1
Make a Monday to-do
list—on Friday.
The end of the week may be
cause to celebrate, but don’t
make it official until you’ve
written a to-do list for Mon-
day. Everything you need to
accomplish next week will be
top of mind, so it makes sense
to capture it at this time. But
there’s another reason. “If you
start the week without this
list, you’ll have to brainstorm
on Monday morning about
the lingering projects from
last week, which could be
tough when you’re sluggish.
You’ll already be starting off a
step behind,” says Samantha
Ettus, a Los Angeles–based
entrepreneur and the author
of The Pie Life: A Guilt-Free
Recipe for Success and Satis-
faction. With this list waiting
on Monday, you may be more
productive and have an easier
time focusing. Check off a few
easy tasks to start, and then
dig into your most challenging
task as quickly as possible.
“If it’s hanging over you,” says
Ettus, “the day will be that
much more of a drag.”
2
Follow the one-hour rule.
No more trying to catch up on
lost sleep on Sunday morn-
ings. “Initially, it was thought
that weekend recovery sleep
was sufficient to pay back
sleep debt,” says Annise Wil-
son, MD, assistant professor of
neurology and sleep medicine
at Baylor College of Medicine.
“But more recent research
suggests that weekend recov-
ery sleep may not reverse the
effects of chronic sleep depri-
vation, and that an irregular
sleep schedule can make it
harder to fall and stay asleep.”
Staying up late isn’t a great
weekend habit either: It can
lead to feeling even more
tired on Monday. So sticking
with a consistent sleep sched-
ule all week long is best. At
the very least, says Wilson, try
not to go to bed or wake up
more than an hour past your
normal times, and if you need
to nap, a brief snooze (under
30 minutes) in the early after-
noon should help you avoid
grogginess and disrupted
nighttime sleep.
GARFIELD THE CAT got two things
very right: First, lasagna is delicious.
Second, Mondays can be a real drag.
It’s not merely the transition from
playtime to the work and school
week. Many of us stay up later on
weekend nights and sleep in during
the day, messing up our circadian
rhythms and making us grumpy and
irritable when the alarm goes off on
Monday morning. The stress of start-
ing the week may even affect our
health. A 2004 study found that
blood pressure tends to be highest
on Monday mornings, while another
concluded that Monday is the most
common day of the week for heart
attacks. All of this may make you
want to hit snooze and spend Mon-
days under the covers. Yet fortunately,
you can reverse the trend and set
yourself up to have a positive, healthy
start to the week. Here, experts weigh
in on eight ways to make this a reality.
(P.S. If you don’t work a traditional
Monday-to-Friday schedule, this
advice is adaptable to whenever you
switch from off- to on-duty.)
With a clear to-do
list waiting
for you on Monday,
you may be more
productive
and have an easier
time focusing.
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106 REAL SIMPLE SEPTEMBER 2019
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