The Monday Morning Ritual
Spend your freshest hour on the work no deadline will ever force you to do.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 85%
The Monday Morning Ritual dedicates the freshest, highest-energy block of the week to big, speculative, career-advancing work rather than to reactive tasks or planning. Vanderkam observes that people who try to schedule their most important work for Friday at 3pm or an 'if I get everything else done' slot never actually do it. Monday morning wins because energy is highest and work-week emergencies have not yet arisen. Done week after week, this compounds into real career progress on the work that otherwise never happens.
Origin
Vanderkam developed this from studying how professionals spend their time and repeatedly finding that speculative, high-value work gets deferred to slots where nobody works. She reasoned that the block with the most energy and the fewest emergencies is early Monday, and named the practice around it.
Core principles
- 01You have the most energy at the start of the week; spend it on the highest-value work.
- 02Speculative, career-advancing work has no external deadline, so it only happens if you schedule it into protected time.
- 03The opportunity cost of Monday morning is high for planning but perfect for ambitious creation.
- 04Emergencies rarely arise before 8am Monday, so the calendar is genuinely clear.
How to run it
- 1
Name your speculative work
Identify the work that would meaningfully advance your career but that you don't strictly have to do and never seem to make time for.
Pro tip This is the stuff you say 'I really should make time for this' about.
- 2
Protect Monday morning
Block the first hours of Monday for this work before anything else can claim the time.
Pro tip Around 8am Monday the week's emergencies usually haven't started yet.
Watch out Don't schedule it for Friday 3pm or a conditional slot — it will not happen.
- 3
Repeat weekly
Make it a standing ritual so the progress compounds week over week.
In the wild
A professional carves out Friday at 3pm for the speculative project that would advance their career, then predictably slides into the weekend without touching it.
→ The high-value work never happens; moving it to Monday morning is what finally gets it done.
Common mistakes
Scheduling important work for low-energy slots
Putting speculative work at Friday afternoon or 'after everything else' guarantees it gets skipped because energy is gone and the weekend pull is strong.
Using Monday morning to plan instead of create
Planning has a lower opportunity cost and belongs on Friday afternoon; spending peak Monday energy on planning wastes your best creative hours.
Is it for you?
Best for
Ambitious knowledge workers and remote professionals who want long-term career progress but keep drowning in urgent tasks.
Not ideal for
Roles that are purely reactive or shift-based where the worker has no control over how Monday morning is spent.
From the transcript
“dedicating monday morning to that is when you are at your freshest when you are starting everything off it will probably happen because the work…”
“the time they carve out is like friday at 3 p.m like you are not gonna do it at friday at 3 p.m”
From the episode
Laura Vanderkam: Smarter Ways to WFH (Work From Home)
Laura Vanderkam