Welcome to another Monday Moving Forward post, in which we explore ways to navigate the beginnings of the week smoother, nicer and, generally speaking, with not too much friction. If you’re reading this type of posts for the first time, be aware there is an entire collection of short form posts on this topic, all part of my 365 days writing challenge. Just do a search on my blog and they’ll show up.

So, what does it mean to “pick a theme for the day”? Simply put, is trying to find some common ground of all the tasks / things you set up to do in that specific Monday. More often than not, our inability to move forward stems for our incapacity to focus on what’s important, as we tend to get lost in the details. This is especially true at the beginning of the week, when we come from some rest that we took during the weekend (hopefully you did took some rest during the weekend) and we’re faced with a potentially bigger load of stuff to do, because stuff tends to pile up when you’re not doing it.

Finding some common ground means identifying things from the same group, like, I don’t know, customer service, or answering emails. Or it may be a day when you will do predominantly coding, if you’re a programmer. Or, if you work in sales, you will send proposals, or do some follow up. Whatever the theme of these tasks, try to group them in such a way that they will give some “color” to the day. For instance, it may be a “Sales Monday”, or a “Coding Monday”, or a “Customer Service Monday”.

The trick is to do this either before you start the week (like Friday afternoon, if you have a clear view of the next week) or Sunday evening (I already talked about planning your Monday a day before). Or, if you don’t have that much of a forecast, try to do this first thing in the Monday morning, even before coffee. Just have a look at all the tasks / stuff you set up to do, and group them. It shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes, but at the end of it, you will hopefully come up with a name. Today, for instance, is a “Coding Monday” for me, as I have predominantly more coding tasks, that I grouped in the first part of the day.

Even if I have other things to do too (and I always have), knowing that I’m in a “Coding Monday” helps me get back on track every time there is a little distraction. Like writing my daily blog post, for instance. Which I just did, so I’m going back to my “Coding Monday” now, and hope you’ll get back to your Monday as well.