The Monday Reset: Five Questions to Start Your Week on Purpose
Most of us plan our week inside an inbox. We open the laptop on Monday morning, see what landed over the weekend, and let the first urgent message decide what kind of week it is going to be. By 9:30 a.m., the week is already running us.
I spend my working life as a licensing director, helping businesses see opportunity where others see friction. Over the years, I have come to believe that Monday is the biggest piece of friction most of us face every single week. It is also the most overlooked opportunity we have.
Why Monday Deserves Five Minutes
In January 2014, I started posting a short message every Monday before the workweek began. The first one was simply: “Wake up! Get up! Stand up! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” I kept going for fifty-two weeks, one topic at a time, and those posts eventually became my book, Reinventing Monday.
The biggest lesson from those fifty-two Mondays is that the Monday Blues are self-inflicted. Nobody gives Monday its bad reputation but us. That sounds harsh, but it is actually good news, because anything we create, we can change. Monday is a reset button that comes around every week, free and automatic, whether you use it or not.
Using it does not take an hour of journaling or a new productivity app. It takes about five quiet minutes and five honest questions.
1. What Am I Really Dreading?
When we say we dread Monday, we rarely dread the whole week. Usually it is one meeting, one conversation, one deadline or one person. The dread spreads out and colors everything else.
Name the real thing. Write it down. Once it has a name, it shrinks back to its actual size, and you can decide how to handle it instead of carrying it around all week.
2. What Would Make This Week a Win?
Not a to-do list. One outcome. If Friday afternoon came and only one thing had moved forward, what would you want it to be?
Answering this on Monday morning gives the rest of the week a direction. When the inbox starts pulling you sideways on Tuesday, you have something to come back to.
3. How Am I Choosing to Feel About It?
One of my favorite lines in the book is short: “Happiness is a choice. Choose wisely.”
This is not about pretending everything is great. It is about recognizing that your attitude toward the week is a decision you make before you send the first email. You can walk in already defeated, or you can walk in curious about what the week might bring. The circumstances are the same either way. The week you get is not.
4. What Is Changing, and Am I Fighting It?
Every workplace is changing all the time: a new manager, a new tool, a reorganization, a client who wants something different. A lot of Monday dread is really resistance to change we cannot control.
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Here is another line from the book I come back to often: “Change is inevitable. Don’t fight it. Accept it and embrace it.” Ask yourself where you are spending energy pushing against something that is already happening, and what would open up if you put that energy into adapting instead.
5. Who Deserves a Thank-You This Week?
Some of the most powerful responses to my Monday posts came when I wrote about friendship and appreciation. People filled the comments with thank-yous to the friends and colleagues who had carried them through hard years.
Starting the week by deciding who you will thank does two things. It reminds you that you are not doing any of this alone, and it gives someone else a better week too. Few things cost less or return more.
Keep Your Week Well Fed
There is a line in Reinventing Monday about travel: “Traveling feeds the soul and your personal growth like nothing else on this planet. Do not let it go hungry.” I believe the same is true of our weeks. When every week looks exactly like the last one, growth goes hungry. Monday is the moment to decide what you will feed it: a new skill, a hard conversation, a little more courage than last week.
Making the Reset a Habit
The five questions only work if you actually use them. Here is how to fit the reset into a real Monday morning:
- Take five quiet minutes before you open any email
- Write your answers in one place you will see again
- Share one of your answers with a colleague or friend
- Look back on Friday and see how the week really went
Do it for a month and you will notice something. Monday stops being the day that happens to you and starts being the day you set the terms.
Fifty-Two Fresh Starts
These questions are a starting point, not a formula. I am not a guru, and I never pretended to be one. What I learned over fifty-two Mondays is that honest questions, asked at the start of the week, change the rest of it.
If you want to go deeper, Reinventing Monday: Transforming the Way You Think, Work, and Live Every Week holds fifty-two honest conversations about confidence, regret, integrity, gratitude and everything else that makes up a working life. Get your copy of Reinventing Monday on Amazon, and if this article helped, share it with someone who dreads Sunday night.
Your next reset button is already on the calendar. It is called Monday.
