Scheduling

Monday stinks.

I think that's pretty much for everyone. It's just very difficult sometimes to make the transition from relaxing weekend to harried workday.

It's hard for me because I go from having my husband around to help with all the kids (five of them) on the weekends to just me to take care of all of them. To make it worse, Monday is a big work day for me.

I've had Monday set up as a big workday ever since I started working from home five years ago. I was a work-from-home employee for several months before I actually started working for myself. I figured that since Monday gets the work week off to a big start everywhere else, it should likewise get things going in my office. I use that day to contact people and set appointments for the rest of the week and to in general get the work week going.

Tuesday and Wednesday are also fairly big work days for me as well. Things start tapering off on Thursdays and Fridays for me.

This schedule has worked well for me for years but this summer I have felt overwhelmed, especially on Mondays, more times than I would have liked. My sister made a very reasonable observation the other night -- there's no written rule that Monday has to be a big work day; shift some of the work to the end of the week when there are only three kids (mine) here for me to care for.

Valid point.

I've not done much on Thursdays and Fridays (except for write) on those days because I figure people are looking forward to the end of the week and the weekend on those days and I don't really want to bother them. But my very reasonable sister said that most people work up until at least lunch on Fridays.

For some reason that thought was very liberating for me (evidently it doesn't take much). Today I did have a lot of work set up (or from the looks of my planner for today it looked that way) but I stopped and took the girls to a park here in town. (It didn't hurt that I needed some photos of the park for a short piece I'm getting ready to write.) It felt good to not feel so rushed to get so much done all in one day.

Depending on how this new outlook works for me I may begin to schedule some of my work weeks more evenly through the entire week instead of setting up so much to do on Mondays. So far so good!