in a good mood, most likely, so your planning session will have good energy! Whereas if you do it on Sunday, you might be more prone to feeling a little bit anxious about it.
The cool thing about doing productivity the Hustle Sanely way is that you get to move and shift things around so that they support you. Since I now take Fridays off of work, I do my weekly prep meeting on Thursdays as my last work task of the week and it works great for me in this season!
The way that I teach weekly prep meetings, they only take you like 10-15 minutes max and they set you up for major success for the following week.
I have a whole podcast episode dedicated to weekly prep meetings which I will link for you here, but I will also give you a quick rundown on of the 5 tips here as well:
01. Reflect on how the previous week went.
02. Make note of any scheduled events: so like meetings, appointments, birthdays, etc.
03. Schedule in how you’re going to intentionally rest during the week.
04. Write your top 3 tasks for the week.
05. Determine and schedule other tasks that need to be done, carving out space for margin and transitions.
If you want to learn more about Weekly Prep Meetings then check out the How to Create Your Peacefully Productive Schedule course: It’s a self-paced course that helps you create yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily routines so you can live a peacefully productive life! I’ll have that linked in the show notes for you, too!
So that’s tip number 1 to help your Mondays not suck: do your weekly prep meeting ahead of time so that you can go into Monday feeling prepped and ready to take on the world.
02. Do a home reset.
This is something else that I like to do before Monday rolls around because a clean living environment = a happy Jess. Like truly, what feels better than a tidy home as you head into a new week?
I typically do a little home reset on Sunday evenings just so that everything is as fresh as possible when I wake up on Monday mornings. If you know anything about Hustle Sanely, you know about Hustle Sanely 5 or HS5 and on Sundays my home reset is my tidy for 15 because that’s really the amount of time it takes.
I’m not talking about a full on deep clean or anything (I do have a whole episode devoted to my cleaning routine - you can listen here if that is something you are interested in) but literally 15 minutes or less or tidying. I put my AirPods in and listen to an episode of a podcast that I’m loving and it’s honestly kind of therapeutic.
Here’s a quick rundown of what I typically do during the 15 minutes:
~ Take out the trash (unless it’s not close to being full)
~ Run the dishwasher (so I can unload it the next morning)
~ Clear all of the counters and tables
~ Fluff and vacuum the couch
Nice and simple but I’m telling you, that little reset routine makes it SO nice to wake up and walk out to a tidy home on Monday mornings.
03. Plan and or prep your meals for the week.
Full transparency I am not in charge of the cooking in our household – that is all my husband, Adam. But I do help with meal planning in a very loose manner. Basically, Adam asks me what I want to eat that week and we talk about it.
I’m gonna be honest – Adam and I don’t plan what we’re eating to a tee every day but we do plan when we’re gonna eat at home and when we’re gonna eat out and we usually plan like 2-3 meals that we want and then play the rest by ear. It’s what works for us in this season.
I have had seasons, like when I was in grad school, working 3 jobs, and going to my internship where I had ti plan out all my meals and meal prep everything unless I wanted to eat fast food all the time which if you know me at all, that is not my vibe. Figure out what kind of meal planing and prepping supports you in your current season and create a plan of action for it.
Here’s a little overview of what our meal planning and prepping situation looks like every week. Keep in mind, we are very low key about this. It is not a strict, set in stone, type of thing.
On Thursday nights (after my weekly prep meeting that I talked about earlier) I usually tell Adam if I’m in the mood for a certain type of meal for the following week. I typically give him 1-2 ideas of what I want.
We have a few staple meals every week – like on Tuesdays we host Taco Tuesday for our group of friends so we don’t have to think about that. Then on Mondays, we eat at my grandparents’ house because we got to visit them. So we just kind of fill in the gaps by looking at our calendar to see if we have plans that require eating out any of the nights. We eat out probably 1-2 times per week.
After talking about meals, I usually order groceries on Fridays. We order groceries through Amazon Fresh. Adam and I have a shared note in the notes app on our phones where we keep a rolling grocery list throughout the week so it’s super easy for me to see what we need.
That’s it! We are really low fuss when it comes to meals and don’t mind eating super simple meals or eating the same things over and over. But like I said, I used to have to pack all of my lunches and plan all of my dinners ahead of time when I was in a busier season of life so if that’s where you’re at right now, do that and do it well!
04. Create Monday Power Habits that support you.
I don’t know if this is an actual thing to anyone else but I’ve been using Monday power habits for over a year now and they really do help me start my week off on the right foot.
Mondays have the potential to set the tone for the rest of the week so I like to start the week of strong when it comes to how I’m spending my time.
Your Monday Power Habits can be whatever you want them to be – tailor them to what makes you feel like an action-taking, problem-solving women who is the leading lady of her life!
I’ll tell you my Monday Power Habits to get your wheels turning:
~ Longer than usual morning routine
On Mondays, I like to take it nice and slow when it comes to my morning routine. I’m all about listening to my body and checking in with myself to see what I need. Tuesdays-Thursdays, I’m pretty streamlined and quick with my mornings but on Mondays, something that makes me excited is knowing that I get to wake up and do a more boujie than normal morning routine.
~ Eat a nutrient-dense breakfast
My breakfast situation is usually very quick and simple – my go-tos on normal days are greek yogurt bowls or overnight oats. But on Mondays, I like to make a hot breakfast – I cook eggs and make avocado toast and it always hits the spot. There’s just something about starting my week off with a meal that nourishes me well that makes me want to continue making healthy choices for my body as the week goes on.
~ Get in a bomb workout
I almost never skip a workout on Mondays and I make sure to sign up for a class with my favorite instructor or get in a lower body lift session (my favorite thing to do in the gym). Same as the breakfast thing, I like to start the week off strong (no pun intended, lol I had to) when it comes to moving my body because it’s the catalyst for continuing to do it for the rest of the week. I think of it like a snowball effect. On Monday, I get the momentum going, and then it’s easier to make healthier choices as the week goes on.
~ Wear an outfit that is cute and comfy
As most of you know, I work from home but I still like to put a little bit of effort into my outfits a few days a week. I love choosing an outfit on Mondays that is cute and just feels very ~me~ if you know what I mean. Mondays are a pretty work-heavy day for me (I work on product development on Mondays) so I usually go with some sort of stretchy or flowy pant and crop top situation because that’s comfy to sit at my desk for extended periods of time in.
So those are my Monday Power Habits!
Take some time and think about how your Mondays currently go. What parts of the day do you want to enjoy more or to go smoother? What are some small tweaks you can make to lean more into that?
Some other ideas for Monday Power Habits:
~ Stop for coffee at your favorite coffee shop (maybe every other day you make coffee at home)
~ Go out to lunch with a co-worker (maybe every other day you pack your lunch to bring to work)
~ Take the scenic route home from work so you can listen to an extra episode of your favorite podcast
Don’t overthink these – they are just little rituals that make you feel like the best most you version of yourself and that add a little sparkle to your Mondays.
So there you have it! Some tactical ways to make your Mondays not suck! I would love to hear what tips you plan on implementing or what Monday power habits you come up with, so feel free to share about them on IG stories and tag me @jessmmassey so I can cheer you on! 💃🏻
Want to learn how to create a schedule that weaves regular rest into your life?
If you enjoyed this blog post, tune into episode 129 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper
into this topic:
