Maybe not with those words, but ask them which days of the week they feel most productive. For me it was never Monday. The Sunday night dread would start creeping in, because I already knew what was coming, back to back meetings and that drained feeling by the end of the day. And guess what, most of the team felt the same.
So I ran an experiment with my Mondays, and it worked better than I expected, for the Mondays and for the Sunday nights too.
What I changed
- No meetings on Mondays. The whole day is blocked for “Flow Mode”.
- Sprint planning moved to Tuesday. The team eases into the week, and nobody feels tempted to work on the weekend to get ready for it. Plus, a third of all sick days happen on Mondays, so somebody missing hurts less.
- Mondays are for cleaning up the weekend. Dev, support and marketing use the day to fix whatever broke while everybody was off.
- And for looking back. We gather what we learned from the weekend and the week before, so Tuesday’s decisions are better informed.
Paul Graham says it best: “Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t.”
Now my Sunday nights are calm, because my Mondays are mine.
Am I just moving my worst day from Monday to Tuesday? Hmmm, maybe. But yesterday was Monday and I got a lot done, and today is Tuesday and here I am, writing this and excited to get to work.