Why Monday is the worst day

Weekends have their own shape. There is less expected of you, fewer people asking, more room to be quiet. Then Monday arrives and the whole machine starts up again at once.

Email. Work. Calls. Other people's normal weeks. For a lot of men, Monday morning is when the gap between how things are and how they are supposed to be is widest.

There is nothing wrong with you for finding it hard. It is a predictable problem, which means it can be planned for.

Decide Monday on Sunday

The worst part of a bad Monday is the first hour, when you wake up and have to decide everything. What to do first. Whether to get up. What matters today. Every decision costs something, and on a hard morning you do not have much to spend.

So decide the night before. Five minutes on Sunday. Write down the one thing Monday has to contain. Not five things. One. Then write down one thing you are deliberately not doing, so it stops hanging over you.

Before ten o'clock

The first few hours set the rest of the day. These are not about feeling better. They are about getting the day moving.

• Get out of the room you slept in.
• Water, then something to eat, even if it is small.
• Ten minutes outside, whatever the weather.
• Do the one thing before you open your email or your phone.
• Send one message to one person. One word is fine.

The goal is not a good Monday. The goal is a Monday that has started.

If it goes badly anyway

Some Mondays will go badly whatever you do. That is one Monday. Write down what you will do on Tuesday morning, then stop thinking about it.

The Monday sheet puts all of this on one page.