Ask HN: How do I create that mental reset effect Monday has on me?

If you work at a job where you don't feel the agency of your decision making and output, if you're working for "the man", it can be relatively demotivating.

If you're working for yourself, and you know why you're doing something, and how you'll benefit from your labor, you'll have a more direct link to your motivation.

If you're working for an institution and you don't feel that agency, you might need a meta-objective. This is where people look to climb the ladder, or learn a skill that allows them to bounce to another institution for more pay and responsibility, etc. If you can't see any of those paths, it can be very difficult to feel the motivation, unless you're intrinsically motivated and all the work you have in front of you feeds your needs.

In addition, the vast majority of office workers will fall into:

Category a) Working for the man or

Category c) Working for the institution

Learning something while I'm working on a task seems to motivate me; the learning is the payoff for some of the drudgery.

Very interesting observation. So for folks who find no intrinsic value in the actual output of their jobs, they seek out other forms of motivation to keep from feeling bad about working in such a demoralizing field.

Not to toss around stereotypes but this sounds like every single MBA I've ever met.

> Not to toss around stereotypes but [..] like every single [..]

:eyeroll: are my eyes rolling out of my sockets or am i too drunk to be shitposting on hn?

I should have rephrased as "disclaimer: what follows is a stereotype, but..."

Didn't know what 'working for the man' meant and had to look it up. :P urban dictionary to the rescue ! What you say does make sense in general, but I was curious about what are the ways in which one could change(reduce) the reset clock interval. Plenty of general advice about meditation, exercise, task management etc i think will help but with following that do people start most days like fresh as Mondays or at least close to? Lot of traditional self-help advice is along the lines saying start every day as new without carrying baggage from earlier day, but it is hard and hasn't worked well for me. I probably sort of "procrastinate" and subconsciously look towards start of the week for that.

I think this depends on a lot of factors.

First off, I work for a large tech company, and I experience the excited-to-do-work-on-Monday effect you mention sometimes. Prior to working at this large tech company, I had worked for several startups, and came into work on Monday prepared for tedium sometimes. I don't think it's as easy as startup-vs-big-corp.

Second, it depends a lot on what excites you. One way I've heard it expressed is "Starters" vs. "Finishers." Some people love turning an idea into reality, but lack the patience to polish the experience. Some people prefer the polish work to starting with a blank slate. It helps to know if you are one or the other (or neither). In start-ups, you spend a lot more time in zero-to-reality rather than reality-to-polish mode. In big companies, it depends on what team/project you're on.

Sometimes, excitement levels increase by spending some time away from a task. If, for example, you schedule all your meetings on Wednesday, it will mean you've been away from any project work for 24 hours by the time you look at it on Thursday, potentially with a fresh set of eyes.

There's probably a lot of other factors at play in what makes someone excited for work. I think it involves knowing yourself (or having someone you work with who knows you well and willing to advise) in order to come up wtih a plan.

Kanban has really helped me keep the Monday sense of urgency all week long. I feel very focused on Monday because people tend to schedule meetings, things get kicked off, there are clear next steps; you're usually not bringing the previous week's baggage into the new week. By Wednesday more things are in-flight, blocked, ramping up, ramping down; there's more mental baggage; it's harder to have mental clarity around what needs to be done and what I should prioritize.

Putting those things into kanban helps me get all of that juggling out of my head and onto a board where I don't have to be mentally burdened by it. It becomes easier to focus on what's at the top of my queue -- if something gets blocked I have a place to park it, and if I'm blocking someone I've got an appropriately-prioritized place in the backlog to park it until I can help. It also helps me limit the amount of "Work In Progress" so I can turn my full focus onto whatever my top priority is at that moment.

Thanks for the suggestion. Do you use it just for work stuff or even personal ? Sorry, I have about kanban but not very familiar.

I do, but I keep separate personal and professional boards because they're prioritized very differently. An example from this fall: I needed a flu shot but I had recently moved to a new city and didn't have a doctor yet. The nebulous thought process in your head would normally go something like "I need a flu shot... but I need a doctor... but not sure what my insurance lets me choose... what's my insurance login credentials..." and you're suddenly five levels deep and way off your original goal. It's hard to stay motivated and focused when a bunch of interdependent tasks mingle together in your mind. Kanban helped me get all of that out of my head into a clear set of linked tasks:

- I need to reset my login.

- I need to login and pick a primary care doctor.

- I need to call and make an appointment.

This has two benefits: (1) A series of hours-long tasks get broken down into smaller chunks that I can knock out when I have 15-30 minutes each. (2) My end goal ("Get a flu shot") stays parked in my blocked column where I don't have to worry about it -- I can stay focused on the things that are immediately within my power to do. And that's super liberating! It feels good to knock out a todo list. This process keeps you focused on knocking things out and removes the mental overhead of having to juggle all these little things that you can't really do anything about immediately -- it's being tracked somewhere so you can write it down, keep working on what's most in your control, and come back to that item when it's actionable.

Not OP, but I also have a personal kanban at work to get stuff out of my head. The team has a JIRA, but my personal kanban is explicitly separate and private, so that I don't have to redact what goes on there. Every little idea for a code refactoring or a library update can go in there without making a huge mess for others. The JIRA tickets assigned to me also go in there, and I use checklists to break down tickets into individual steps. (The kanban is in a private GitHub repo, so the checklists are those found in GitHub-flavored Markdown.)

If I ever find myself utterly stuck or blocked on the current task, I can pull up some small quick-win task from the backlog in my kanban to get my mind unstuck. Plus I'm always able to say that I accomplished at least something by the end of the day, even if 80% was spent hunting some elusive bug without producing anything to show for it.

Thanks. I will try this

Try to introspect why. I'll make a suggestion to start you off.

On friday you have a number of problems that you can't see how to tackle properly and it's disheartening. Having two days to sleep on it, you've subconsciously seen a way forward so that block's gone.

It's probably not that but I'd urge you to look inwards and see what you find.

Maybe an odd suggestion, but I do this during the day and find it refreshing: buy a pair of industrial-strength soundproof earmuffs and an eye cover (for sleeping.) Put both on and meditate for 10-15 minutes, or if possible, lay down on a couch or bed. I always feel refreshed after ‘resetting’ my sensory inputs in this manner.

thanks. any particular meditation technique you recommend ?

Oh, just keep it simple. I like to focus on breathing because I find it easy/requires less mental preparation.

I take time off from a job to literally soul-search: meditation, reading, spiritual practice. Doing things for no metric or goal at all except to feel good about myself through the experience. When my insides aren't OK, I can't perform on the outside.

Take a day off in the middle of the week.

sigh ! if only, that was possible at a job. Wonder if any companies have tried this. a day off midweek instead of two day weekend. That probably affects the momentum

It would also affect the weekend. It takes a day for the stress to disappear, and by Sunday 2pm it's back, but it's a glorious couple of hours Sunday morning.

Username checks out

I really know this same Monday feeling. I’m ready for anything on Monday morning but often out of gas by Tuesday afternoon. I’m just now learning to be sensitive to this rhythm.

It doesn’t always work with my schedule or the demands of the job, but most weeks I am able to build in some buffers following long, focused work periods.

Example: Monday, I’ll start early, work long (often into the next morning), break only for meals or the bathroom, and accomplish much across multiple projects. Then, on Tuesday morning, I’ll sip my coffee slowly, exercise, read leisurely, and eventually take care of administrative tasks like processing email or writing up project updates. When Wednesday comes around, I’m ready to work long and deep again.

I work best when I can take advantage of my most energized days and give myself space to recover following those days.

I'm also a startup founder and I try to stay disciplined in keeping a can-do attitude all week. The main principles I try to stick to are:

* Uplift with gratitude

* Take breaks

* Breakdown overwhelming tasks

* Celebrate small wins

* Be clear on your motivation

Breaking down tasks is one of the most important ones for me. I find that if a task isn't well-defined or small enough, I dread starting it. I've started doing "braindumps" on any task that isn't small and actionable until I get there.

Post for more details: https://link.medium.com/PSWM5I8Vo6

I think you just described my last 18 months. As soon as December of 2018 hit my motivation died in IT. Having left tech taking a few months off, I feel great. Other projects around the house are fun ; things I used to hate doing are now enjoyable. As soon as the projects run out though, wondering what to do next to get back into it - job wise.

I guess you have to find out what excites you! Does meaningfulness from work drive that sense of excitement? Perhaps it could be your own personal project that excites you. Personally, I enjoy what I learn from working as a software engineer and writing them down coherently as blog posts. This help to cement my understanding and also give me the ability to share with others. One example is my article regarding design patterns that I was learning just a week ago! Hope to share with you all (:

https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-cloud-de...

Or perhaps you could start an active lifestyle again. Working out always helps to curb motivation issues at times. Give that a try!

Do you think this could be sleep related? I still am guilty of sleeping a lot on the weekends (so Mondays feel great!) then running myself into the end of the ground by the end of week. Do not recommend for anyone.

I don't think so. It's just the feeling of starting fresh

Think of it this way. Why can't you just go and write the code to solve all the big problems in one day?

Because of the context switch between problems. Each one requires more energy to think about and switch to.

Each night is like preparation for the next big context switch.

One thing I do that helps is I set little 10-30min timers and say "I'll do this in this time". Gaming your time helps a lot.

But things like coffee and drugs are just taking energy away that you would have later. So it's not a net gain.

Sleep/naps are the best reset mechanisms IMO.

I experience the same thing and I think it's the result of subconscious processing over the weekend.

I find this is only true while I'm working on a job or project I care about, but I generally arrive Monday morning and it's like my fingers just know what to do all on their own. Problems that confounded me on Friday don't even seem like problems anymore. I know what to do and I know how to do it.

I catch myself thinking about work over the weekends often, and I suspect an even bigger part of it is subconscious.

Meditation. Guided, unguided, silent, musical, 10 mins, an hour, Calm, Headspace, doesn’t matter. Try it out, see what works for you, and see the results for yourself.

I suggest regular 4-day weekends in which you silence work notifications completely.

Here is something you can try that I find very useful.

The night before, plan out your biggest tasks. Then when Monday comes, you can hit the ground running. You know exactly what you need to focus on.

While your advice still applies, it seems you might've misread the thread: the asker already has Mondays nailed down, they're asking how to expand that elsewhere.

Mostly I enjoy working on most stuff when there are no blockers. So I work on minimizing blockers so I am not getting interrupted by stuff I could have avoided.

Take 2 days off.

If you take every Monday off then this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

I don't think they're saying it's a problem.