I’m trying to be more productive to get some more work life balance and am curious how others start their week. Any things you do every Monday morning to set yourself up for a good and productive work week?

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Sleep in, cry inside, rush through making kid’s lunch because I forgot to last night, run to the store last minute to buy fake flowers because there’s an activity at school today and I forgot to get them ahead of time….and then settle in, take a deep breath, and try to do better.

But for real that’s a great goal and I am also interested to see what others suggest.

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General advice that applies to personal and work is to start on Sunday looking out towards the week and writing it down. For me putting pencil to paper creates that connection that helps keep me organized. Prioritizing the immediate things and then working off from there. Then writing down what needs to be done to get those big things done (I have that big document review due, but for that to be done I need xyz people input/signoff/review ). Once you do this for a bit you can make the list more complex or less complex like adding items of goals or side tasks you want to do.

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Will second the Sunday prep point. It sounds counterintuitive, but one of the best things I’ve done for both productivity and mental health is spend 30–60 minutes on Sunday planning out Monday and the week ahead. It’s a huge mental relief and helps me walk into Monday far less anxious and much more prepared. It also gives me a bit of control over my day in a profession where that’s otherwise pretty elusive. I also block out my calendar on Monday mornings such that I don’t have any meetings before 9:30 am, which gives me time to settle into the day before the chaos starts.

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Sunday prep helps like others have said. But my biggest WLB game changer was to calendar time to complete a specific task (instead of just a To-Do list, calendared deadlines, and dedicated working sessions). This helps you see your bandwidth throughout every part of your week, and lets you move things around to mitigate some of the “hills” and “valleys”

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One system that's working for me is having the assigned assistant create a matter chart of all upcoming deadlines and task to move each matter forward that week across my workload. She sends me last week's on Friday, I update; she returns Monday. I then calendar by 4 three hour work blocks (AM, MID, PM, EV with goal of keeping evening free) and make sure 1/4 is dedicated to one off/same day problems, then a lot my other tasks by block across the entire week. That helps me not over commit, or at least give partners realistic answers re my capacity and turn around availability

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I fought weekend work for a long time but the Sunday prep session does help. I plan out everything I’m going to do during the week. It’s the only thing that helped with the “Sunday scaries.”

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Do not make any appointments or phone calls until noon on Monday

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