Don’t Start Monday Morning With Inbox Catchup

A new week of work requires inspiration, not box-ticking

Sarah Begley
2 min readJun 28, 2021
Photo by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash

Pretty much every Monday morning of my career so far, I have started the day with inbox catchup. I never feel like I can put my head down on the week’s work until I’ve responded to everyone who needs a response, or at least made a mental note of which emails will require my attention in the near future.

I think this makes intuitive sense, and is probably the way most people start their weeks. But lately, I’ve been toying with a different Monday morning kickoff, one that is less rote and more inspiring for the week ahead.

Over a Monday morning coffee, I’ll read some big-picture thinking, whether it’s a strategy doc that a colleague has shared or a business book whose advice can help shake loose some new ideas. Today, I paged through the HBR Guide to Managing Strategic Initiatives and found this quote that got me thinking:

Colleagues need to be able to understand your idea in the context of the company’s past measures. People often think…

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Sarah Begley

Director at Medium working with authors and books. Formerly a staff writer and editor at Time.