happy, happy monday

I know this is going to sound like workplace kool-aid of a hallucinogenic sort, but I have come to really love Mondays.  In my still-new world of independent consulting, I have been testing and trying and balancing.  I've been time managing and retrofitting my week.  I've been sorting.  Culling out the unnecessary and unmanageable.  All while maintaining a sense of an integrated, reasonable life as a whole.  And sometimes this journey isn't smooth.

I don't get all excited about typical work hours - or even days, anymore.  I work either when necessary or when inspired.  So if that's 9pm on a Sunday evening, or 6am on a Tuesday morning - or any random time in between - so be it.  And if I need to scoot out for groceries, a client meeting, happy hour with an old friend, my precious time at the gym, well then I do that too.  I work when my clients need me (or need something from me) and I work when my brain is on and the productive juices are flowing.  If I'm stuck or having a less-than-creative day, I stick to billing or financial models.  Or I go for a bike ride to reset.  And when I'm "on" I try to stay in the groove and follow it.  Which doesn't always work out.

But I've also found that my fondness for working with small, entrepreneurial clients has necessarily led to engaging with more of them simultaneously.  So I'm learning to develop that fine balance between rainmaking, base touching, networking, info gathering, relationship managing...and actually doing the work.

I won't say that all that old "traditional corporate workplace" mentality has bled out of me yet, but in the past 10 years I've worked for companies that have started to realize the importance of flexibility and adaptability in our jobs.  With all the travel, conference calls with folks in other countries, and other whacky things in today's work world, we either get integrated or go lose our minds.  And the other key?  I think many company leaders - including me, in my tiny little company - have learned that productivity doesn't directly correlate to a 40+ hour work week.  You don't get 8 quality hours out of an employee every day just because they "show up for work."  You get quality, creative output when workers are energized and ready to work.  Oh and whether I'm working for me or for someone else, 4 hours of meetings a day talking about the work doesn't offset the actual work that still needs to get done!

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for dedicated work time and dedicated personal time.  It's just that I've come to believe - at least for me - that these times don't necessarily have to be scripted and consistent.  On the other hand...

...recently I've come to adopt Mondays as my revered and fiercely-guarded "productivity days."  And I've found this exponentially important as summer has hit and our weekends are as rushed and busy as our weekdays.  Otherwise we end up arriving at Monday, feeling as if we need a vacation from our weekends!  So I've blocked my calendar and started focusing on what's most important for setting up a solid week.

Mondays now look like this:

• 7ish - wake up, throw in a load of laundry, put on the kettle and deal with the dishes that were ignored yesterday
• tea, email, google reader, review social media for myself and clients, switch laundry
• SHINY OBJECT: reorganize junk drawer, sort through mail and take out the recycling
• 9ish - Starting to really wake up and get going.  Refocus on the week ahead, aka go Post-It crazy.  My technique includes:
• Post-It Calendar - one section for each: clients, boards, bus dev/ops, and personal.  This calendar is a giant pad where each week gets ripped off at the end of the week.
• Post-In Notes - one standard-sized note for each client, stuck all over my desk underneath the Calendar
• I review my Outlook calendar for the week and note on my Post-It calendar the appointments I already have scheduled - client meetings, networking, social, gym.
• I sort through my notes & emails from the previous week, jotting down all the to-dos - by client - on their sticky note. Then I assign these tasks to a day  the calendar when I know I can sit and do.  
• Sometimes I just do the work quickly while I'm jotting it down, giving myself that oh-so-satisfying checked off item.
• (I've just found that this system works best for me, as most time management techniques fail miserably in my world.  I've figured out that I'm way too ADD, multi-tasking, free-association, and overscheduled for something much more complicated.)
• 10ish - more laundry, email, a smoothie.  But by this time, I'm hitting the productivity apex.  So I'm starting to dig into client projects like crazy.
• 5ish - by this time I've done the rest of the laundry, given a light buff to the bathrooms and the kitchen, eaten something resembling lunch (though around 3pm so it's starting to feel a little dinner-ish), and been horribly hard-working with my client deliverables.  I'm truly in "the zone" at this time and am running at full stride.
• If I don't get wrapped back into my client projects, I'll take time to walk over to the studio for a 6:45pm yoga class.  But honestly, the past 2 weeks I've completely missed it.  At 7pm I look at the clock and realize I've blown right through the start of the class.  Bummer, but I value the uninterrupted productivity on this one day so I SCHEDULE the workouts on the other days.  Again, it's about finding a system that works.
• And then sometime around 9pm, I grab a glass of wine and maybe either watch a Law & Order re-run or take my Kindle to bed and am asleep by 11.

And you see what's missing?  No meetings, no clients and - if I've done it properly - no leaving the house, with the possible beneficial exception of going to yoga.  Just a good solid 12 hours of being industrious, productive and effective.  Sure, I go to sleep at the end of the day with the all-day-at-the-computer stiffness in my shoulders and neck, but that's okay.  It's worth it to me to carve out this day of work - for all aspects of my life - in order to stay dedicated and present.

I have actually started to look forward to Mondays now.  What a difference it can make when you joyfully anticipate settling in and being successful in your efforts.  It brings a whole new definition to workplace productivity - one that I've defined for myself and one that I can continue to edit and refine and adapt.  And I will...because I just realized I need a half hour for blogging...