It’s Monday, 7:30am. Rain flows down my face. I race my bike to University. 6 students already wait outside the door when I arrive. I let them in and for the coming 2 hours I teach them intermediate C/C++ programming concepts. We're having a blast. I don't understand why Mondays get such a bad rep. Don’t get me wrong. I love weekends. I love sleeping in but I also thrive on kicking off the week with full force. I love weekends because they allow me to decompress, think about complicated problems, sleep, eat and make sweet, sweet love but why should that make me feel bad about Monday? If anything, recharging my batteries allow me to get really excited for the week ahead. In the past months working on VA I have routinely gotten up around 6:30 and earlier and couldn’t wait to get to our office and kick ass together with the team. What follows is an incomplete list of reasons I like Mondays. **_Mondays Are an Opportunity To Start The Week On a High Note_** Let me start with saying: However you start a week will determine how you continue to feel about it. So why not strive to kick things off on a high note? Being relaxed and energized from sleeping, eating, working out and spending quality time with friends (and alone, too) allows me to have that much more focus and energy. I usually try to make a point of getting up early, around 6:30 or 7am, stretch in bed, practice a round of Yoga and meditate for an hour or so. Nothing crazy. Just stretching, breathing and finally sitting still. Beginning the week like this centers me and helps me focus. A snack like a banana and a handful of nuts on my way to the subway keeps me light and nimble. I try to consciously feel good about the days ahead and usually by the time I arrive at the office I’m excited to get started. **_Everyone Is Coming Back From a Mini-Vacation_** I think the most important part in my day are the people I work with. I am lucky and utterly excited to be working with such a smart team. In best case every one had a reasonably relaxing, inspiring and recharging Saturday and Sunday. In fact, at VA we’re trying to not email and code during the weekends. The value of a fresh mind is higher than cramming in a stressful late-night session or breaking up a smooth Saturday afternoon with a disembodied conversation over email that would take 5 minutes in person on Monday. If emotions were high the week before, Mondays are a good time to recap without being blinded by immediate reactions. If morale was lacking, Mondays are a great time to check in with everyone and get excited. I’ll say it again and again. The people I work with are key to how I feel about work. **_Mondays Are a Great Time To Plan And Set Goals_** Before checking in with the team I like to sit down for 30 minutes and list out my goals for the day and often my overarching goals for the week. It’s simple and I use a piece of paper for the high-level stuff and then use timestacks.com for detailed scheduling and sorting. Nothing extraordinary but having that extra amount of focus and mental energy early on is harnessed well through goal-setting. **_Summary_** In summary, I love Mondays because they’re a fresh start, can be framed positively and with excitement, let me see the people I really enjoy working with, are great for morale and are a great time to organize the week and set goals. **_But What To Do If You Still Really, Really Dislike Mondays?_** So, my raving review of Mondays still hasn’t convinced you? Still can’t get out of bed, still loathe your life, still thinking “Here we go again…” again and again every week? Well, as you probably can guess, the problem aren’t Mondays per se. The problem most likely is much more systemic: - Are you in the right job? - Do you have the right people around you? - If you won $1,000,000 today, would you still go to work? This is not a trivial problem because your attitude towards your work (and yourself, really) informs every other aspect in your life. Your friendships, your relationships, your self-esteem and self-worth. I have this nagging feeling that time is too short to be unhappy. So, if you really, really hate Mondays you gotta check yourself. What’s that one thing you can change today to make yourself get really excited about next Monday?