Beating Down Monday Blues

Weekends are the time to relax & refill.., recharge & revitalize.., and replenish & renovate our worn-out bodies & minds after going through a long work week. Understandably, we wait with excitement & anticipation to finally reach the end of the five days arduous work sprint. In our uncontainable excitement, we start planning how we'd like to spend our coming weekend. We have pretty much figured out for ourselves what we'd like to do on a weekend. Most of the time our weekend plans are defined by the kind of phase of life we're currently in.

Those who love to throw themselves out on the streets, can't run out of alternatives in metro cities like Delhi & Mumbai with the last mile connectivity. They'd explore beautiful sites, green spaces & exquisite monuments with significant others or friends. Some would hang out with colleagues & co-workers at cafes, malls, multiplexes, & restaurants. Others might love to pack their bags and go on a weekend getaway to have some gala time with family & friends.

Also, some of us would welcome weekends curled up in our bed and wake up feeling relaxed & well-rested on Saturdays & Sundays. They would love to bake cakes and cookies, prepare puddings & sweets, and cook delicious meals to enjoy meals together. Similarly, the new age cyber couples would tune in on trending Netflix shows or series, order Italian or continental on Swiggy, stack up some wine or beer, and feel better off.

So would single men & women might make time for self-care to pamper their wounded selves and feel better. They'd book an appointment at the salon or urban clap and give a treat to their exhausted bodies & drained minds. And yes, some might find themselves stranded in a depressive episode too, brooding in their corners.

Yet what is it that despite having a great weekend (that we think in our minds we had it), we dread going back to work & resuming our long hours' shift office job? Despite spending the weekend having fun & bursting out our stress, we still do not feel quite arrived on Monday morning. It is what we call Monday blues we suffer from even after a supposedly great weekend. They are lingering pangs of feeling not getting enough of the weekend as we eventually move into next week.

According to some dedicated studies, research & surveys, and my observation after interacting with over hundreds of clients: I have found that for clients weekends happen to go fast & workweeks seem to move at a lot less speed. One of them interestingly put it, it feels as if time just flies over the weekend & stops through the arduous workweek!! To which I asked him, don't you like your job enough to bear with it happily through the week? In response, he said: "It's nothing like that. It’s to do with my struggle to BOUNCE BACK to my desktop after a fun weekend."

So is there a way to beat down our Monday blues & arrive feeling "relaxed", "refilled", "recharged", “revitalized”, "replenished" & "renovated", to work after our much-needed break? Well yes!! And the answer is Workweek Warm-up!

Workweek warmup is an intentional practice to help you BOUNCE BACK quickly into your productivity circle after a tangential getaway on your weekend. It is a way to GET BACK to your office job by minimizing hard resistance on a mental & physical level after your weekend is over. Here it goes:

MOVE INTO THE ORBIT | Get Back On Track

Before you get carried away & drift too far with the current of the weekend, start returning as earliest by the early evening of Sunday. Don't be shocked to read it & complain that your weekend is still not over. Rather learn to wind up your weekend to prime your mind with the onset of the evening itself. For it’ll help you transit from the orbit of leisure and move you back toward your orbit of work. The orbit you'd jumped in for the time being to renew and replenish, however, should not stay here for long.

Naturally, it isn't easy to bring yourself back to your table without cribbing about it. Quite expectedly, you feel a bit disconnected as well as disrupted after a full break from work for a day or two. So you gotta push yourself to eat the frog over the week & that too not with disgust and distaste. But feeling arrived, excited, and ready to take on the challenges in the workweek.

For it, you’ll need some downtime time to rewind yourself to dissolve the weekend hangover. It will further reorient you to sail through the coming five/six days of the tough drill. Also, you need it to prepare yourself mentally and physically for the office with a regained form, renewed energy, and reset focus.

Thus, you must take a series of steps beforehand to get the feel of going back to work. It will help you immensely the next morning to immediately tap into your productivity groove. Therefore, you must slowly and gradually start ahead to stay ahead.

1). Open your wardrobe & take stock of your formal.

2). Make your office bag, and equip it with stationary, files & folders.

3). Take a quick look at your inbox, prepare drafts & clean the spam.

4). Meditate to calm your mind and clear the mundane clutter.

PLAN YOUR WEEK | Set An Intention, Sort Out Your Mind

It is ideal to walk back to the office with a clear intention & sharp focus rather than to drag yourself cluelessly & feeling scattered. So take a moment to reflect on how you'd like to spend your week and what you'd want to accomplish. You might go out in the late evening to a cafe, order a coffee, and sit down and plan your week to get the most out of it. Some people like to scribble on paper and others like to use productivity apps like Todoist, Evernote, etc. Go with whatever you like and prepare a realistic to-do list for the week.

Also, list down the distractions that might fragment your attention and prevent you from performing in your workweek. A distraction could be an app, a habit, a platform, or even a person that comes your way to bring the best out of you, hence, be the best you. They slow you down and kill your productivity during the workweek. Thus, must be put behind only to attend to or entertained in your free time. Yes, initially, it will be difficult to stick to it but with more and more practice, your mind will be gradually trained and disciplined to reject those distractions.

To sum it up, there are two key things that you must keep in mind to make it a power week marked with peak performance:

1). A loose & flexible to-do list to center your intentions.

2). A clear view & rigid take on distractions to channel your focus.

In short, bring your goals & objectives in focus and push your distractions behind.

Pro Tip: Go to bed early. Catch up on your sleep. Wake up feeling well-rested.

EARN YOUR WEEKENDS | Grind Through Workweek

Here we need to acknowledge that work and leisure go hand in hand. While work gives us a sense of meaning & purpose in life. Leisure, when done right, brings us a feeling of joy & contentment. When work and leisure are in balance, leisure supplies us with the energy for hard work, and hard work makes us truly appreciate hard-earned leisure.

Therefore, grind through workweeks to arrive on your weekends feeling you’ve earned them. At the same time, do not forget to strike a work-life balance too. In any way, weekends cannot overcompensate for your sleep, diet, or exercise. Rather, strive to be joyfully productive without having to feel obligated to work day-in-day-out. All this while, do not forget to put yourself first. Remember the world would not fall apart if it weren't for you.

Similarly, do not save all the fun for the weekend, take short breaks in between work hours. You could move around a bit, have a cup of black coffee, crack a joke & share a good laugh with a colleague, and do a couple of stretches. Periodic short and healthy breaks during work hours make the office grind a lot more fun & less exhausting. The power of short power breaks cannot be stressed enough. They increase attention span, improve productivity, and increase overall job satisfaction. MOVE.

Also, learn to appreciate the ordinary joys at the workplace free from distractions like technology, and vices like office politics. Moreover, protect your focus, save your energy, and use your time for better things. Furthermore, value consistency over intensity, it's way more sustainable in the long run and a lot less dreadful.

STRIKE WORKWEEK & WEEKEND BALANCE | Here’s Why:

The sheer idea that the weekend is the time to relax & chill out is itself flawed & overhyped in the toxic productivity culture of the corporate world. It is a big part of the problem behind Monday blues that employees deal with at the start of nearly every week.

In other words, they dread driving themselves through an overstretched & overwhelmed grind in the coming week. It dictates they squeeze every ounce of their energy over the week and save all the possible fun & leisure later for Saturdays & Sundays.

It might seem to work for the initial months or years maybe. But for its mechanical and soul-sucking nature, it leaves us dried out & discontented over the period. It robs of the richness of life in the present over the promise of luxury in the future.

Inadvertently, we spend the whole week pushing and dragging ourselves toward the weekend. So as the weekend kicks in, we feel rushed to release ourselves from the corporate cage for whatever time.

In addition, it leads to other problems like time distress & time scarcity with the rigid concept of weekday & weekend division. We find ourselves in a vicious cycle where we neither have ever enough time for work nor leisure.

Ironically, contrary to the popular assumption of spending weekends laid back & lazy, we find them burning fast & quickly passing through. Incidentally, we arrive the next day at the office feeling low on energy and fuel.

Pro Tip: Discipline is Freedom!

SHIFT IN OUR THINKING

I am of the view that we need to restructure this kind of thinking for comfortable consistency at a leveled pace spread over the week. As a result, we’d be required to put in fewer hours in a day during workweeks. Consequently, it will free up time and energy to catch up on regular stuff in life other than work & office.

Since an 8-12 hour shift at the office leaves little to no energy at the end of the long day. It sends you back home drained and depleted for things that we care about or about ourselves, interests & passions we want to pursue, and relationships we love to nurture. Moreover, it will not require us to break our backs and wreck our minds but persevere and perform for a long stretch with sanity and continuity.

A provision of taking an early leave on completing the daily target, granting a day off in a week, or planning for paid time off for days (5 Days at least) over a month would be a far better deal. It will allow us to disconnect from work when we want to and lose ourselves to recharge ourselves when needed. We would then be able to savor our breaks bit by bit, drop by drop.

With this kind of freedom, we’d be incentivized to do more in fewer hours and meet our reasonably-set monthly targets before the deadline. Furthermore, it will also motivate us to choose consistency over intensity, and delay gratification until we earn it. Moreover, we'd be better placed to take control of our lives with a sense of responsibility instead of compulsion imposed by professional accountability. What do you think about this new arrangement, do write me back?

PS: How do you like to spend your weekends? Do you like to stay indoors or go outdoors? Well, I like to stay back at home and spend some quality time with near & dear ones. Tell me what your idea of the weekend is on Gmail.