5 Simple Steps To Managing Your Monday Morning

This morning when you woke up, for a brief moment did you convince yourself that it was Sunday again, and you didn't actually have to wake up? Did that brief feeling of relief quickly sour as you became more conscious that you'd already had this moment yesterday?

Here are a few steps you can take to make sure you don't lose your shit this morning and go end up running around the side of the freeway exposing yourself to traffic.

1. 5 More Minutes.

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Small victories: they’re the key to a successful Monday. When your iPhone alarm goes off at 6:45am with that tone that seemed relaxing when you set it, but with each morning it slowly becomes the bane of your existence (I prefer the Sencha alarm sound), treat yourself to the 1-2 extra snoozes that you might not ordinarily take.

Sure, you’ll wake up a little behind, maybe you guys will miss a spot shaving, or maybe you ladies will forget to put eyeliner on one eye, but that feeling that comes when you decide to allow yourself to keep sleeping just a bit longer is probably the most gratifying, relaxing, blissful moment you’ll have in an entire day. Savor it. Cherish it. Snooze it.

2. Dress to impress.

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Image is very important to the workplace. You can’t waltz into work wearing a bathrobe and sandals and a dog-eared beanie and expect people to take you seriously. Your clothes tell your colleagues what kind of worker you are. You want to exploit that obviously flawed logic and work it to your advantage and make yourself look much more professional than you are inside.

The strategy: on Mondays always take great care (especially if you snoozed an extra 45 minutes) that you really get your image right. Monday should be the day you put on your best clothes, your nicest shoes/shirt/blouse/watch/gold fronts/whatever. Doing hair and makeup aren’t necessarily important to this end (you’re going to a shitty office job, not the Debutante’s Ball); the point is to wear your most professional outfit.

If you can pull off, just with your clothes, the image of a well put-together, detail oriented professional, you’ve already accomplished about 75% of the work you’re going to be doing today.

Even if they catch you sleeping at your desk, with a look like that they’ll walk away saying, “geez, he/she is working too hard-- he/she is totally exhausted from all that work.” Just make sure your computer screen is open to some in-progress Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation; they’ll think you’ve been working yourself ragged when in reality you're just working out a #SundayFunday hangover.

3. “Uh-huh.”

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Do you like the people you work with? Are they your best friends? Are they your absolute favorite people? If you answered yes, the people you work with are likely computerized virtual people, plants, or cadavers. In any case, Monday is the worst small talk you’ll be subjected to all week. With one simple expression, all this small talk about what you did on the weekend can be minimized and eventually phased out altogether. The answer is the “uh-huh.”

Here’s the scenario:

Boring Colleague #1: “So, how was the weekend?”

You: *Filling your coffee* “Uh-huh.”

Boring Colleague #1: “Yeah, the wife and kids and I went to Knott’s Berry Farm this weekend—a lotta fun.”

You: “Uh-huh…”

Boring Colleague #1: “Here, look my daughter went on a carousel car shaped like a ladybug, isn’t that the cutest thing?”

You: “Uh-huh…”

Boring Colleague #1: “Well, I better be heading back to my desk. Happy Monday!”

You: “Uh-huh.”

If you can maintain your self-control well enough to not ask for details about someone’s weekend, and avoid divulging details of your own, this awful small talk by the coffee machine can be reduced to a simple, 20-second exchange. Soon you can go back to your desk and check out Twitter in peace.

4. Stay Updated On Social Media.

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Another point that needs to be hammered down is that Monday is a time when we need community the most. We all have to deal with the transition from the weekend back to work, and it can be a very stressful change, indeed. So, the most important part of Monday is to spend your first 45 minutes to one hour working exclusively to get updated on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Soundcloud, whatever (Xanga, Myspace…). You need to take a little time to decompress when beginning the work week and not get started too fast. Take some time for yourself and get situated. You don’t wake up in the morning and immediately start vacuuming, do you?

Check emails, retweet that funny quote from Patton Oswalt, get into a comment battle on Facebook about the real problem going on with our government, like a few pictures on Instagram—whatever you have to do to resist the work that’s slowly melting your mind while you sit in a chair that every day curls your spine just a fraction of a degree more slouchy.

5. Work In Progress.

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As was alluded to in a previous section, another key to managing the expectations of your coworkers on Monday is to have open work on your desk for whenever anyone decides to walk past/check up on you/ask about your weekend. When they get to your desk, you need to give off the impression that, maybe you’re not too swamped to talk, but that you’ve got this or that project that needs to be done and you’re on it. That will start a buzz about your work ethic, and with a little time that buzz could be what gets you to the board of directors of that piece of shit shell company.

Conclusion:

These tips for Monday can be applied to any day of the week if you feel like giving minimal effort. For many of you these will be useful every day. So get back to work updating your facebook status or watching YouTube videos (with the audio through your headset). You're doing a great job. We appreciate you.